Fear of relaxation.

This has been the first break I have had longer than 15 minutes all week. It's been like that the past month and will be until Fall Break. I'm living that life of constant motion. There are people I look up to.  They live this way. They never seemed to stop and I teased the hell out of them. I just couldn't understand how they did it. Now I realize...I get it...I don't have time to figure out how to do it, so I just do it, and that's that. The end.  Except that it isn't the end...

I sat waiting for Luna to come out of school, trying to breathe...trying to process my week so far.  This thought just took hold of me and I haven't let it go yet.

I left work late today..stayed til d last possible minute. As I was leaving I got this deep anxiety. It was worse weekend...a fear and painful rush deep in my chest. There it was...I had time that wasn't filled with immediate responsibility. Sure there were responsibilities to take care of, but nothing that couldn't wait a bit so that I could breathe. And that scared me.  So much.  I can't stand to be still anymore.  I cannot allow a chance to freely choose where my thoughts will go.  I have to be involved...it forces my thoughts in one direction and then they can't run around getting all drunk in worry and distorted by old pain.

Constant motion has been...well unavoidable.  There's no problem finding trains to force my thoughts into.  I have 10 responsibilities that are set and unavoidable and blasting through like train engines. Where there are gaps, I have ten more trains passing by.  And I jump on them quickly, giving myself to for whatever reason. Fast trains with big cabooses adding education or another line on my CV.  I jump on them to prove myself to the doctoral program.  I want that train so badly.

So...now remember this girl who used to sleep all the time, who didn't have time for responsibility because there was too much crying.  That girl sat under the bridge watching trains go by...or played chicken on the tracks.  I was so scared to take on responsibility that I would not be able to handle because I was going to break.

Guess which life I prefer?  BUT there's a moment for break and I don't know what to do...because then the junk can come out.  And there is the anxiety and the fear...taking a break will make me fall into the junk.  I'll fall of the train...the train goes fast and if I fall off, it will hurt bad...

Or...going back to the imagery of my dear peanut butter river.

I'm at a running pace through the peanut butter which makes it so much easier to keep going.  It's not sticking to my whole body...just to my feet. If I'm moving fast enough there's little time to stick.  But damn...all that running has tired me out...it is draining...I can't possibly keep running. The options are both painful: exhaustion or getting sucked into the peanut butter.

What a problem...no one wants to be anxious about free time.  Breaks are supposed to be delicious...yummy and help you get back up and run. God it scares me to death...to stopping scares me.

That's not helpful, Teresa.  Let's think of some other possibilities for the fear.

1. Maybe the fear is because of the other responsibilities that are being put off and are weighing me down.  Maybe they CAN'T wait.  My break is not yet a break until I take care of the other stuff.  The unpaid bills..the lawyer shit...the family stuff...that's the peanut butter.
2. Maybe the fear is that I don't want to face the stuff I don't have.  While I'm enjoying what I am doing (work wise and push wise), maybe it's that I still don't have what I find enjoyable. Any pause in the push only serves to highlight that void.  The pain that's there because I don't have the things I find enjoyable. It's the for what feeling?
3. The people/relationship shit is hurting.  As long as I am in the push, I'm around people and that means less loneliness.  The break, though, is lonely....really really lonely.  So I have to keep on moving.
4. OR...maybe I'm scared of wasting minutes. There are things to be done life to be enjoyed.  I don't want to lose a minute of time that I can use for successful living.

The crazy things is that I was this girl walking around without the push...tons of break and fearing a push.  Now I can't live without it.  Regardless of the reason, now I am so scared of the break.  It is so damn uncomfortable.

What am I trying to avoid?

I talked about the silence a few weeks ago.  God's message to me about silence.  I cleverly threw that message aside because of this very reason.  Silence just throws the thing I'm avoiding like smoke in my face.  However, in true silence, which is the actual message God was giving me, neither the push nor the thing I'm avoiding nor the side responsibilities or the relationships...none of that is present if I am practicing that true silence God was telling me about.

Ok...so now what? Cause I'm still at the base.  I'm sitting here.  Now it's actually night. I am so anxious  and fearful of what I should be doing the next few hours.  And unbelievably, I can't wait to go to work in the morning so that this anxiety is over.

My heart is really telling me that I am trying to avoid some feelings. I'm not denying that there are feelings there.  OMG, I know that there are feelings that are hard there.  But, why am I denying them the space to come out?  I have never wanted to hold feelings.  Why now?

This has been healthy.  As much as I know I was all over the place, it has un-stuffed and sorted a few feelings.