I don’t understand what life is for. I just keep striving to achieve things, but it doesn’t really make me happy. Whether I achieve things or not, I just move on to the next thing and I start striving for that. I think I need to relax and let myself find what feels good, find what feels like love and light, but I don’t know how to do it. I’m addicted to the feeling of satisfaction I get when I tick off another task. I’m maybe also addicted to the self-flagellation of constantly finding myself wanting and finding another thing to try to improve in this endless quest to make myself worthy.
I think I found today’s lesson of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) frustrating because it’s going back over something that didn’t help me much the first time around, whereas the last couple of lessons before this review period were really transformational for me. Obviously, if they’d been truly transformational, I wouldn’t be feeling so stuck today, but I suppose what I mean is I’d rather be continuing to contemplate the last lesson: let me recognise my problems have been solved, instead of today’s first review lesson: I’m the light of the world, which I don’t find particularly illuminating, pun intended.
The problem is I’m not just afraid, I’m completely terrified, of letting go of my quest to achieve, to be worthy. I’m frustrated at my seeming inability to trust myself. To be nice to myself, even. I feel endlessly guilty at what I perceive as my laziness. I have to say, I totally get this from my mum, who is even worse than me at this. I sometimes think all women – or many women – are like this. My brother’s girlfriend triggered me the last time I saw her, talking about yet another business idea she’s had. She just seems so energetic while I just mostly want to go back to bed.
But when I let myself sleep in, I’m just so overwhelmed by guilt at my laziness that it’s not even helpful. It’s not worth it. I’m already stressing about my upcoming holiday and wondering how I can minimise the damage I’m perceiving that it will do to my fitness and mental health. Because I don’t only worrit (definition: a combination of worrying and wittering) about my body and health but about the effect eating sugar and drinking alcohol seem to have on my ability to think straight and live a life that makes me feel good.
I’ve tied myself up into a big knot with all these rules about how to be happy, and all it’s done is make me feel more guilty, more anxious, because I’m constantly walking the line between too much and too little. Overdoing it and underdoing it. I’m plate spinning and if I let go of just one of them it will all come crashing down.
I’ve predicated my happiness on: running a certain mileage and certain workouts every week, strength training four days a week with progression, I feel guilty at not also doing yoga, I doubt all the time whether I’m even doing the RIGHT running, especially since starting this threshold-paced training, which never feels quite hard enough, and then writing, and earning enough money, and not wasting money and finding spiritual enlightenment, even though I know really that to achieve the last I have to let go of all the other things that I’m terrified to let go of. And NOT watching too much TV or playing iPad games. OK I actually think the last two are quite sensible frankly. And gardening, and housework and studying and reading, and even a little bit of “pampering”, which to me always feels boring, unpleasant, and a lot of work.
And not eating certain foods. And trying to make friends but never really feeling comfortable around other people because I feel like who I am naturally is either not enough or too much for them. Feeling damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Never knowing when to work and when to rest and therefore ALWAYS feeling in the wrong, except when I’m so exhausted that I literally couldn’t do anything else, OR when I’ve gotten to the bottom of my to do list for the day. But even then, when I’ve surely earnt my rest, ending up feeling unfulfilled, bored, craving ice cream and wondering what life’s all about anyway.
I’m lost, I’m stuck, my plan has failed, I don’t know where to go. I am the light of the world but I don’t even know what that means or what to do about it! I think I “just” need to stop. Sit. Listen. But it’s so hard because my mind is constantly thinking up things I should be DOING instead. ACIM told me this morning that there was a message for me, and I think after not only much contemplation but also about two and a half thousand words of writing, I may have finally heard it. The question is, can I actually listen to it?