The road back is long. My work, financial and personal life are all in parallel positions. Coming back from the toughest places. Every end fee, every dinner I cook at home, every night of sleep, every moment of peace is a move in the right direction. The challenge I am finding is that all three of those roads are not one way tickets to better places. They all have set backs. Sometimes all of those setbacks are at once. Some nights I still don’t sleep. Sometimes one step ahead at work turns into a setback that cost us more than we had gained. There are days where it all feels just as bad as before the tides turned. The exception is the pain of estrangement, which is gone. It has not been replaced by simple peace, but it has been replaced by a pain that is more dull and less anxiety ridden. It looks like peace by contrast, but if you put it next to true peace, the purity of the real peace would put it to shame.
Whatever that thing that ‘isn’t peace, but is better than before’ is, I wish I could document it, scientifically. Trace a line around it in black marker so I could watch it grow or shrink. X-ray it periodically to see if the fractures are healing or if there are any new ones. Healing happens so slowly, it is hard to know some days if it is really getting better.
Of course, I do know it is getting better. But in getting better, you become more equipped to see what it really is. And I was in deeper than I even knew. I have a longer road to travel than I ever could have imagined. I need to keep reminding myself that it is making a difference. Every night of sleep isn’t erased by a night of wakeful anxiety.
What I think I need is something that I am not certain I can have. But in typing that, I realize that I am only limiting myself. What I need to do is sacrifice something to get it. And my family needs to sacrifice something for it. I need to go away. On my own. I need to travel the way I used to. It won’t fix everything, I know that. But it will fix a lot. And it will re-set something inside that has been red-lining for a long time.
I don’t know where I would go. Maybe somewhere I have never been. I don’t know. But I am realizing that I have been dreaming about it. It is across the ocean somewhere.
Whatever that thing that ‘isn’t peace, but is better than before’ is, I wish I could document it, scientifically. Trace a line around it in black marker so I could watch it grow or shrink. X-ray it periodically to see if the fractures are healing or if there are any new ones. Healing happens so slowly, it is hard to know some days if it is really getting better.
Of course, I do know it is getting better. But in getting better, you become more equipped to see what it really is. And I was in deeper than I even knew. I have a longer road to travel than I ever could have imagined. I need to keep reminding myself that it is making a difference. Every night of sleep isn’t erased by a night of wakeful anxiety.
What I think I need is something that I am not certain I can have. But in typing that, I realize that I am only limiting myself. What I need to do is sacrifice something to get it. And my family needs to sacrifice something for it. I need to go away. On my own. I need to travel the way I used to. It won’t fix everything, I know that. But it will fix a lot. And it will re-set something inside that has been red-lining for a long time.
I don’t know where I would go. Maybe somewhere I have never been. I don’t know. But I am realizing that I have been dreaming about it. It is across the ocean somewhere.
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