Dear Diary, 13, Breaking Through

Dear Diary,

Well here we are sitting at entry number thirteen.

Someone once told me once that in their family the number thirteen was lucky. They are also the only person whose care spontaneously combusted in their driveway. No one was hurt and no damage was done, I just don’t know if I trust their judgement on luck.

There was also a year in my late-20s where I encountered a lot of thirteens. And it was kind of a terrible year, but there were some good points, too. To be fair, it was not the thirteens that were giving me trouble. It was more my impulse and anxiety that kept me depressed at the bottom of the bottle. There were some fun moments though. Like skating to the liquor store and getting drunk on the grassy hill right next to the turnpike reading philosophy. Never felt as much of a gutter punk.

It was not all bad, there were long stretches where I didn’t just drink. I hung out, met people, learning about myself. Maybe I needed that pause in my life to figure things out. I mean none of the approaches I tried to find success worked. That is life—ticking away the boxes until we find our homes and ourselves before we wind up dead or worse. That worse is different for everyone.

And now I am here. In a different place with a different crowd. Most of my closer friends are all in transitions or limbos, planning to move on to somewhere better. It is the perfect crowd for me to have somehow found with a lotta luck.

With a lot of support and mindful reflection, I have dusted myself off from that spill I took in Entry 11: And the Crash. It took a second to lick my wounds. It still doesn’t matter what it is, but I can say it doesn’t have anything to do with losing my sobriety or my transition. Things are still being played out, meaning lots of anxiety brought on by feelings of helplessness in the meantime.

Still, I had a really good session with my therapist today, and we made such a nice breakthrough. We did not get rid of the anxiety by any stretch. It will never go away of course. We did figure out what was causing it, though, and started thinking about how to work through it.

And that is the powerful thing about therapy. It is not about solving anything, controlling anything, or even understanding anything specific. It is about listening to what the mind and body are saying. Then it is feeling through how to give all the different parts in the mind and body what they need without throwing the rest of the internal system ecosystem out of balance.

And what I am learning about anxiety is that one way of dealing with it might work one day, but it will to totally useless the next. There are different kinds, triggered by a variety of triggers. My anxiety all feels the same through when it kicks in making it very confusing. And making it so the process has no end except presence. And presence is something I still wanna get into. But more on that later.

And oh, and I am breaking through on my thesis too. But more on that later, too. Geez, things just keep building up. Guess I will just have to keep writing these entries.

Life is all about catching-up just to fall behind again.

But, it is also pretty cool.

More to come promise