as i am, where i am
Every weekend I root around in my notes for a thought that I had had in the course of the week. There is the urge to flesh it out into a full-bodied story with a neat start, middle, and an end that wrings out a sweet little nugget of wisdom.
When I am doing my best to hold my attention taut and keep my schedule airtight with work and worries, these brief bursts of revelations can go a long way. They imbue the rest of the day with meaning. There is now something now to look forward to, something to sit down and unpack when I have the time. This is especially true for those days that feel so stripped of meaning that I want to jump out of my skin and disappear.
But more often than not, once I am past the moment of intensity, it is impossible to recall or re-inhabit the precise state of mind and faithfully recreate how it made me feel. It simply fades into miscellaneous struggle/confusion that I cannot glean a pattern out of. I feel like I'm always on the cusp of knowing, but when I edge closer, the week blurs into incoherence and I am denied the succor of a lesson learned.
When I'm in the throes of anxiety and going through the motions of life, it is disappointing to come out of it and not be able to piece together how I overcame it. What went right despite my ironclad conviction that things were headed south? How did I eventually end up doing the thing I was terrified of and did it decently enough to not raise suspicion? When there is only madness without the method, it can be extremely disheartening. And yes, yes, this is all very maudlin.
When I was younger, I wanted to write down my core beliefs in a notebook and carry it with me. It would be my auxiliary brain and I would read it whenever I felt like life was slipping out of control and I could not rely on my mind to self-soothe. It would serve as a point of reference and help dispel self-sabotaging thoughts. However, I would have to blindly believe what was written in it. This never worked for me even though it sounds like a really great plan when I am chilling in the living room on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe I was capable of taking to the task in front of me if I calmed down and put my mind to it as my notes claimed, or I could just switch to survival mode and expect the worst like my mind was blaring at me.
It is easier to believe that each hardship will eventually calcify into an armor that you can use to shield yourself against similar mistakes in the future. But the hardest lesson perhaps is that you forget most lessons at some point or their significance dissipates over time. Or maybe, there is little any lesson can do, and it hinges on time and exposure until you get used to the way your life is and can think your way through it, despite it all.