I’m home..and kind of tired

12:37 pm

I’ve been “home” for a few weeks now.  And, well, admittedly, I’ve been feeling tired, and sort of alone; and realized (again) today that despite all that “sober” work, I’m still me:  I have trouble reaching out to people.  And that I really need to do that.  And that it’s the only thing that leads to feeling a part of things, of life, of community.  Duh.  Well, not duh to people “like us,” who, for whatever reasons (natural hermits, fear, self-consciousness, “drinking thinking”), find it really hard.  It’s hard.  But, once you get over that hump–I did it once and I am going to do it again, get over that hump–life greatly improves on SO MANY LEVELS.

So, yeah, I’m home (from where I was for a work contract for that past 7.5 months).  And, it’s kind of cool that I consider this place my “home” now, if not a little scary–I don’t really love familiarity.  Anyway, I flew home about 3.5 weeks ago–and have been struggling ever since to figure out my new, well, everything.  New (old) home, new (old, well, current because they are letting me work remotely right now) job, new (old) schedule, new (old) climate (I have to say, going from 20% humidity on the regular to 80% when it’s not raining hasn’t been that easy).  It’s been a lot of things, but tiring and confusing come to mind.  Life is tiring and confusing, and I think I’m just extra tired and confused right now.  Haha.

Tiring.  It’s all happening at once, and I want to do it all at once.  That means, writing a book (!  just gotta try), writing stories, writing a business plan (!  just gotta try) so I can open a coffee shop of my own, all amidst trying to figure out the rhythm of life here, again.  It’s kind of maddening in that, I put SO much effort into leaving, and I left, and now, I’m back, and it feels like I didn’t leave.

(The one thing I learned that I’m blindly, almost, clinging to right now is this:  what you FEEL and what you BELIEVE or THINK you know, is usually wrong, or at best, doesn’t align with what actually IS, or with what actually WILL BE.  Haha.  So, I’m just going to put all this thinking into a box on the shelf and come back to it later.)

Depressing.  Well, maybe I’m finally coming out of my depression?  I don’t even know exactly how I feel.  I will say that my depressive symptoms have eased now that I’m not chasing around constantly, stressing continuously, and well, now that I’m actually eating normally again.  My diet was horrible there–I was literally starving myself for the past 7.5 months.  Like, 80% consciously aware of it, the other 20% a combination of denial and depression, I think.  (Eating disorders are definitely deeply ingrained behaviors, and for me, even more buried and hard to discern and examine and change than binge drinking behaviors.  At least with drinking, you know that it’s fucking you up; with bulimia, or restrictive eating, it’s the opposite effect in that you THINK it’s improving your life, somehow–and then you come to depend on how it makes you think and feel about yourself, and not just your life.  So weird.)

Enlivening.  Well, it’s great to be home, in a (almost too) familiar place, with my boo, my dogs, and job prospects that I left…and that I just have to plug myself back into.  I have to rev up to do it, is all.  Why?

The ever-looming conflict for me is this:  do you just plug back in when you know that moving on might be the more challenging thing to do?  The thing that makes you grow, change, learn, expand?

More later.  That’s about all the time I have (I have to do something for work, and then, do errands–the never-ending to-do list of coming home…).  Miss you all.  (Oh, and no thoughts of drinking since being home; none.  I’ve been tossing around the idea of just forgetting about the entire “getting sober” thing of the past FOUR years, but, how?  And, why would I?  Should I?  I can’t let it go.  I can’t, and that’s OK.)