Journal 10/13/2018
Lisbon, Portugal
Last night the not-enoughness and fear got so bad I couldn’t sleep or think straight. It was as though all the walls were closing in on me and I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t make a decision. I couldn’t choose anything. […] I bailed out of Essaouira and started looking at surf spots. Anywhere I considered filled me with dread, especially if I considered hostels or surf schools on whose web pages I saw pictures of young and attractive people, smiling easily, laughing and talking amongst one another, and I despaired inside. It was a primal fear, seeing this. I tied it back to any number of occasions when I saw how breezily some people could be social and confident and live their lives among one another, among strangers. I despaired that I could be chill and find a way in.
Eventually I put my phone away, but I lay on the couch staring at the ceiling. Dad [who was also in Lisbon for a month and with whom I stayed for a few days] had gone to sleep by this time- after midnight- and I, silently breathing the words, took myself through a dialogue with myself. I think I knew it had gotten dark enough in my mind and enough shit had been stirred up that it was ready to come to the surface. And it was. I expressed a lot of fear. I was so afraid. I didn’t have to explain why. There was no why, really. I saw myself as a terrified child in a grown-up world, and realized that this was an important thing to have seen- myself as a child. There is a scared boy still inside of me who shies away, who is afraid of the big, scary, world, and so I comforted him, just by acknowledging how he, how I felt. “I understand you’re afraid.” […] When I get into these states of mind, the whole world collapses on me and I’m trapped. I can’t make any decision because every decision is wrong. I think- and I’ve had this idea before- that what’s happened in the past year and a half is that the difficult feelings and beliefs are now much closer to the surface. They’re no longer hidden in the depths below in an ocean of distractions and walls as they had for decades, and that’s good. The nice thing is I know now when I’m not being straight with myself. I know deep down, even though I’ll go through the rounds of justifying this or that or rationalizing this or that to avoid a fear or a truth, the unsettled sense doesn’t go away with my attempts to avoid it. It deepens and darkens, quickly, until it must be dealt with, until I finally look at it. It forces my hand. There is no place for me to hide anymore, although I can still run for a little while. Remember last year when you were looking at schools? The core problem was close to the surface and you soon knew that there would be no choice you could make, no place you could go, no degree you could earn, career you could succeed in, nothing at all you could do that would address the real issue- the not-enoughness. This was true last night as well. There was no thought I could think, no plan I could make, that could help me feel at peace. Nothing worked until I had tended to the churning feelings, until I had seen the scared boy, until I had seen the belief. I’d like to think this is all a slow process of reprogramming my brain and that I am indeed making (glacial) progress as far as cultivating a more stable mindset that believes I am enough/worthy/etc. It’s funny, once I cry and see that scared kid in me, once I see and acknowledge the fear, the clouds dissipate and what was so terrifying moments before and impossible to consider, is no longer a big deal. I could now say hello to that person or book that trip because I no longer needed to. Nothing truly important was at stake any longer. No action or outcome was necessary and paradoxically this made the action (and outcome) possible. But I had to acknowledge and see the blind, visceral, black storm of fear first. It’s like this core belief that slips from disguise to fearful disguise has to be repeatedly stripped of its masks so I can see it in its true form. I recognize it now, its essence, regardless of the form it takes, and know the answer is, in the end, always some form of seeing it and letting go. It’s not always easy to do. Remember Copenhagen? Remember Brighton? In the car by the chatty campfire neighbors in the Adirondacks? The cycle continues, but I’d like to think that every time I run through the scenario, it cuts off the available escape routes more and more, or, to use a more loving and squishy analogy, until that scared kid finally feels comforted and seen, and over time frightens less and less. […] I’d like to think that, despite myself, I’m making headway, having set the intention at the outset of the trip, knowing I’d be cutting away my support systems and leaving my quarry no place to hide. Like jumping off of the cliff and the rest is now taking care of itself, even if I flail about and make hitting the water far less comfortable than it needs to be.