Why am I feeling so lost and discombobulated? Is this how it’s meant to feel when you meet a person you are attracted to and enjoy spending time with? Because if so, I think there may be a terrible flaw in the way our emotions develop and someone needs to say something about it.
I feel excited, scared, distrustful, happy, beautiful, anxious, exhausted, nostalgic, uncertain, protective and confused. In equal parts.
I mean seriously. How is that a positive combination?
I’ve lost 3 kilos and I haven’t been to the gym in weeks. My room is a mess, I've got almost no clean underwear, I haven’t changed my bed linen and my dogs have forgotten what the park looks like. My parents are permanently annoyed with my lack of communication, my housemate is pretty much living alone, I have done no work on either of the theatre projects I had in planning, and I spend my work days writing about and reading up on things completely unrelated to work. I am, in a word, distracted.
And the most disturbing thing is that it’s gotten increasingly worse until today my head has screamed with the hurtful thought, “What am I doing?” and my instinct is to cut and run before I lose the wonderful relationship I’ve cultivated with myself over the last 3 years. But then what is the purpose of life if not to love and what will my life be if I forever run from that?
Well, peaceful for one. And lonely. Productive. Focused. Centred. And safe. Safe.
Safe.
That's it isn’t it? Safety.
Predictability and equilibrium. Things I have chased my whole life and will continue to chase because that’s the legacy left by my childhood. But with that emotional security comes self-doubt, and longing, and nights curled up in bed with a Kelpie and an old teddy bear wondering what might have been had I not made the choice to live my life alone. Because I had made that choice. Whole-heartedly. And now the chipping away at my resolve is something terrifying and disorientating. And I long for my boring solo existence when emotions were rational and linear and my own company didn’t feel like there was someone missing from it.
So.