How the New Year is Like the Muddy Bottom of the Arizona Canal
So life has dealt me a pretty crappy deck of cards the last few years. Details aren’t important- just consider one of your worst possible moments, magnify it and add a dose of lifetime movie f-up-ed -ness and you have a feel for the emotional stress I have been under. And in the past 9 months or so it’s been better. I would have a week or so of really bad anxiety every now and then but I would somehow manage to button it back up, feel better and I would continue to take steps forward.
Sometime in the beginning of December my old pal anxiety came creeping back and then didn’t leave. It just got worse and worse and nothing seems to help. Not drink, not silly rom com movies, not really loud music dance parties, not even crazy runs in freezing weather while visiting the Midwest of for the holidays. It started to take on an almost physical weight until I couldn’t take it anymore. It just started coming out of me in the form of tears and verbal diarrhea to family and friends. Which helps. I feel the need to repeat that, if you are a border line hermit type like me, REACHING OUT HELPS.
There is no one cause for my anxiety. My topsy turvy life lately have left me with so many problems, questions and challenges that they only way to survive, to exist, is to break them into smaller problems, questions and challenges and do my best to wake up every day and take full breaths. And for some reason the start of December all my little issues started to add back into their larger selves. Along with the usual stress and pressure of the holidays, some pop-up work surprises and a minor relationship let-down I ended up with a toxic emotional cocktail raging through my body.
And it’s still there, ebbing a bit perhaps. Tried to knock of a few issues of the list this morning and went for a run along the canal. The first of the year is one of my favorite times for the canal. It is drained and its muddy bottom is exposed. Along with a treasure trove of discarded items. Many not to be unexpected: grocery carts, smashed TV’s and a good dozen once orange cones. But there are surprises, a yellow and blue toy truck that has had almost all of the color sucked out of it, but enough remains to remind that it was once delightful. There was a lovely vintage looking suitcase propped up on a log like it was waiting to be packed. And two or three stuffed animals – enough probably to make them not so special of an occurrence but there is something so sad about their sogginess I feel the need to mention them separately.
I always wonder how these items get here. Even the grocery carts must have some story or tale of woe. But in a few weeks the canal will fill, life will surge in it again and I’ll feel the need to wax poetic about the duck families and reflected sunsets.
And I guess I’m a bit like the canal. At my core - emotions are still fairly muddy and gross. Stuck together with questions that will never have answers, problems that may or may not get solved and challenges that I’m going to do my best to step over. But even when all is going swimmingly and looking good, that muddy bottom is still there. And that is OK. I hope in the future I can be a bit more agile and avoid the perfect storm that hit me.
I’ve never really liked the introspection that occurs at the New Year. I’ve always found it more of a negative process that a positive. But inevitably it occurs. So I guess that is my epiphany for 2013. The cruddy bits of my life will always be there, but I can do my best to deal with them and move forward. I will continue to strive to remain in the present moment. I will do things I enjoy, be it a show, a hike or just an afternoon spent listening to podcasts and knitting. And when the water gets low and my uglier bits come up for air I will address them as best as I can and reach out when I need to. A little draining is a good thing, no matter the cause or form.
