Boxes

   To understand what I accomplished last night, you have to understand how I got here.  I've mentioned before that my life was pretty well ruled by my anxiety disorder for many many years.  As far back as I can remember I've been crippled in one way or another by anxiety, self-doubt, self-esteem issues, and more anxiety.

   I've mentioned that I used to self-injure, and that part of this little therapy journey for me is learning healthy ways to cope with my stress and anxiety without cutting or shoving food in my mouth or both.  But here's the part I haven't really said before:

   Last January I was tired.  Tired of living a non-functional life.  I was in a place where I could manage a job, even some limited social interaction outside of work.  But mostly, I was still a recluse.  I turned down 101 party invitations, I limited time with my family, I had to budget myself for anything that took me into places with lots of people.  Knowing I needed to go to the grocery store on Saturday.. meant I probably wasn't going to go out to dinner with a friend on Friday.  

   Every social interaction I agreed to had a cost.  And sometimes, when I'd had enough unexpectedly... I'd change plans, head home, and just... flip out.  Panic attacks were better than they had been before... but I still had them.  And I was tired of being a non-functioning person.  So I found a way to change my life, inspired (oddly enough... by the movie The Yes Man).   If you've seen the movie you know it's a cute little Jim Carrey Comedy.  If you haven't here's the quick synopsis:  basically Jim Carrey is a man who says no to EVERYTHING.  Then one day he's "cursed" into saying yes to everything.  It was a cute movie, but the thing that kept resonating with me was saying Yes.  And of course in the movie it goes to ludicrous extremes, but I couldn't stop being amazed at the transformation in the life of Jim Carrey's character.

   Because I was someone who said no to things.  Not because I wanted to, but because I was incapable of managing myself and my anxiety in order to say yes.  And I decided I had to find a way to change it.  So I started just... saying yes.  

   

   "Do you want to have dinner?"  Yes.

   "We're having a party will you come?"  Yes.

   "Going to a ballgame, want to go?"  Yes.

   Shopping, eating out, parties, events, coffee with friends.  Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.

  The problem of course was that saying Yes to everything didn't change how I FELT about it all.  It didn't change that I would come home from each outing exhausted, pained, anxious... frequently suffering panic attacks, crying myself to sleep.  I forced myself to keep it up but I needed to do something that would allow me to actually enjoy the life I was taking on.  

   So I decided to try and "visualize" a solution.  I sat down and I decided that what I needed was a way to... close off all the pieces of myself that kept me from being able to HAVE a life.  So I imagined up these boxes... wood boxes with hinged lids and latches.  I saw myself tucking away all the pain, and loneliness, and self-doubt, and anxiety, and fear, and anger, and neglect.  I took everything that was holding me back and I boxed it up.  Then I slammed the lids down, and locked them.  I stacked them in a closet, closed the door, locked it, and sat my fat self down in front of it... with my back to the door-- holding it closed with every spare fiber of energy I had.

   And for the last year and a half... well, almost 2 years now... I've been expending no small chunk of energy keeping that door closed.  Keeping those boxes locked up has been no small task, but after awhile I got used to it.  And for the first time for as long as I can remember I felt like I had room to have a life.  And I know, have always known that all that crap is still IN there.  I know that it wasn't the healthiest solution, or a permanent one.  But I was able to start going out, to start accepting invitations, able to start being brave.  I went on a photowalk with a bunch of strangers, I stopped being afraid to take my camera out in public, I went to parties.  I spent time with my family, and I got to know my friends again.  

  

   And all that crap just... sat there.  In boxes.  In a closet.  And I never really relaxed completely because part of me had to stay alert, to watch for leaks.  To make sure that everything stayed locked up and under my control.  Because those were my options:  an iron fist of control over my emotion... or let my anxiety control me.

    I'm sure that need to have control also fed into my weight issues.  Because really, won't a fat girl be a better counter-weight to that bulging closet door than a thin one?  That's not really the point of this blog though.  I'll be working through those boxes later on.   But in order to understand last night's experience, you have to understand how I become a functional person.  Those boxes gave me a freedom I'd never had before.  I separated myself from everything that debilitated me, and I actually enjoyed my life.  And that's how it's been ever since.  I decided that having a life where part of me was separated out... was better than having no life at all.  Half a life was better than no life at all.

  

    And then over the summer, my boxes started to break down.  And part of that, I'm sure is because of the stress of my job.  I had to exert so much more energy and focus on work... that I stopped watching that door, stopped maintaining all those boxes.  So then the discussion of massage came up with the SuperTherapist.  The idea of course, being to use that kind of loving, healing, safe touch to work through some of my body issues and my issues with touch.   And all of that DID make me nervous.  But the thing that sent me whirling into my first panic attack in almost 2 years... the thing that terrified me, was the whole POINT of massage.

   To relax. To release.

   To let. go.

   And that, to me, was terrifying.  Because if I let go, if I really and truly let go, I have to abandon my post at that closet door.  And all I can think of is those damn boxes.  All I can see is this tumble of boxes as the door breaks open, and they fall open and they overtake me again.  All I could see was getting swept away by all of that crap again, and losing control.  Becoming nonfunctional again.

   I spent a lot of time the last two weeks fearing last night.  I had panic.  I almost cancelled 100 times.  I journaled.  And I was sure that by today I was going to be a non-functional person again.  That my life was going to back to being filled with fear and pain and anxiety.  Which is probably the reason why I pretty much started crying when I hit the office.  

  I am very blessed though.  I have a dear friend who is a massage therapist, and thanks to recommendations from my best friend, I have a really remarkable therapist as well (hence why I call her the SuperTherapist).  We all met in the massage therapists outer office and talked a little, and I confessed my fears, my terror really about what was going to happen.  When I was ready, I laid on the table and the massage started.

   For probably, the first half... I didn't really connect to it.  I had a hard time relaxing enough to not fight the process.  SuperTherapist tried walking me into some guided meditation... but I didn't really connect for awhile.  It wasn't until it was about half over that something really resonated.  Up until that point I was mostly exerting my energy in "trying" to give in to the process.  Which, by the way... "trying" to give in... doesn't really work.  As SuperTherapist says... it's not about trying... it's about doing.  But that's beside the point.   I told you everything up unto this point so that you know how remarkable this really was.

   A little over halfway through my massage therapist was working on my left arm, my back and shoulders. And I suddenly was overwhelmed by memory.  Flooded with it.  A lot of my boxes... well-- they've got a label on them that says, "Mom."  Although she and I made peace by the time she died for the most part, there is a lot of stuff that I have not personally worked through about our relationship.  And a lot of that is the fact that I spent a lot of my life taking care of her, being her support, her emotional rock.  I made myself invisible, played the good girl, listened to her troubles, hugged her when SHE cried.  I felt like for many years, my life was focused on either not upsetting my mom, or supporting her through her emotional troubles. 

   I have very few memories of my mom tending to me.  Soothing Me.  Taking care of Me.  And part of that is that as I got older, I didn't ask for that the way I should have.  But part of it is that she, for many years, was not able to see beyond her own pain and anxiety to recognize and soothe my own.  After she died, it's something that I have greatly regretted.  Not necessarily the neglect that created... so much as regret that I never asked her to care for me once I had the voice to do so.

  The one thing, consistently, that my mom DID do to nurture me was when I got sunburned.  (And really I probably got more of them than I should... maybe because deep down I knew it was a way to receive the nurturing I didn't get otherwise).  She would rub lotion on my back, on my arms.  And she would lay wet rags soaked in apple-cider vinegar and cold water across my back and sit with me until I could fall asleep.  That memory washed over me like a tidal wave and I started to cry... not a little but a lot.   Ugly cryin'.  You know the whole nose-runnin, face swollen, can't breathe, ugly. cryin.  And I had to sort of sit up because I couldn't breathe, and SuperTherapist asked me to talk about what had come up.  And I talked about that memory, and I talked about how incredible it was to FEEL that memory in my body, to FEEL that touch from my mom when I have so few memories like that from her.

  And when I could breathe again (mostly) I laid back down, and we continued the massage.  And my massage therapist said, "You just released a ton of energy, I can feel the difference in your body."  And I could too.  My arms fell off the table, completely relaxed, and I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted.  And I closed my eyes and followed the meditation SuperTherapist had been guiding me through earlier.  I went to a safe, comfortable room, and I sat with that memory, I sat with the pain that was associated with it as well.  And then I realized that at some point... that pain left.  It left my body, it left my safe little room, and I realized that what I was left with in its place... all I had left of it... was an empty box.  A broken lock, an open lid, an empty box.

   An empty box.  One empty box.

   And I was ok.  The rest of those boxes were still locked, still safe behind that closet door.  But one box, one big-ass box was empty in front of me.  And I was ok.  I have not come undone.   I have not become non-functional.  And because there is one less box for me to hold shut, one less box for me to hold back... I can be a lighter person too.  Emotionally.  Physically too.  

     I had never told anyone about my boxes.  For the last almost 2 years-- those boxes have been my secret "success."  I realized today as I was thinking about all of this that I've probably had boxes all my life.  I have a feeling I'm going to be finding boxes I had completely forgotten about in this process.  It may have just been last year that I manifested the vision of all of that... but its' probably something I've been utilizing for ever.  And I do honestly believe that as I work through those boxes, my weight loss will come easier and easier too.  Because as I empty those boxes, as I clear them out of that closet... I'll need less weight to hold that door closed.  And maybe that's part of what has made it so hard for me to lose weight in the past.  Because in addition to my body issues, in addition to some of the actual experiences I've had, in addition to my desire to be "invisible"  I've been using all that weight to hold shut a door that has been bursting at the seems to release all of the pain I've been trying to hide from all my life.

   Last night, I opened a box.  I looked inside, sat with the contents, and then... I let it go.

   One box down.

   After the massage was over, we all went back to the outer office to talk about the experience, to make sure I was ok.  They told me that right before I broke down the massage therapist started sweating, started getting hot, sweat dripping off her forehead.  Right before I broke down, she said my body suddenly started radiating heat.  After I had explained what my memory had been, she said it had felt almost as though my skin was holding heat from a sunburn.  When I laid down for her to go back to work on me, my body had cooled down again, the energy it had been holding on to was gone.  All I could say again, was that I had released a box, a box that was tied to a memory so deep my body called it up physically before I even made the connection.  That was  atruly remarkable thing for me.  To know that my body held that memory, and that I was then able to release that, to empty that box.

   Aside from that... the massage felt amazing-- once I was finally able to surrender to it it was wonderful.  And obviously SuperTherapist was right.  This may be a path for me that I hadn't allowed myself to consider before.  I haven't scheduled another massage session yet.  But I might.  Maybe I need to be more connected to my body to FIX my body.  Maybe I need to let my body help me create the path that heals me.  There are definitely boxes in that closet that I think would best be released during massage.  In a place where I am safe, and loved, and nurtured.  

   Whatever happens from here on out, at the very least I know that just because I open one box, doesn't mean they all fall open.  It doesn't mean that I will lose control.  I can open a box and still be a functional person.  And eventually, when I've opened that last box, whatever it may be-- I'll even be a whole one.

   Because half of a life is not enough anymore.