The String of Life

Holy buckets, y’all. I’ve been stuck in my feels this week. Which is totally not me, but DANG! This week in counseling we talked about “the string of life” a theory that your life is a ball of yarn and if you choose to skip through parts, you only have so many skips or so many pulls of the string, until you get to the end of your ball of yarn.

Man oh man, I wish I could tell you guys how deep this hit me. Here’s the thing. I suffer from dissociation.

“Dissociation is a break in how your mind handles information. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings. It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time.”

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociation-overview

I dissociated for 4-6 YEARS, but this made sense to me. I was escaping from my body. I was getting out of my pain. I didn’t want to face the fact that my life was turned upside down. I didn’t want to come to terms that I was in a bad relationship. I didn’t want to feel my pain, and I accept that. I get it.

But the more we talked about it the more I realized I wasn’t only disassociating for 4-6 years. I’ve been disassociating for my whole life. It’s been a subconscious default coping mechanism for as long as I remember.

I always talk about not remembering my childhood or even middle school for that matter and I just thought I had a bad memory. Eric brought up times when we lived in Waverly and I could not for the life of me remember what he was talking about, and that was only 2.5 years ago.

It all clicked that I was disassociating.

I mastered it. Even when things weren’t “bad” or even when I didn’t NEED to escape, I would.

It hit me in my feels because I realized if I didn’t go back to counseling, I’d be pulling through the string of life until it was the end.

Escaping from the bad turned into escaping from the good.

It’s so important to sit in your emotions. The good, the bad and the ugly. Take all that life has to offer. Find the beauty in the balance. Feel your feels, and remember you’re so damn lucky to.

This week I’m challenging myself to sit in my feelings. To be present and to take things slow. Don’t wish for the next big thing, sit with what you have now.

I’m challenging myself not to rush through this busy work week, not to wish I can get all these done but to slow down and be thankful for each and every product I get to print.