Emotional Mountains and Ugly Area Rugs

It’s been a hot minute, I know and I’m sorry.

I had a thought the other day that if I keep sweeping my emotions under the rug, eventually I am going to trip over the damn thing.

Here I am, laid out on my belly with sore legs and a tired heart.

There’s a lot of introspection that can be done when you hit this point. There are a lot of thoughts that cross through your mind as you look at the heaping pile of avoided emotions peeking out from under the ugly ass throw rug you never wanted in the first place.

You think about where you came from, how you got there, how hard it’s going to be to clean up mess, and how you move forward.

I come from a family of “if you want it done right, do it yourself.” And in some ways the trait can be viewed as admirable, but in a lot of ways its honest to goodness a terrible trait to have bestowed upon you. I say that because it takes away your ability to ask for help. On the flip side, of course, would be the trait where you always ask for help and never really learn anything yourself so where is the happy medium? Where can you fall where you can do everything you can but know that asking for help, or allowing someone else to take on a task won’t kill you? It’s something I’m learning, and let me tell you my silly self is learning it the hard way.

That’s where I came from.

I spent a lot of teens and early adulthood being a pillar in the mental health community, being the best advocate I could because I never wanted someone else to feel the way I did and I’d be damned if there wasn’t something I could do to help someone out. This mostly came from my writing and throughout the last few years I have fallen straight off that pillar. I didn’t want to write, and I didnt want to face what I was feeling, so I went to the store and bought the ugliest floor rug you can think of and I just started sweeping.

I swept up my previous relationship and the insecurities that pained me and how it affects my current.
I swept up my anger at not getting promoted in Chicago and needing to move 900 miles to get it.
I swept up losing my grandpa, my best friend, and my lack of understanding around grief.
I swept up feeling inadequate, insecure, not enough, tired, exhausted.

I swept depression right under that rug and shrugged.

The act of “cleaning up” my emotional mess kept going and I just kept sweeping as life kept falling all over the floor.

That’s how I got here.

When I think of the work I will need to put in to successfully clean up this emotional mountain, it scares me.

It scares the ever living shit out of me because the work is hard. It’s walking to the pantry, grabbing the dustpan and having it break after the first load because it’s too heavy. It’s sitting on your hands and knees in the middle of your kitchen picking up garbage one by one after your dog decided to rage.

I am in the thick of it. It’s kinda funny though, we are remodeling a house and the plaster they put up as walls came down in pieces and some days I just wanted to leave it on the floor for tomorrow. But every day we took the time to pick up the pieces.

I am committing to picking up the pieces I shoved under the rug.

This is how we move forward.