Calm can feel like the quiet before something goes wrong.
I get up from my desk, walk into the kitchen and take a deep breath. The meeting is over. It went well. Really well. It’s the third thing that has gone well this week. Only days ago, I found a beautiful new place to live, and before that I received an unexpected windfall of money that had been owed to me without my knowledge.
I should be feeling great. But I feel edgy. A mix between nervous and hyped up. As though something bad is about to happen and I need to be ready. I pour myself a glass of water, but it doesn’t help. I stand there like that for what feels like minutes. Clinging to the kitchen bench for stability. Anchoring myself against the tide of feelings that I don’t yet fully understand.
I keep checking the room for danger that isn’t there.
Nothing is wrong. In fact, everything is right. And maybe that’s the problem. There’s no crisis to fix, nothing to make amends for. There’s no trying to figure out how to get what I need, or wondering where I am going to come up with the money to pay my rent. There’s no job I need desperately to find so that I can afford to pay my credit card bill. There’s no fear that I won’t get any sleep because of the worry of what tomorrow will bring.
Instead, things have gone from not only getting better each day, to being better than I ever expected they could be. Life is working out for me in ways I only ever used to dream of. But I don’t yet know what to do with that. I’m still learning how to sit with it, and to let it simply be.
I lived so long in survival mode that things going well feels strange. I can’t help wondering if it’s too good to be true, or assuming it’s about to be ripped away again at any second.
Unexpected events did that to me, changing the way I saw things so it seemed as though there was a potential threat around every corner. I became so hypervigilant to everything that going anywhere made me anxious. Eventually I didn’t even want to leave the house. When I had to, I bolstered myself up with substances that made me feel artificially brave, at least for a short while.
I certainly didn’t expect good things to be coming. I was always primed for the worst and if things were good, it must be a trick. Things that were once pleasurable began to lose their appeal and I couldn’t even imagine how I would possibly ever make it back to who I once was.
And that’s the thing. I never did make it back to who I once was. I struggled for years trying to recreate the old me in relationships, work and everything I’d once been. But all it did was set me back further. I had to find a new me to become and then I had to start from the very beginning and build from the hole I was in.
That’s why now, when things are falling into place as I want them to be, I sometimes catch myself reverting to the old. Searching, seeking, hunting for something to find wrong. Something to confirm I’m not really going as well as I think I am, because at least that old ‘reality’ would be familiar.
I know what to do with being scared, depressed and uneasy. How I tend to act in order to suppress it. But the feeling of joy, wellbeing and excited enthusiasm – that’s something else entirely. If I’m not in a state of awareness, and if I’m not practising being grateful for all that’s coming my way, it can still trip me up sometimes. I can find myself wanting to go back, the new me still disbelieving that the old me no longer has a place here.
I notice the better things are, the stronger the pull to revert to self-sabotage becomes, and I wonder if anyone else notices that in their own lives? I wonder too, does that feeling ever go away?
I hope so.
I write from lived experience, not as a clinician or expert. What I share is what I’ve noticed and what has helped me, not advice for everyone. [Why I write this way]
If you’re struggling, you’re not alone. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14.
Read next:
When Things Begin to Happen, They Often Happen Fast | The Old Me Fights Hardest When I’m Closest to Breaking Through