Yesterday I blogged about feeling generally irritated and frustrated by my situation in life, and today I talked to my therapist about my feelings. “Let’s just call it like it is,” she said. “You’re fucking pissed.”
“Okay, I’m pissed,” I said.
“That’s all right,” she said. “Be pissed.”
“OKAY, I’M PISSED!” I said.
So now that that’s established.
My therapist asked if I’d ever blogged about just how frustrating it is for me to be 1) living with my parents and 2) trying to “make it” as a writer or a creative. Like, what’s it like to be a starving artist? (Well, you go hungry a lot.) And whereas I told her that I have blogged about these frustrations a number of times, I also said maybe I needed to give it another shot. So here I go.
It’s frustrating as hell. (How’d I do?)
Okay, fine, I’ll dig deeper. Today my therapist said she thought part of me wanted life to wave a magic wand and make my dreams come true. Well, yeah, of course I want that. Who wouldn’t? At the same time, I know it’s not realistic–for each goal a person has, there’s work to be done. For me, it’s not that I’m afraid of the work. It’s that I’m often paralyzed by what step to take next. With a hundred creative ideas in my head, I’m not always sure which one to pursue. Also, I’m scared that whatever I do pick won’t be THE ONE. In short, I’m scared to fail. Of course, as my therapist said, “What do you have to lose?”
“At this point,” I said, “Really nothing.”
My pride, you say?
Honey, I lost that a long time ago.
Getting back to what’s frustrating for me, sure, part of it is that my life doesn’t look like what I want it to right now. However, a good deal of my frustration is due to what I’ve done internally with the facts of me life. That is, I’ve blamed myself for my situation. Like I have this dream and have taken steps toward it, but the steps I’ve taken OBVIOUSLY aren’t enough. So that means I’m not enough. I’m a failure. This is where the frustration really lies, the feeling that I’ve done my best and it–clearly–isn’t sufficient.
This thinking, of course, is recipe for misery. Normally therapy puts me in a good mood, but I spent this afternoon in a pretty significant funk. I did a lot of–what’s the word?–wallowing. Not that I donned sackcloth or anything. I actually donned painting clothes and continued painting the room I started yesterday. I listened to several podcasts. In short, I was productive. At the same time, however, I gave myself a good deal of grief. For not having my act together. For not being “a success.”
Thankfully, this evening while I was taking a shower, the weight of the world fell off my shoulders. I remembered that my therapist said that as many as one-in-four people (Google says one-in-five) live in multi-generational households. “There are a lot of people like you,” she said. Then I started thinking about some steps I could take to reach my goals–and actually got excited about them. My therapist said, “Do you ever talk about how irritating writing is?” I said, “It’s not writing itself that’s irritating. It’s that it’s not paying the bills.” This is the thing about creative projects. Inherently, there’s joy in thinking about them, doing them. But you can suck the joy right out of them when you put pressure on those projects to put food on the table.
In the moments when I’m most clear, I’m proud of myself for listening to my soul several years ago, closing my dance studio, and beginning to work on a new life. I’m proud of this blog, regardless of who does or doesn’t read it, regardless of whether or not it ever makes me a dime. I get hung up on success as the world sees it, but the truth is I already consider myself a success when it comes to what really matters to me–what’s on the inside, not what’s on the outside. Do I want the outside to follow the inside? Sure. It would make a lot of things easier. But until that happens, I’m working on being okay right here, right now–irritated, frustrated, pissed off, or joyful. I’m enough.
Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)
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The truth doesn’t suck.
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