I haven't checked in on myself for a while. I guess it's about time.
After several years of living with my parents, I recently finally managed to build up enough emotional bandwidth to move out on my own.
The first few weeks were brutal. It was a specific brand of intense anxiety that was fueled by loneliness. I hadn't felt that hopeless and emotionally "dysregulated" in a long time. I missed my dog so much (I still do.. that bastard). All I could think about was whether I made a huge mistake. I was full of regret. The words of Allen Wheelis thankfully put the situation into perspective, which allowed me to make some sense of what was happening:
More often the course upon which one has embarked entails so much anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, that reappraisal becomes necessary. One finds that his entire self was not known, that submerged aspects of self now rise up in terror, threat, and subversion, screaming outrage, demanding revocation. One is forced to a halt, sometimes driven back. The whole issue has to be rethought. "What I'm giving up is more important than I knew." "Maybe I don't want to change." "Am I going at it the wrong way?" Newly emerging feelings and reactions must be explored in relation to other known elements and to one's now threatened intention.
Here therapy may offer insight into bewildering experience, help with the making of new connections, give comfort and encouragement, assist in the always slippery decision of whether to hang on and try harder or to look for a different way to try.
He states it very well in this quote. Things felt "slippery." On any given night, when my heart was racing and I felt panic rising in me and I could barely sleep, I was on the verge of running back to safety... moving back home.. getting to hug my dog again. But I kept at it because another thought by Wheelis gave me the strength to persevere:
Throughout our lives the proportion of necessity to freedom depends upon our tolerance of conflict: the greater our tolerance the more freedom we retain, the less our tolerance the more we jettison; for high among the uses of necessity is relief from tension. What we can't alter we don't have to worry about... The more issues we have closed the fewer we have to fret about.
I kept thinking about this quote. I reminded myself that if I can't "tolerate conflict" or discomfort, I will never be free. I will forever be stuck living a safe and uneventful life. I will be controlled by fear.
Things have mercifully settled down a bit. The loneliness still feels intense but not unbearably so. It's duller. It's more manageable. I still miss my dog but I've come to terms with not having him around anymore. I still get to see him on weekends. He will be alright. He has a family who loves him.
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Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til' ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!