Context:
This is a stream-of-consciousness post I wrote in 2015. I was too ashamed to post it at the time, because I was ashamed of my overwhelm, of “not being OK”, not knowing myself well enough, not having an operating manual, and of not being Good Enough, both in my daily life and in what I write down.
Why not just leave it in the junk heap? I’ve spent the past five years undoing and repairing that shame, being willing to be seen as flawed and chaotic. So here: see me as chaotic, curious, and yearning for more, and see how I’m not ashamed.
But also because, it’s got my tone of voice, with all my rambling and self-deprecating, self-observant humor. If you don’t like my tone of voice, go listen to someone else talk.
Might it make a better post if I already had the answers to what was going on in my life? Maybe. But if you’re figuring out who you are, how you work, and why you feel like a chaotic mess in a world of orderly normals… you’re not alone. I promise.
Today I am tired and overwhelmed. I’m emotional. And it took me so long to find a computer that would turn on, and then log in, that I don’t remember how the rest of this thought went.
I’ve been running between projects, and then running to catch up on sleep. (FYI, that doesn’t work.)
I can’t find the pair of knitting needles that are the right size for my new sock yarn.
I have lots of my stuff still packed in boxes stacked around my house. I feel like I have no time to unpack the boxes.
At work, I have to have conversations with people, and right now people are draining.
Last night I was reading about Highly Sensitive People, which I’d heard about years ago, but never really read about. I can’t tell if it describes me or not… I don’t think of myself as being sensitive to noise, or particularly aware of what will make another person more comfortable. But if my mom is highly sensitive (which she is), it’s quite possible that my point of reference is not, in fact, normal. :)
I can tell you that nearly every week, I have some emotional disruption to my life, and it makes it hard for me to do my day job, or to be useful at home, or … well, it can impact anything or everything. Sometimes I can point to something concrete and say, yeah that’s a totally reasonable reason to be having trouble this week. When we moved back into our house, we had a lot of really late nights and early mornings, and packing my stuff is disruptive. Totally valid. But there’s always *something*. This weekend I went on retreat, so I was up late and up early, and didn’t have a restful weekend. Go figure that come Monday/Tuesday, I’m exhausted and dysfunctional. But I’m also miserable, uncomfortable in my body, and I wish I could stay home and knit. (But I can’t even find the knitting needles.)
So last night, I didn’t read the written-for-the-lay-person book called “The Highly Sensitive Person”, I read the first third of a clinical psychology paper about HSPs written by the same author. This was helpful, actually, because she’s talking about Jung’s definition of “sensitive” (vs. “introverted”, which she says is different), and I’ve firmly fallen into the Jungian camp, so it’s nice to have this concept cross-referenced with a theory I respect. And according to Jung, most, if not all, people with neuroses are highly sensitive, which means that a disproportionate percentage of the people who go to therapists are likely to be sensitive. On the positive side, I don’t seem to be neurotic, I just have issues.
But it’s funny, because I don’t think of myself as being particularly emotional. I think I’m always surprised when I have strong emotions. I like it when I’m just going along all neutral, it’s simple and predictable.
This doesn’t feel like an essay worth posting on the internet, and I don’t have time to sort it into something more coherent.