How Can This Be Easy?

Dear Self,

This is a note for anyone who’s felt frustrated along the healing journey. For anyone who wants to quit therapy, give up on breaking poor habits, and throw in the towel. This is for the hopeless, wounded, and broken. This is for the real humans out there doing the real work. This one is for you and me.

How can this be easy?

When I let it be easy. 

When I let go. When I just let go and allow myself to be. My mind is a bottomless fissure that I’m trapped in. It doesn’t allow easy to permeate the perimeter. It perceives easy as a threat, emulating danger and the unknown. 

How can this be easy?

When I let it be easy. 

When the crisis has stabilized and times are quiet, my mind is loudest of all. The stillness. The quiet. The desired state I have yearned for since conception has been achieved. It is everything I wanted, and yet the worst of all. 

I long to return to chaos and crisis. Bring me back to abuse, illness, and chronic instability. When life or death is unclear, and the boundaries become blurred.

Bring me back to poverty. The days absent of all warmth. Those freezing, snowy nights curled up in a ball with no heat or water as I watch the spiders crawl by. I beg for that, for that I know. 

Bring me back to the grief; the raw, emotional pain that demands to be felt in isolation. The popping sound of beer cans beginning at 10am, but it’s not what you think. Alcohol, similar to self-harm, is a saving grace. Pure numbness is the only way to avoid suicide. Numb saved my life. 

How can this be easy?

When I let it be easy.

I long for the pain and problems to feel safe again. I understand problems. I understand sacrificing my needs for survival. I dream of one day spending most of my time in my rich, fantasy life rather than my agonizing reality. The fantasy becomes my greatest companion. It’s the antidote to mindfulness. And that I understand. 

But nobody teaches you what to do when the storm subsides and one day becomes this day. The crisis has become my identity and my purpose. Without you, who am I? 

They say the answer lies in being rather than doing. It’s the how and not the what. But if that is true, why are there so many unanswered hows? 

How can you learn to feel safe in the present when being absent brought safety your entire life? 

How can you trust a felt sense that cannot be understood by thought when all the sensations are painful? 

How can you tolerate ongoing tension and tremors that keep you awake for days? How can you endure bracing and contracting that never subsides? 

There is no time for enlightenment when your body is in crisis. Being present is not an option; it’s never been an option. It’s as if the heavy body is still on top of me as I lay there, lifeless. I’m no longer trapped and constrained by another human, but by my own mind, body, and soul. I have become the prison I worked so hard to break free from. 

How can this be easy?

When I let it be easy. 

xoxo,

Self