I’ve been trying to write for the last few weeks,
but I keep feeling stuck;
I keep feeling numb;
I keep starting and then stopping,
not knowing what comes next,
not being able to find the next word in the sentence.
I know there is so much to put down on paper,
so many feelings to pull out of my heart
and put out in front of my eyes,
so I can know them,
face them,
heal them.
But my heart hangs on so tight.
When I found out I got laid off from my job, I cried for two days, mourning my loss, wishing it could be different. Then I was done. That was over a week ago, and I haven’t felt anything since. I should feel scared. I should feel angry. I should feel anxious about what comes next. Why don’t I feel it? I keep telling myself I’ll start feeling sad again at the end of the school year. Of course I will. But what about the entire month in between? What do I feel for a month while I look at job postings each day and think about possibly moving? Why don’t I feel the enormity of these changes, these inevitably hard and risky changes?
Instead of feeling, I often find myself making lists, usually mental lists. If I can make myself a list each day of things I need to do-- mundane, trivial things that have to be done-- then maybe I can feel as though I hold my own fate in my hands. Maybe this makes me feel more powerful, more in control, more able to predict what’s going to happen in my life, even if the prediction only stretches to the next twelve hours and no further. At least for a few hours or perhaps a few days, I have a plan, I have a direction, I know where I am, and what I’m doing, even if it's nothing that actually matters.
But when my list-making fails, I start to feel anxious about anything that slips free of my grip—when the papers in the filing cabinet start overflowing, when I get behind on writing up the monthly budget or recording the receipts, when there’s a pile of anything forming on the floor, on the desk, pushed away in a corner. That’s not okay with me because if these things escape me, they may begin to overwhelm me, they may beat me, they may never come back under my control again.
If I can have this kind of anxiety about piles of paper that aren’t in the right place, that don’t know their place in the order of life, obviously losing my job is a much more serious crisis. I don’t know my own place. A month from now, it is possible that I won’t have a place to work, and I’m not very comfortable with not being able to predict when or where my place will appear. Until I find my place in a job, then I am unable to predict my place to call home. I can handle the idea of moving, but I can’t handle the idea of maybe moving or maybe not moving. How do I relate to my coworkers, friends, apartment, my town, the streets I’m driving on, right now, when I don’t know if I will be here for much longer? How do I keep feeling like this is home if it may not be home in the not-too-distant future? But if I begin to disconnect myself now, pull away from the things that feel like home right now, then won't I feel lost, disconnected, like I'm floating away?
