Recovery is a weird road

Things are good. Like, really good. We replaced some broken appliances, I got a casual job, big kid is doing really well living with other young adults, middle kid has their health stuff sorted, and the youngest is settling into health school with the stress of the daily high-school grind removed. We're all breathing easier. Oh, and I got an amazing chaise that gives me pure Queen vibes when I sit in it. I've picked some paint for my future office when I'm able to claim it, and yeah. (More on all of these things in another post). Things are just...good?

And that makes me so fucking nervous.

If you spend long enough living crisis to crisis, it can be incredibly hard to accept when things are okay. Like, that life is normal and there is no imminent threat. When things are actually GOOD and not just okay?

My jaw is tight, my back is tense and aching, I am filled with nervous energy because my body and brain just KNOW that something bad is going to happen. I'm constantly thinking about what could go wrong, scanning the world for the next threat. As a friend said, this is where the phrase 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' might come from. Except it feels bigger than a shoe. It feels like the Titanic is going to fall on my head at any moment. Something bad is going to happen.

It has to, right? Something bad always happens. There is always another crisis just around the corner.

But things are good. Genuinely. The best they have been in ages. There is some extra space to breathe and relax, which is why it feels wrong to be on the brink of a meltdown; but I really am just waiting for the next sucker-punch. And the sad thing is? If it came - when it comes - there will be a sense of relief because the world has returned to my normal. I know what to do in a crisis. I've got all the skills to deal with that. I'm used to it, to shoving everything else to the side to deal with what's right in front of me. The most pressing thing. The thing that keeps my loved ones alive.

But I do not know what the hell to do with lower levels of stress. I'm not sure I remember what it's like to have average, daily, regular old stress levels. Have I ever? I'm honestly not sure. My brain is seeking it out, frenetic, frantic, desperate for whatever chemical load comes with the stress. I want it. I need it. I crave it.

I get it now, in a bodily way, not just as theory or knowledge learned from others, how hard it can be to disengage from conflict and 'drama'. How there is a gap in your brain when it's gone, how it feels bad, wrong, how it unsettles you. I want to invite it in. I'm looking for it almost hungrily.

By nature, I am not a dramatic person. I avoid conflict. I like peace. But I am coming to realize that after living like this for so long, I don't know how not to. Not really. All my attempts to relax and unwind and find peace have been a scratch on the surface, and there has always been that underlying tension. Me, poised, ready to respond at a moment's notice.

And living like that? Has made it really easy to ignore my own internal landscape a lot of the time. I mean, I understand me as much as anyone can understand themselves, but all of the chaos has given me an excuse not to really face up to myself. Every time I've picked up a book and felt slapped in the face by the truths exposed, I've still had the chaos which meant that I didn't have time to fully address those issues. There was always a reason (an excuse?) why I had to put that to the side and solve the bigger more threatening issues.

Oof.

That means I'm going to have to work on me now, right? I cannot blame anyone else, anything else, for my bullshit. I'm going to have to stop being distracted by all the other things and actually focus on myself (gross!).

It's weird that in some ways the high stress levels can give you the freedom not to do the personal growth that you need to do. Not to dig too deep into the problems that you know you have. It's almost a relief when you can focus on someone else's needs rather than your own. It's easier to deal with. Easier to see the answers, to solve.

This is such an uncomfortable space to be in, and I know that healing from trauma, getting to a place where I can find a new equilibrium is going to be a weird journey, an unpredictable one. I honestly never knew that everything changing for the better so quickly would throw me into such a loop.

I don’t like it. But I also kinda love it.