this moment, now... no, now...

So my new mantra is “getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

No small task.

I am so familiar with processing feelings in my head that it is almost impossible to put them anywhere else. The other day I was able to at least recognize that I needed a time-out, but whether or not I really got comfortable with my feelings is another subject all together. By nighttime I had fallen into my old patterns of “dialoging” my problems: feelings become personified by familiar faces and I begin to talk to them, often time reenacting the moments that lead up to the painful experience. Frustration becomes Professor no.1, anger become professor no.2. I have done this numerous times, and I have become very efficient at it.

I tried to find the link to the post where I first discovered that my brain isn’t trying to kill me and that this dialoging is actually just different parts of me trying to work through tough experiences, but to no avail. It was a really important lesson for me because it helped me to view people more compassionately. (I am not arguing with professor no. 1. Professor no. 1 is not here. I am arguing with myself.) However, this did not cause the behavior to subside, rather it merely rechanneled this thinking in a new direction.

D. and I had one of our blow-out explosive confrontations the other night. Later as J. and I were processing the episode she said “I think you were really angry.”
“When? With D.?”
“No before that. When you were unpacking in the kitchen. I heard you muttering to yourself. I think you were talking with your professors, and you were really angry.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I think you were so zoned out that you didn’t even realize how angry you were.”
I thought about this for a minute. I knew I was there, talking to them in the kitchen. Having one of my delightful instant replays. Was I angry? Damn right I was. Oh my God, I thought, I took that right into my talk with D. I felt like such an idiot. That little girl never stood a chance with me,

Walking through the grocery store yesterday I could feel the impatience. “Idiot” I thought of the man who was blocking the aisle with his cart. “Moron,” came my thoughts of the woman walking slowly in front of me. “Give me a break” came from staring at the old couple that was meandering about, not really buying as much as looking. When I think about how judgmental I was I feel dirty and I want to go and take a shower. Judgment is the greatest of all sins in my book. Perhaps second is indulging in it, relishing the sense of superiority it brings, and worse, pretending that those feelings of frustration are “being in the moment.”

I am making headway here. I am beginning to see again how my moments are manufactured. How the “now” I am living is not really the “now” that I am in. Another way of saying this is. I’m not living in the moment, because I am too busy judging it, or analyzing it, or processing it. Do you see what I mean by this? Regardless, I am not going to be too hard on myself about this. It may not be who I want to be, but today it is who I am. Acceptance is the first step to change.