tolerate it

First I’m the queen of dialectics, now I’m the queen of ambivalence. Really, I’m the queen of self-proclaimed titles, but for now we’ll stick with ambivalence.

I love when things are black and white. Nothing makes me happier than a straightforward all or nothing plan and answer. I’m so good at following rules. Though most people don’t know this about me, I’m a very regimented person. I do things very habitually, very rarely changing any part of my process. It makes life comfortable for me.

Though this is not a news flash to anyone, not even myself really, I am horrible at tolerating discomfort. I’m not good at being physically uncomfortable.. hell I have an eating disorder. I’m not good at having people not like me and I don’t do well in conflict. I don’t like making decisions, especially ones that impact others. Oftentimes my biggest breakdowns are the result of not being able to escape discomfort.

Though it’s not a profound discovery, it is rather insightful for me. I can think back to my most recent really big emotional breakdown that happened with my mom. I carry a lot of emotions around all the time. There’s a lot going on in my life that really no one knows about and on top of that, I’m battling the worst anxiety I’ve ever had as I deal with new and intense OCD. I have an average of about three silent panic attacks a day, one’s where I can feel everything internally but someone around me might only notice that I’m not too engaged. In this breakdown with my mom, I had to make a seemingly easy choice: I could go to a store that was about 30 minutes away, get a specific item, come home, and go to an appointment or I could stay home alone all day and go to my appointment when the time came. I only had about three hours and I needed to save at least 45 minutes to get to my appointment.

I could not for the life of me figure out what to do. The shopping trip was going to take a max of an hour and 15 minutes but in my mind, I was convinced I wouldn’t have enough time to go and get to my appointment on time. On the other hand, I had only been home for winter break for a day and I really didn’t want to spend the whole day alone. To me, it was not a decision of what I wanted to do, but instead I had to pick which situation had the least amount of discomfort. Being late and being alone are two things that make me super uncomfortable. Being late lets other people down; to me being late tells others that they were not a priority or that I am not put together enough to know where I need to be when I need to be there. It feels like it is a complete refection of who I am.

Yet, so is being alone.

Being alone is not my favorite thing. I think we can all agree that I’m not really one who should be left with her thoughts and being left alone feels personal to me. It felt like my mom didn’t want to spend time with me, especially given that I hadn’t been home long. I will say that this particular incidence likely felt more personal and emotionally charged because my mom is my comfort person. She’s the one I go to when I’m drained from everyone else or even from myself. She hears all of my complaints, listens to all of my worries, and knows damn near everything about me. I can breathe normally when she’s around because I don’t have to put on a face or pretend to be anything that I’m not. So, when she made me feel down I didn’t know what to do.

What started as going to a store or staying home ended in screaming and sobbing. I couldn’t pick which type of discomfort was more tolerable. Ultimately, I ended up going but that came after about an hour long breakdown and a whole lot of chaos.

I hate myself when I’m uncomfortable but I also hate myself when I’m breaking down. Having these emotional explosions of sorts, is really hard on me. It causes me to think about every single thing that’s been bothering me since the last one. My emotions become a beach ball, the more I push them down, the harder they hit me in the face when they come back up.

That’s why I’m so conflicted in recovery right now.. if that’s what we’re calling it. I’m so freaking uncomfortable. I am still so emotional from a relationship that ended in May. It’s worse right now because this time last year we were in the heat of it and I know each day on the calendar that I saw him and how it went. I miss the hell out of that and missing people makes me uncomfortable; I want to feel like I can do everything on my own and that I never need anyone.

I’m seeing a really bad side of one of my favorite things; seeing the more competitive and defensive sides of people I consider my best friends. Conflict makes me uncomfortable.

I miss my parents, like I said before, they’re my safe place.

I’m just really uncomfortable with a lot right now and you know what soothes my discomfort… other than a mental breakdown? My eating disorder. The bliss of being completely consumed by my old friend, Anorexia.

As I say in the closing of so many blogs now: I don’t know where to go from here. I know this means I have an usually and often (for my disorder) unfortunate deal of self-understanding, but at the same time I just don’t want to be uncomfortable. I don’t want to feel it, I don’t want to sit with it. I want to escape any and all discomfort.