Running

I’m in that “I need to run” place. Move back home, or move to some place other than here. Lonely, out of sorts, eating way too much, thinking strange what-if kinds of things. Like what if I have cancer, or what if they kill me doing this dental implant procedure, or what if I run out of money and have to live under the bridge when I’m 75? Or next year. Or tomorrow.

It’s a pain in the ass when my brain gets all revved up with no track to run, and I’m just spinning my wheels but making no progress in any direction. We’re all a little lost sometime. (thank you, Nightbyrde). My brain is a strange and terrible thing, although I would imagine it offers unending amusement to others. Sometimes even to myself. It’s like living in that Hamilton moment, “Oh, am I talking too loud? Sometimes I get overexcited and shoot off at the mouth…but I promise that I’ll make y’all proud…I’m not throwing away my shot.”

What is my shot? A shot at what, exactly? Maybe I’ve been sitting here waiting for something to descend upon me, like rain or a pile of dung, but that’s not how it works. Maybe I’m supposed to go out and get it, whatever “it” is. And therein lies the rub – I don’t quite know what “it” is, but I know I haven’t got it. I don’t have the innate talent of a Virginia Wolf or Alice Walker, and I’m not going to wake up tomorrow morning with those stellar attributes. There was once a song that asked “what becomes of the broken hearted”; i want to know what becomes of the mediocre. What becomes of the C students, the people under the dome of the bell curve. What becomes of the average amongst us – do we succumb to mundance existance, with nonvariance day after day, unnoticed and unvalued?

People want the exceptions, they want the extremes. That’s more exciting, it seems. These days neurodivergence is a buzz word, and when we come across someone who doesn’t exactly fit the mold, who doesn’t get all of the social cues quite right, who doesn’t seem to function well by conventional norms we are beginning to label them neurodivergent. What the eff does that actually mean, anyway? Johnny’s not weird, he’s neurodivergent. Susie isn’t oppositionally defiant, she’s neurodivergent.

I have begun to wonder if I’m neurodivergent. I don’t get social cues quite right, and I don’t see the world in the way most people see the world. My triggers are numerous and very sensitive. I feel as though I have had several lifetimes from the moment I was born until now – the good girl, the scapegoat, the bad girl, the drunk, the disappointment, the befuddled and inept donkey who doesn’t know when to stop. My first thought is to question which one is really me, and my first answer is all of them. I’m just not sure I’m supposed to wear all of those costumes at the same time.

Several of the self-improvement modalities I’ve explored in the past have asked what you would be without the trait or habit you’re trying to change. That’s an excellent question, and I know what I imagine I would be without some of the more annoying hindrances, like social anxiety. How would I function with anxiety, or without obsessive thinking? I would love to say that I’ve gone past some of those, but all I can honestly say is that I’ve beaten them down to a dull roar. I still find myself enraged at times, but the instances of that are a mere fraction of past times. For a while, I lived in rage, without a trigger. It was my natural state, my baseline, a given. I’m surprised I didn’t have a heart attack or kill someone. Maybe I did kill someone, someone inside me who held dreams and innocence and trust but proved to be a liabiliity. I wonder if she’s really gone or just hiding. One day, I’ll go looking but probably not today.

Regardless, I supposed I can say there have been some improvements along the way, but I’m not where I would like to be just yet. There is still far too much hesitancy, too much doubt of the Universe. I still feel as though I can depend on no one or no thing, and if I want it done I’ll have to do it myself. That’s very non-productive, and tiring, but it’s also a mechanism of isolation, which tickles me because periodically I wonder how and why I am sitting here alone with nothing much to do outside of my own space.

On many levels, I am making a conscious choice to be alone. Too many bad experiences with people who proved not to be who they said they were, or who had unfounded expectations of me. I suppose that is the way of the world, but I’m just not well for it. After being hurt and abandoned so many times, on large and small scales, I have chosen not to keep trying for companionship, for partnership, for love with a capital L. There’s still a romantic who lives in me, holding out for a miracle, but I keep her pretty well in check. I know she’s in there, but I’m not giving her a long leash. But, as usual, I digress.

The point is that if I have a shot, I want to take it squarely in the face of judgement and injustice. The injustice of people who have great ideas and viable solutions that aren’t heard because they aren’t the right look, the right gender, the right color, don’t speak the right language, don’t wear the right clothes. There’s always an “in” crowd, and very often members of that crowd are the ones with money and connections. If that was only about social invitations, it wouldn’t be so bad, but so often the “in” crowd is endowed with benefits – greater opportunities for advancement, enhanced social acceptability, higher income ceiling, generational wealth. In short, they have power, and the ability to get things done. That is not justice.

We judge each other by artificial standards of value. For example, if your IQ is a certain numerical value, you are judged to be worthy of a level of trust based on your presumed intelligence. There is no corresponding character assessment, or evaluation of morality, loyalty, or basic common sense. I am not sure my chances of survival in a cataclysm are better with someone who possesses an IQ of 160 but cannot start a fire. Some of the smartest people I know are fools, not because they are deficient in some area of mental capacity but because they arrogantly believe their intellect makes them superior to everyone else.

I have great respect for people who are smarter than me, and who use their powers for good. There is little patience for those who ultimately have no opinion or feelings of their own unless they can be validated by an established body of factual information. I know brilliant musicians, self-taught and without ever having the benefit of classical training but inherent talent expresses itself regardless. Street musicians and some gospel organists may have never heard of Chopin, but Chopin is irrelevant in their context. They bring joy and jubilance to the listener, and there was never any greater purpose in playing music than that.

I still want to run. I am still not comfortable where I am these days. Fear is wreaking havoc with my so-called sacred center, and I can feel the root and sacral chakras are far out of balance. I believe they have always been so. Fear was given to me, and once I received that gift I learned how to manufacture it in more efficient fashion. I have to be one step ahead of the unknown, always waiting or the inevitable catastrophe, never sure of my well being. My body actually reflects that, with a bizarre and disproportionate distribution of fat and bulge in the lower abdomen, just above the pubic bone. I believed the uterus had been the cause of all my issues, but it’s been absent for many years and still the mistrust of the body remains.

In all honesty, i do not feel significantly safe just about anywhere. Safety, for me, involves my physical wellbeing and my emotional wellbeing. I am more often able to convince myself of physical safety than emotional. People are mean, or at best clueless when it comes to how brutal they can be. More often than not, interactions have to follow some archaic sense of respectability and propriety at the cost of authenticity. Superficiality generally drives me crazy, but society appears to demand it in the name of politeness.

It remains a mystery to me how we can dismantle systems that oppress people intentionally. The system’s job is to protect itself, and our systems of capitalism and supremacy are performing as designed. Those are not broken systems, despite their negative toll on billions of lives worldwide. Why they exist and why they were designed requires only discernment of who benefits from them. At the very least, we know who does not benefit from them.

Unblocking my sacred center will take persistent effort – changes in eating habits, more water, intentionality, meditation, etc. It will also require admitting that my way has not worked to produce optimal health, happiness, or purpose. Unblocking the sacred center of the country will take similar efforts, but we cannot seem to admit that we may be wrong about how we’ve built this reality. That’s Step Zero, and we can’t get there. We’re still in the land of blame and discontent but not willing to take responsibility for any of it. So, here we are, and here we’ll stay until we lose something precious, something we feel we cannot live without. We’ll be at the bottom of our addiction then, and I hope we have the courage to recover. It’s entirely possible, entirely do-able, but it’s going to take a heap of lumber, nails, and paint to rebuild this ark. We should hurry, too, because there’s another flood coming. If we’re not ready, we’ve got nobody to blame but ourselves.