Too Much Introspection Drives ME Batty!

Huge sigh...........I am home again, and have not come to the conclusion yet if that is something I am happy about, or not, mostly not I think, even though I had a constant inner struggle the entire time I was away.

The 4 days I spent home alone (except for the occasional visit from my ever-hungry son) were the best days I have had in years. As I hit the road on Wednesday, I felt a serenity, a calmness of spirit I had not felt in a really long time. I am not really sure if that came from the much needed alone time, or the opportunity I also had to just write whatever was in my head, to put some thoughts in a form of balance. My serenity lasted until I was within an hour of the lake. Then a tenseness entered my being. I tried so hard to push it aside. To recapture that calm feeling I had. But it wouldn't come. At first I told myself I was just road weary.

That first night when I arrived, the day was done, husband and daughter already asleep. But it was just like being home, I had to mentally shake myself the next morning.....tell myself that I was on vacation...no, I could not worry about work, wonder what was happening, I had to make myself not check my cell phone ( I had told them to call me if they needed to talk to me--they didn't thank god!). I finally locked it in the trunk, so it would be harder for me to get to.

Then I started worrying about my son, had he finally gotten his act together and registered for classes? ( NO, he hasn't!) Again, something to push aside.

Next it was the little tensions between my husband and I, or to be truthful, maybe it is only me that feels that tension....I don't know, if he feels it, he hides it so well...but the tensions of not saying what is really going on in my head.

Anyway, my daughter was very happy to see me, she said,"There is only so much 'Dad' time I can take"....she is very much like him in many ways....but she is also used to spending time with me...and when we have the freedom to be spontaneous, that is what we are.....she said she was weary of having every moment of every day planned. There seemed to be a crankiness between them as that first day of my arrival ended.

So I wondered, was I creating a tension between them that hadn't existed before I arrived? Was it my presence? Or was it just that it was time for an infusion of new ideas? More tension I created for myself.

Then the self-questioning started again, something I had promised myself I was not going to do. I was not going to dig deep and examine my life, I was just going to be, be there, do whatever came up, and most especially ride the water.

So a mental shake each night before bed. Another mental shake each morning. Pushing it all back....not allowing myself to think......

That worked as long as I was on the water....how fast could I get the jet ski going? How many wakes could I ride before I scared myself? How many new tricks could I teach myself? I did scare myself and my husband several times....I realized that I do things on the water that I would never do on land....why is that I wonder.... the water makes for a softer landing maybe?

As long as I had the water to play on, the shore line to explore, a book to read, a nap to take, a short back-to-school shopping trip to take my daughter on I was okay. But each evening.... in our oh-so-not-my-idea of camping campsite, with no campfire except for the last night.....each evening I would sit alone, after they had gone to bed, watching the water, the nightlights of the boats traveling by, listen to the chatter carried across the water, and my mind would start digging away....once Acushla wrote something about picking at scabs...that is what I felt like I was doing.....picking away....trying to get the answers to a multitude of whys.

One night I actually found myself asking the godawful question of....why are we here, what is our purpose, what does it all mean? Oh god....another mental shake....I told myself, it doesn't matter why we are here, or what it all means...the only important thing is our purpose....have I found my purpose for being alive? At least that question, I could/can answer.... yes.....I have found a few of my purposes.....not all of them...but my job...gives me a purpose....my children ... give me a purpose...all the people I love....give me a purpose....the rest of my purposes for being here will come....I have to keep telling myself.....sometimes many times a day, but they will come to be.

So that little bit of craziness I was able to let go of. But as I sat there each night, trying to find the moon hiding behind the clouds, I would wrestle with some new doldrum of thought, it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend last week, one in which we spoke of someone not happy, not really knowing what she wanted, and not really wanting to do anything about it herself, just allowing her general malaise to affect those around her. I sat there beside the lake thinking, is that what I am doing....burying myself in melancholy? Am I just so uneasy in my own skin right now that I have to find the reason? Can I not just let it go, just allow the world to flow by? So once again I would give myself that mental shake. You would think I would be dizzy by now.

So for these past few days, like a dog shaking off water, I would shake off my thoughts, close my eyes, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and try to recapture that feeling I had on Wednesday morning....that feeling that even though all was not right with my world, it was my world, and I could live with it, I could make the proper choices at the proper time, and it would ALL BE OKAY.

Then I had the six hour drive home, alone, oh god! More thoughts, more and more thoughts, more self-talk, more burying those thoughts away, I opened the sunroof, opened the side windows, blasted the radio, and drove.....it took me the first two hours, and picking up the phone and calling my mother, just to check in with her, find out all the family news, new people to worry about, before I could put it all back in perspective. Realizing that I choose, I truly do choose how I feel, that I can pick at the scabs of my life, or let them heal in their own time. Sometimes they may get a bit of an infection underneath, and the healing has to start anew, but if I can just hold on to that feeling of balance I had, if I can just remember that there is so much more than my petty little problems going on. If I can occasionally stop worrying so much about how each little thing will turn out...stop worrying so much that I become buried in my own self-induced malaise then the healing will continue, the growth of me will continue, and I can smile today. I just have to remember the advise of a very wise friend who tells me I think too much, and sometimes I just have to let life happen as it happens....... sometimes anyway, I don't think I could ever completely stop questioning, wondering.



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I have just been exchanging comments with Acushla instead of finishing this post...it is so strange to me ......there is a woman, a beautiful, witty, brilliant woman on the other side of the world, who in just a few short days it seems has entered my life because of this wonderful online world. Reading her words, has given me a bit of joy, made me realize that I am not alone in my wacky world of womanly insanity. That what I feel is okay, whether it makes sense to nobody else but me. Thank you.