Riding the Rails

Featured Image:  “Derail, Mississippi,” © The Spider Hill (own work), May 2010. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. (license)

A casual scroll through the dates of my last postings will reveal my dwindling blog activity. The truth is that I am struggling…

About a month ago, my understanding of my world abruptly crashed, leaving a field of chaos like so many shards of a broken mirror. Splintered fragments were all that remained of the smooth, silvery, reflective glass that was safely shielding me from needing to confront the tumultuous realities of my very uncertain position in life. The truth was always present, floating just behind the veil. I chose not to focus on it. Instead, I passed the last year looking through a beautiful kaleidoscope of color, perceiving, for the first time in my life, the stunning beauty all around me. Despite the jagged edges of my bumpy, twisting recovery, I found joy and gratitude in the vibrancy that I newly appreciated. To be sure, I was aware of a degree of unpredictability and uncontrollability. I knew that I could not know my future. Yet, I took for granted a certain stability and sameness in my work, my surroundings, my community, my family and friends… and I was deeply thankful for it. “No major changes in the first year,” a confidant with experience in counseling people recovering from alcohol and substance abuse repeatedly advised me. It was reassuring and comforting to rest in a relatively constant landscape while taking my first tentative steps into recovery. After a young lifetime marred by depression, anxiety, suicidality, disordered eating, and instability, a single year of stability was a blessing and a great gift. Yet, it was a gift I tended to not examine too closely, for when I did peer into that distorting magnifying glass, the tingles of fear began to prickle in my fingers and creep upwards into my hands, inching gradually toward my center… the fear of loss.

Not enough time! Not yet! I need more time! That was my first response when I received the news. After six years in the same cozy, comfortable, townhouse-style apartment in Vanillasville and three years in the same relaxed, flexible professional assignment, I received an email from HR that would derail my recovery and launch my emotions on a bullet train over terrain resembling the Alps, my body dragging along behind, hurtling haphazardly along the rocky landscape, bouncing against the unforgiving outcroppings, becoming more and more broken with each racing turn or screaming descent. Directly, the email stated, “Respond by the end of the business day tomorrow with your preference between the following three locations. You will be relocated this summer.” Two of the spots were in distant states and one was overseas.

To my credit, my panic did not settle in immediately. Initially, I told myself, There must be some sort of mistake. Or, at least there must be some sort of other option, some avenue that will allow me to stay where I am. It was a few hours later, after several fruitless, initial attempts to obtain more information and to express my desire to NOT return to the pressured, intense, demanding, competitive, workaholic, political, miserable world from which I escaped three years ago, that the bullet train of anxiety shot away from its platform and out of the station. Gracefully, mercifully, after two days of sleeplessness, palpitations, breathlessness, and a sensation of daggers driving into my stomach, and with the merciful, compassionate assistance of my colleagues and supervisors, HR relented. “But,” the representative declared to me on the phone, “Get ready. Because I guarantee you with 100% certainty, that you will be relocated next summer.” For another two days, my breathing was easier, but the train never returned to the station.

“Speed,” © John Georgiou (own work), Apr 2009. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. (license)

Nothing changed, I told myself. There is nothing different about my life now, about me now. It is all the same. Physically, tangibly, concretely, these statements were true. However, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, everything was different. And I hated myself that it was so. HATED myself. Because, it shouldn’t be that way. Where were my skills? Where was the faith and trust in God that I thought I was cultivating? As I moved from anxiety through depression, anhedonia, anger, and irritability, I found my thoughts spiraling into familiar and detested territory – self-shame, blame, and judgment. In the small journal where I recorded my daily bodily sensations/hunger/fullness and the thoughts streaming through my mind during meal times, an unhappy pattern crept into my reflections. I hate myself. I’m a failure. My insight enabled me to recognize the pathology of these thoughts, and I despaired for entertaining them. With my emotions swinging wildly and my mentation becoming increasingly catastrophic, alarming, all-or-nothing, and black-and-white, impulses and urges to use food as a comfort arrived almost imperceptibly. Rationalizations and justifications to engage in emotional eating abounded. Confusion and internal conflict were my daily diet.

Confusion… because I didn’t binge. I didn’t restrict. I didn’t over-exercise. I told myself that I was failing, and I told myself that I was unable to use my skills, yet I reached out. I demanded help. I curled up in a ball on my therapist’s sofa and cried for an hour, took a day off from work to dedicate to self-care, and exhaled a long sigh. Within days, I was acting out, ranting in a way that terrified me. I passed a long weekend visiting Alice for her daughter’s second birthday. I journaled for days about my lack of faith and how I detested myself for my inability to trust in God’s goodness. I lamented my fear of pain and future disaster, which was destroying my present happiness. Then, I made an appointment to speak to my parish priest, challenging my own distorted ideas about God, blame, punishment, worthiness, forgiveness, love, and life. He gently listened, without dismissing any of my concerns, he appreciated my anxieties and normalized my doubts, and then, without judgment, he offered his wisdom, understanding, and what reassurance he could give, telling me that we would meet again as often as I needed. I left his office with a sense of peace and safety, only to lapse into my chaotic cycle again a day or two later. Up and down. Back and forth. Around, backwards, sideways, and upended.

One Monday at 11:30pm, in tears, I called my childhood friend, Rachel, after eating two desserts. Of course, there was more to the story. I was away at our industry’s annual, international conference, and I was out with a group of close colleagues. We were enjoying a raucously good time. I lost track of how often I pitched my head back and released a full-bodied laugh that shook every muscle. When was the last time that I was raucous? When was the last time I allowed myself to be loud, rambunctious, and uninhibited? It was uncomfortable. It was just like the “old me.” I ate a dinner that was perfectly fitting for my meal plan. Then, instead of turning into bed for a solid night of rest, I convinced my friends that a late-night dessert would be a wonderful idea. And then, I ate two. DON’T I CARE?!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!!! I demanded of myself. It was “just like” that person I “used to be.” The girl that drank and partied, stopped for pizza with the gang at Jumbo Slice at 1 am after one too many in Adams Morgan or ordered Chinese food in the post-midnight, pre-dawn hours before falling asleep on Alexandra’s couch when she couldn’t make it back to her dorm. It reminded me of the self who was out-of-control, who stayed up too late, and who woke up hung-over. Self-hatred, remorse, and shame as thick as a blanket of nails wrapped around me. “You don’t understand…” “Yeah, but…” I replied antagonistically to Rachel’s reasonable questions and encouragements. There was that hyper-reactionary, emotional, catastrophic, inflexible, panicked, intractable thinking again. “I know I’m being irrational!” I sobbed. “I know I’m being moody and irritable and dramatic.” What I didn’t know was what to do about it.

Am I worse? Am I failing? How bad is this going to get? When is my descent going to stop? Where? What sort of shape am I going to be in by the time I finally get my feet under me again? How do I slow the train? I want to get off.

On Tuesday morning, I delivered an expertly crafted (if I do say so myself, which I do) presentation to a packed room. Of all the people composing the panel on which I sat, my talk generated the most questions, and I responded to each one, unfazed.

On Tuesday afternoon, I checked in with my therapist. Surely she noticed the marked changes in my moods, my language, and my behavior. “Yes,” she admitted. I confessed that I didn’t trust my own judgment. I catastrophize too much. How do I know if I am really falling? I tell myself that my life is off-the-rails. Is it even true? WHAT DO I DO?! SOMEONE DO SOMETHING! I went for a walk on the beach. I smiled at strangers and exchanged kind words with people at bus stops and on park benches. I attended mass. I breathed in. I sighed out. For the remainder of the week, I isolated myself in my hotel room when not attending the conference, and by Thursday, I was so lonely that I joined three of my closest friends from work at the hotel buffet. I was unabashedly direct. “A buffet is probably not the best place for a binge eater,” I told them. They gave me their support, just as always. And I ate a meal that fit nicely into my meal plan, just as always. We laughed. I breathed in. I sighed out.

There are no answers right now. Just as there are no answers as to what I will be doing or where I will be living a year from now. So, I wait. I wake up every morning, and I try again. I ride the rails. I don’t know where they lead. I go for mindful walks, I meet with my nutritionist, I confide in my supports. I participate in yoga class, and even when I am feeling depressed, I make an effort to get myself to the gym. I follow my meal plan. I tell myself, Just do what you can.

Ad astra per aspera.

“Reach for the Stars,” © Tony Beverely (own work), Sep 2014. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. (license)