Was This For Real? It's Hard to Tell. Cause it was such a Beautiful Mess

There is uncertainty. Everything is shifting. I would worry about the tectonic plates if I didnt know it was me. How do you feel stable when your life is coming apart around you?I put in notice, but I have no paperwork for the supposed new job. I have no official words that say when it starts. I have ideas and words spoken and unorganized thoughts shared, but that is not enough. I like stability. I wander from change and growth. So how can I just say I am leaving with no certainty? And is this even the right move? What if I could find a physiotherapy position full time? Am I passing on opportunities I am missing because of blinders? And what if I find a place but they will not accommodate Vegas or Christmas? We have plans. I had it so easy. So casual. So little expended. Why do I crave more? Thrive for something real?

Was this for real, it's hard to tell 'Cause it was such a beautiful mess we had got into

A Little Strength to Redefine

Needed some time so I could find a little strength to redefine, what I've become, what I have done. I never asked to be the one.

There isnt really a reason for it. I just have noticed that lately things have seemed more difficult for me. Strained. Frustrations are rising. Perhaps because this isnt were I wanted to be 9 years ago, let alone today. I know there should be so much gratitude for a job close to home, that  is easy and pays well. But it was always supposed to be my in between not my forever. My fall back to pay tuition. My in for a medical profession. The first rung on  my never ending ladder. And now it feels like I have never left that rung. Like the ladder towers over me wondering why I cant climb. 

The thing is, I love climbing. This past weekend I spend far too long climbing a cherry tree picking cherries. I crave that exhilaration when you are on your tippy toes knowing the cherries are out of reach and that you should fall but still having to go for it. Willing yourself not to fall. It probably didnt hurt to watch my husband watch in horror, continually asking me to come down before I got hurt. I wasnt that high. There were more cherries. I was having fun. So many childish excuses. But I felt alive. I liked watching him worry because it reminded me of how much he loved me. 

But that isnt the ladder that gives me issues. It is the bigger one. The one that holds my aspirations. I suppose that the difficulty I feel lately is mostly from the weights I keep picking up and throwing in my bag. It's like I see something to drag myself down and there I go clasping onto it for dear life. I feel the failure hanging heavy in the air, like a brewing storm. I sense some form of urgency in everything. In moving on. In organizing our home. In having children. It is as if I have to fight time. To fight the brewing storm that only exists within myself. 

I think I am at a point where I need to free myself. To let go of so much from the past. Actually, more so to accept it. The failures, the highs, the existence of it all. Perhaps Yellowcard is right, I just need some time to find the strength to redefine. I can feel my potential within I just seem to stifle it before it has a chance to be anything. Before I can become anything above the ladder rung I have come to live on.

Something has to change within. Love needs to be found for myself. I just need to start believing in myself again. To take that reach that feels just a little too far and pull onto that ladder rung that seems so impossibly far. It is time to move on. I will be someone I respect. Someone I want to tell others about. The strength is there. I just need to dig a little deeper.

A Fear of Escalators

March 1, 2011. I first wrote on the overcoming escalators blog explaining the purpose of it all. I wrote of how I wanted to overcome fears. To become something more and to take hard paths when they were right. How I get anxiety when faced with a lack of stairs and how I knew being scared of escalators was something ridiculous.

Fears come from experience. At least for me.When I was young, I want to say pre grade five as I remember the cute little leather shoes I wore that day, I had my shoelace caught in an escalator. The problem was solved rapidly but the fear began. Later when I was 18 my mother and older sister convinced me to run up a down escalator. I was stubborn and adamant that this was not a good idea. Peer pressure won and up I attempted to run. This resulted in a beautifully ungraceful fall and a painful escalator trail of cuts of my legs. And thus began the real fear. Escalators become a place of pain and anxiety. I often would say I preferred the stairs for fitness reasons and not that I was actually afraid. Avoidance became my behaviour only furthering my anxiety and fear when avoidance was not an option.

Later, I once found myself in Vegas, a land of many escalators. I remember clenching the rail and focusing on my breath and the plan to step of in a fashion that would not result in injury. This continued as I allowed myself to feel controlled by my fears.

I dont know how it all began or perhaps I do. But I have come to point in my life where I no longer accept that giving control away is the only option. I have watched in myself and in my loved ones the agony that comes when we allow something external to control us. Sometimes it fear, sometimes it is a human, and sometimes it is ourself. Yet the truth of it is we are allowing ourselves to submit when we have options.

I became a child of divorce in what seems like a lifetime ago and there reached a point where I had to acknowledge that I could continue to be bitter and broken or I could take control. I could no longer allow my emotions and mental health to be a pawn in the shattering I saw. I stepped away and took control for myself. It could be viewed that I should have relationships I dont and it could be said that I am unreasonable. But my reality is that I stopped allowing my fear to define me.

I will not allow my fear of escalators inhibit my life. Just as I will not allow someone else to dictate my expression of thought again. I am stronger now. I will overcome these escalators.