Relief

I sit in the quiet room of a large old public building that is now a city library. A reading room and computer roonm, and the cool of the chair leg against my ankle, the wide dark shine of the bench tops soothes me.

And today I needed soothing.

It shouldn't surprise me I supose, when I think to the past, that quiet spaces in public feel like a home coming. I knew that when, standing in the local shopping centre eating handfuls of salty impulse cashews like the stressed monkey I am, feeling mind blank at the prospect of going home, at the prospect of going to work, at the prospect of maybe calling my counsellor ('hi bob, yes it's been 18 months, do you have a space available today?'), at the prospect of confessing to my patient boyfriend who came around for emergency hug and moral support last night and pep talk and gee up to get to work this morning that I didn't after all make it to the office, all these things whirling in my head, all these mind blank, short circuits, all these entangled threads, and the entagled threads behind them too, and the thing I think of is the cool, and the quiet, the reverence, and the anonymity of this old building with books in it. And a keyboard. And maybe writing and writing until it all comes out and I feel clean, and balanced, and unentangled.

I wonder on the bus on the way in (almost calm then, a decision made, some of the options closed off momentarily) whether it is the case that I am someone who can endre a lot of stress in one direction but when it comes in multiple directions and from areas that feel connected but seperate then I wig out, fall in a heap. I wonder this because I seem to remember the idea that I can handle a lot of stress. I must be able to. I've put myself in situations that are stressful several times. I seem to like it, or at least not mind. Quitting my job on impulse to travel overseas and work and have nothing to come back to not even a plan! Leaving to move to Sydney on a whim in the New Year with a boot full of stuff and barely an idea of where my new job is or what I'll be doing! Studying two subjects while working 12 hour days in a new job in a new country and living in a tiny room with a family and no space to myself! So, a willingness to take risks, at least at some points in my life. And then there's the endurance of stress. Weathering shitty situations stoically. Surely I've done that too? Handled periods of responsibility and work stress. Handled family dramas ad nauseum and managed to keep myself sane - for the most part. Supported other people through tough times and been supportive and up beat. Haven't I? Or at least this is the vision I have of myself. Strong. Stoic. Able to weather discomfort without complaint. Able to adapt to the vissicitudes of life, stormy seas, chopping and changing direction. Adaptable. A make do-er, a stubborn little plant with roots dug in deep to thin soil in a small pot left up the back of an old lady's house long after she's left the house to her niece and the garden has ceased to be watered.

So today, this week, yesterday I think 'am I'? Or am I actually a dithering wreck?
How is it that sometimes a few characteristics of circumstance are able to wind me with a thump to the guts, take the wind from my sails and leave me gasping, panicking for air? And the bizarre thing is that I have these moments in time delay mode, revealed layer by layer - no one large temper tantrum fuelled teary meltdown that announces itself out loud in full colour, but a niggle, a dread, a mounting sense of disengagement which little by little opens up the door for other feelings and other 'symptoms' until looking at myself I think 'oh - I'm upset'. I look at myself like a cold cliched movie style disengaged professor father peering up from an entomology tray and say 'oh, there are tears - you must be sad. You feel sick in the stomach, you must be worried. Oh, I see you are not going to school today for the third day in a row - do you not like it? Oh, you seem to be trying to attract my atttention, did you want to let me know something?'. It is strange to be so removed from your own feelings that they seem a puzzle to you. And it is like the Professor father archetype ghosting in my self plans my days, very logical, healthful, useful, good for you life plans, and the mute child lives them out and feels them.

So of course I'm not naiive or simple enough to overlook the patterns of the past happening here. The experience of growing up in an emotionally volatile household where parents unresolved family and life issues took centre stage meant that I always felt my own emotional response to life was a liability. When my father was mentioned, at all, any context I would cry quietly, tears coming without me being able to stop them, out of shame and hurt and sense of loss about not seeing my father, and my mother would get angry and tell me that some people's fathers beat them, or lived with them but then died, so really, I wasn't as bad off as them and I should be grateful for my good fortune in avoiding either of those fates. When my childhood cat died, was put down at the vet, my mother cried in hysterics and me and my best friend who lived next door and had come along too comforted her, in the dark on the steps of the vet and I felt a familar coldness and distance as I went through the motions of comforting her. I grew up trying to be 'good' and self reliant. I read a lot. I made friends easily. I was a good listener. I rarely complained about things or demanded things or asserted my preferences (well, until my teens, and when I started to disagree, and assert my own preferences it felt like my mother acted like I had single handedly betrayed her and broken her heart). Unsurprisingly, feelings felt (and continue to feel) very dangerous. Me being sad or angry or dissatisfied and wanting something meant that I wasn't holding it together enough to keep everything (her) on an even keel, and often resulted in me being told I was selfish, or overdramatic or something else that I equated with being 'a bad person' (I'm not saying this was the intent, it just became the shortcut meaning for me, in my child's brain). I eventually left, my emotional distance taking physical form in an effort to keep myself safe from these inherited emotional badlands (which my poor mum inherited herself, a contaminated site bequeathed to her from her parents), to try to establish some kind of boundary by geography where I had never learnt to create one in my heart. So I create huge distances to save myself from situations where I think I am in threat of being subsumed by another's will or needs of me.

And here I am, feeling like I want to run from my job, a job that is very good on paper but I secretly detest much of the time, but feel pangs of guilt and panic when I think of leaving it. I mostly ignore my feelings about it and tell myself all sorts of good sensible reasons why I should stay there except in bursts, when in a rush, my feelings come out and I wail and want out. And in those moments of intense feeling it is as if I must act NOW, right in the very moment, or I will never get out. There is no sense of the value in taking some time to plan, look at options, work towards something, make provisions for myself, there is only 'out, right now'. And in those moments (such as the one I am in the tail end of, which grew from a tiny seed of discontent mid this week)my overdeveloped sense of responsibility which lumbers around yoked to me the rest of the time, is replaced with a fundamental disregard entirely for the needs and wishes of the other. I suddenly don't care at all that there is a deadline, nor that people are waiting for me, nor that it will look bad, nor that bailing manifests me as a flake, exactly the sort of fucked up child of dysfunctional family that I have always tried so hard not to be. I suddenly care way less about the financial realities of having no income, I feel the need to throw myself seed like on the winds of fate, whereas just a week ago the slightest gust of the cold winds of desperation would have frightened me away from even considering leaving.

And in all this I feel like part of it is the search for 'my people'. Not in a religious or ethnic labelled tribe sense, but in a vague 'I'm not sure they're them' kind of way. The people I currently work with are bright and shiny, happy, smart folk with easy going natures and if a rock hard core of ambition then this is politely dusted over with organic sweetness and light. They are Together. They have their Shit Together. And sometimes I feel like the combined good fortune and comfortable ease with which they move in the world leaves me no room for expressing honestly what is really happening for me. So this week I have struggled with going in dragging my post Christmas reality with me, to that collegiate, politely interested tea room chat space - where polite questions and polite answers about hip happenings and quirky observations are palatable, but sincere ruminations about anything not squeaky clean and shiny are not.

The correct answer to "how were your holidays?" is "oh it was lovely, so nice to see family, and get away". Not "well, I thought it was OK because I borderline kept it together while gone but seem to have fallen in a a bit of a heap when I got back. You see my grandma's depressed and not getting out of bed, another one has been depressed for years since her husband died and apparently couldn't muster up any joy without him, and I guess I feel sad and guilty and worried that it's catching when I see them, and kind of helpless that I'm far awar and can't do anything. Then there's my mum, who I think might be leaving her partner, and moving interstate with my little brother, but the whole relationship is fraught and littered with considerations of exes and other children and access isues. And now, my housemates are seperating and moving out, so I have to move house early this year at roughly exactly the same time that uni starts (which I have enrolled in after a 4 year hiatus and was feeling a bit nervous about anyway), and at the same time I've come down with raging career doubt and strange fantasies of a quiet life illustrating children's books over a cup of tea in a quiet little room in a quiet little house somewhere, so coming back here is particularly difficult..."

So instead I came to the library.