Shananigans

Leg is bouncing. I keep rubbing my eyes. My vision is focused on the computer and everything else around it is in this peripheral blur. I simultaneously want to capture the deliberation going on in my head by bringing it into words on this screen and I also want to scream into a void, drink the third cup of coffee, read a book or watch tv, and ignore this flood of panic going on in my brain, my body, my being.

This is overthinking for me, people. At times, it feels like spastic energy surging through me or staring into the void while my synapses fire about. At least I call it overthinking, the neurosis of “WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?” Despite my credentials of being an adult, I am saddled with this imposter syndrome of how to adult. Did I miss the fucking class on how to function? 

I root myself (and you the reader so I don’t totally freak ya out) knowing that I am OKAY. The need to clarify this is part of the whole loop of thought going on in my head. I am safe, healthy, able-bodied, comfortable, surrounded by beauty, have a resume full of accomplished shit. I have dug myself out of depths of my brain time and time again. I am loved.

I am okay AND I think a hell of a lot, in circles, about seemingly nonsense. I get totally stuck in my neuro-pathways to nowhere. I feel like I can take on the world one minute and suffocated by it the next. 

It is dramatic questions of worthiness and also the roulette of options on what to do with my day; my empty, free, no responsibility day. Do I go on a hike? But I will be alone and I know how anxious I can get about slipping and falling or having a weird Hawaiian pig chase me down and gore me. Or to the beach? But I was there yesterday and the sun is so strong and if I am not careful I will get burnt. Or I could go get some food at a restaurant? But then I have to spend money and talk to people and what if I look at the menu and can’t decide fast enough what I want and then I choose something sporadically and realize I really wanted the acai bowl even though they are already shmearing a bagel with the cream cheese which I could have made for myself at home. So then instead of doing anything, I stay in my house and poke around the porch where I am always in reach of a fridge full of food and beverages and the bathroom is right there and I can keep the dog company and I am safe. 

Oh but wait, it is not over. I stay home and enjoy the day reading, relaxing, chilling. And somehow I trap myself in doubt. Am I living enough? Enjoying Hawaii enough? Taking advantage of the day enough? I am annoyed at my desire for comfort over the opportunities that come with exposure, vulnerability, showing up. 

I thunk a thought thoroughly through. Repeatedly reiterated rutted rambles. Cerebral collisions curtly controlling contradictory concerns.

I am prone to rampant bouts of overthinking. I exist on a pendulum of thought that takes me into spastic highs and lows of questioning and then back to middle ground of knowing the answers.

On any given day I am raddled by the illusive rule book on how I should be living my life. Lately, I compliment my friends on their success in adult-ing; getting married, making babies, buying houses, going to the doctor, having a retirement fund, going to graduate school. It is not that I am jealous of their lives like I want it for my own. Rather, it is these nagging questions of, “Am I doing this wrong?” “Am I behind?” “Am I going to be 65 years old and have 6 cats that I am allergic to and spinning in circles on still trying to figure out how to do life?” “Do I need to grow up and start a 401k?”

That is my brain pendulum-ing, and then it swings the other way. The aggressive self affirmation saying, FUCK THE SHOULD. FUCK THIS NOTION OF ENOUGH-NESS. Fuck the idea that anyone is doing it RIGHT, so how the hell can I be doing it wrong. I am not behind because life is not some race to the finish line or a competition at all. Fuck the status quo. I listen to my gut intuition that says, “Be _____. Do_____. Act_____. Live____.” I get the joy of filling in those blanks, and all the other blanks, however I choose. What a terrifyingly, beautiful gift that is. 

And after a bit, the pendulum rocks and eventually comes to a stop, between the doubtful low and the spastic self-affirmation high, I rest in the middle, a place I can breath. The middle is action. It is writing these words, acknowledging this truth of now and releasing them into the world. It is walking out the door for a walk along the ocean. It is getting in the car and driving to the cafe. It is laying at the beach with a book and watching the crabs dig holes that are quickly filled back in by the trickle of the tide. 

Somewhere my thoughts subside, they are ever present but not consuming. I watch the should, would, could, later, after, if…blah blah blah wash away. The language capturing the visceral buzz and I am left being. To be. Present form. No acknowledgment of the past or the future. This moment, the now. Where I learn to breath deeper, fuller, longer. 

My thoughts, lately, seem exacerbated by the pandemic that persists. Elongated amounts of time to ponder, to question, to stir. It is accentuated by my solitude, two months now of keeping my own company. I daresay it is not normal, whatever normal ever is or was.

Whether it is the day to day rumination of what to do or macro contemplation of my existence, this overthinking damn sure categorizes itself as messy thoughts. I leave these words here, a reminder of an action taken, a way to cut through the twists of thought and put it to work, forming words to function.

Now, breathe.