I’ve Got This

I’ve hit a creative wall.  This is not unusual.  I have times when my controller pushes through something with the mind because the mean kid or inner rebel has shut down my ability to do anything useful.  It hits me when I decide to create a new program or create something for a client or update my website.  But this is new tonight.  I usually don’t hit the creative wall with my blog.  I always seem to have something to say on the blog.  The topic comes to me and magically, the content pours onto the page from a place that is beyond my intellect.  It almost feels like cheating.  I hear from my fellow bloggers who struggle with creating enough content and I don’t want to tell them it isn’t a struggle for me.

But it is a struggle tonight.  There is no topic tonight.  There is only the blank page.  So I did something I have never done.  I just started typing.  This isn’t something I do.  I have always been substantially enmeshed with my controller, which means everything has to have a plan.  Everything has to have a direction before I start.  “Go with the flow” is not something I say on the regular.  But tonight, out of desperation, I am giving it a try.  I am trusting in the universe to take me where I need to go.  That never lasts long, but we will see.

It isn’t surprising that I am struggling at the moment.  It has been a tough week.  I have been processing my inner rebel and she is taking me down some exhausting emotional roads.  My son had his third surgical procedure (albeit minor) from a toenail accident that happened 2 years ago which refuses to resolve itself.  And my daughter now has strep.  Even my dog started randomly limping for one night just to keep me on my toes.  It all feels a bit overwhelming sometimes.  I love what I do, but running a business isn’t easy.  I love my kids, but being a single mother is … well … impossible.  Managing everything with no help from family can sometimes pile up and pound me over the head.  It is in those moments that creativity leaves me.

But I am not looking for pity or concern.  In the scheme of things, I am doing okay.  Why?  Recovery.  While sometimes, I can lose faith in this recovery work because it feels never-ending, I can usually acknowledge how far I have come.  And right now, I know that this week’s happenings would have rattled me much more a year ago.  I would have struggled more.  I would have felt far more futility.  I would have sabotaged myself more.  I would have slept less.  There would have been more wine.  I’m not suggesting there has been no wine, but much less wine.  And there would have been more emotion coming out sideways in the form of misplaced anger.

I know my progress is real and I know things will improve as they always do.  But I can hear that voice in the back of my head saying, “The universe hates you.”  I hear those inner parts who feel strongly that all of this is punishment.  This is a common chorus when the things pile on as they inevitably do.  And I yearn for the day when I will just handle it.  I long for the moment when the bad things will happen and I will know with all of my being that it is “just a thing”.  I can’t wait to take my action steps toward resolution without the whispers of futility telling me it won’t do any good because there will just be another bad thing.

In reality, I know it is the inner futility that makes life so exhausting.  It isn’t the things I have to address.  Those are just things.  And they will always be there in life.  They have to be.  That is life.  But the fighting against life is exhausting.  The fighting against life makes it feel like too much.  One day, I am going to hang up my boxing gloves.  I am going to back that bull out of the china shop.  And I am going to stop fighting life so hard when things come my way.  And maybe, I will be sitting here in a year or two writing a blog post about how much better I am handling life than I used to handle life.  Or maybe I’ll be missing those days when my kids had a sewn-up toe and strep between them, but could spend a week playing video games and reading library books.  Maybe the bad things will be bigger.  Maybe they won’t.  Maybe I’ll handle them better.  Maybe I won’t.  But one thing I know for sure.

Life is going to keep happening and it won’t all be pretty.

And I’ll handle it.

Written By Elisabeth Corey, MSW

I’ve Got This was originally published @ Beating Trauma and has been syndicated with permission.