You're Doing Fine.
If you’ve never known serenity until now, then it’s possible that you don’t know how to recognize it. Spending years in an emotional hurricane of your own making makes you so used to storm conditions, that when the sun finally breaks through the clouds you still brace yourself as if it’s just the eye of the storm, and not the potential healing that comes when it finally passes.
After my own years of turmoil, I still find it difficult to not expect that all of the good things happening to me can still be taken away. I feel like I’ve spent so much time paying for my mistakes and missteps that any windfall that comes surely is a fluke that I don’t deserve.
Life is good right now. Really, really good. Work is going well, I have a tight circle of friends that support me and welcome my support of them, my art career is taking off faster than I can manage, and Improv has been a real saving grace and true joy, and I’m at the point where I want to make moves to do it full time, in any sort of capacity. But in the back of my mind, I am still waiting for that other shoe to drop, some rude ghost from my past finding me and selling me out as someone that still needs to atone. This manifests in a few ways: I let new opportunities sit and spoil without taking them on; I leave new belongings in bags, wrappers, and tags until I feel that the time is “right” for me to enjoy them; I keep exciting developments to myself, just in case they don’t work out (even though they always do). Basically, I hide from my own blessings. Ironically, it’s Hiding that got me in trouble in the first place. It’s a weird method of self-preservation.
So I’m unlearning that method, and learning how to relax, look around at the good, and to keep moving towards more good, even in the face of bad or temporary obstacles (because, in the end, all obstacles are temporary, no?). In improv, we ask, if this is true, what else can be true? I’m learning to adapt this way of scene building to examine and accept that good is here and more is coming. If I am invited to join this board, surely my voice is one that is respected and deserves to be heard. If I am told that I am a talented improvisor, then I am indeed worthy of actually believing that praise.
The great things that are happening are mine. I’ve worked long and hard to get to where I am, after years of struggle and pain. I still have moments of pain, fear, and self-doubt, but even those moments don’t negate the existence of the wonderful parts. It is possible to accept your blessings, while knowing that there could be more storms on the horizon. I’m still working to forgive myself for the past (shout out to therapy, holla!), and part of that work is not hiding from the positives for the sake of the negatives. Here’s to doing fine.
