One step at a time.

sometimes, i’m the mess.

sometimes, i’m the broom.

on the hardest days,

I have to be both.

-Rudy Franciso

That absolutely sums up how I’ve been living the past few months.

Being a woman with a tender heart and a profoundly deep longing to love who she is, I have grappled with the necessary but oftentimes painful growth during my journey of self-acceptance.

Having recently found out that my over-analyzing, over-thinking, and over-reacting tendencies are all actually byproducts of living with anxiety: well, it hit me kind of hard.

But it also put a face to a name. It opened the door to some honest conversation and I’m learning to understand how I can cope with it and overcome those self-harming proclivities. And that’s progress, regardless of how sore it’s left me at times.

When I found that quote, I felt that it perfectly encapsulated how living with anxiety feels like. How it’s not just about being the mess (cause that’s hard enough), but the strength required to clean up, emotionally, and often as an army of one.

It’s weird, but I almost feel relief at being able to identify what I thought had no name. I mean, for years I truly believed that I was this anomaly that had these disproportionate levels of hormones or something, for how else does one explain my vehement reaction to seemingly inconsequential things?

I’m finding that during this expedition towards embracing my imperfect self, I sometimes forget to mention and celebrate the good that occurs during the days that I think are completely clouded by bad. I have this tendency to wholly focus on the lows, altogether forgetting about the highs.

Don’t get me wrong- my writing comes from a place of vulnerability and the desire to share how I feel (and this girl feeeeeeels). And while I live with anxiety on a day to day basis, sometimes feeling like a fraud in a mask trying to keep it all together on the inside, I’ve experienced many a moment where I feel good. Whole. Complete and calm, like my emotions are balanced and I am left wondering why I let these little nuances ruin what a loving life I have.

So I think it’s important to remember and share all the positivity, since we’re on the subject of balance.

I was recently blessed with a most memorable Monday, where I felt joy, peace, and harmony within me.

I was out hiking with my close friends in the midst of Mother Nature, following the Kenai River and hiking along the ridgeline of the upper canyon. Along the way, we witnessed proud eagles perch, stately sandhill cranes soar over the glacial blue, and the hypnotizing flow of the river as it wound its way through the gorge.

It was gorges.

(I simply had to throw a pun in there to lighten things up a bit)

And I thought to myself, there’s no place in the world I’d rather be.

Yeah… I was feeling pretty damn magical.

That’s honestly how I felt: like magic was happening inside me, because for the last few months I have been riding the struggle bus. Constantly riddled with anxiety and nerves, this break from all the negativity felt like actual magic.

I felt stillness. My heart beat normally, my mind wasn’t wandering, and I was living, breathing, and being in the moment.

And when my mind did try and wander down a wicked path, I focused on the steps I was taking. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Cause that’s what this is all about, taking things one step at a time.

Balancing act

Ah emotions. You breathtaking, magnificent, but equally frustrating, overwhelming, constant part of my being.

You make and at the same time you break me.

Flooding through my veins as thick as my blood, I’ve been living with the vigor of my emotions ever since I can remember.

Struggling to manage the heights of my highs and the depths of my lows, I spent years pouring my soul onto paper and crying until the tears ran dry, suffering in silence trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and why I felt in the intensity I did.

At times, I felt better when the pain swallowed me whole, because it was a darkness I was so familiar with.

Welcome home.

But that home was fractured, and barely functioning.

And it got harder and harder for me to find my way back to living a balanced life.

For awhile, I blamed external factors on my uncontrollable emotions and its subsequent demise of my happiness.

I feel like this because I’m living at home. (goes and buys a house but continues to struggle with loneliness)

I feel like this because I’m not pursuing my magazine. (goes and gets herself published for the first time, yet still feels incomplete)

I feel like this because I’ve never had a boyfriend. (puts herself out there and learns to use her voice only to obsess over the constant disappointing losses in her dating life)

I feel like this because I don’t have xyz and my life doesn’t look like xyz. (instead of focusing on all that she has, there’s worry over what she doesn’t)

After moving from city to city, home to home, guy to guy, and sad blog post to another, I realized that the thing that was really causing me pain were my emotions.

Now let me clarify: it wasn’t my emotions that were hurting me, but my inability to control them.

When I finally made the brave decision to spend money on someone who could help understand and embrace the tenderness and vulnerability that made up who I was, I learned to see the difference between being an incredibly emotional being (my biggest strength), and my lack of control over the force of these same emotions (my biggest weakness). And recognizing these helped me accept the beauty of my emotional vulnerability, but at the same time tackle the issue of mastering self-control over these robust feelings.

To embrace the feeling, but not become consumed by the emotion.. now that is the hardest work.

During one of my recent sessions, I was asked if I felt improvement, was it getting any better? Were my practices of “doing the dance”, staying calm when anxiety threatens to take over, or working on staying in the present and not making something out of nothing, was it helping? Have I overcome the temptation to let my mood shift based on insignificant actions and words?

At first, I said yes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I had been withholding the truth because in all sincerity, I felt like things had gotten worse.

My anxiety attacks had gotten more intense, my meltdowns had become more frequent and fervent, and my emotional tsunamis crashed harder than ever before.

But then I remembered: sometimes, you need to breakdown in order to breakthrough.

Ain’t that the truth.

I have fallen down, a LOT. But as much as I’ve slipped, stumbled, flipped, and fell, I have picked myself up, each and every time. In this journey of learning to love who I am, which includes all the messy and magnificent intricacies and complexities that make me me, I’m patting myself on the back because what I’m doing is brave. And I’m damn proud of myself for working so hard on owning my story, which isn’t always wrought with puns and pretty pictures.

Talking about it, sharing my tale, creating a safe space to be vulnerable, that’s what heals me.

As tempting as it is to remove what causes me anxiousness and worry, I know that the only way to overcome these obstacles is to practice this emotional self-control, and to embrace who I am and how I feel because in the end, that’s one of my most marvelous qualities.

It is a constant work in progress, “soul work”, if you will, but in all of this obsession to find that thing that would make me happy (house, magazine, love), I overlooked the thing that I actually found.

Me.

I’ll close with a Brene Brown forward, who has enlightened and inspired me these past few weeks:

May we find the courage to let go of who we think we’re supposed to be so that we can fully embrace our authentic selves- the imperfect, the creative, the vulnerable, the powerful, the broken, and the beautiful.

May we show ourselves and others the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle.

May we create a just and equitable world where privilege isn’t a prerequisite for self-expression and authenticity, where everyone feels invited and safe to express their power and their vulnerability.

And last, may we experience the strength of connection, the love of belonging, and the grace of pure joy.