adult/responsibility/trap/clarity/3

So, back to post about my rabbit brain, which I didn't get to finish. I was talking about how my "rabbit brain" just freezes and waits for the threat (in this case, finishing my teaching certificate and getting a job) to go away, and how I didn't want to do that, but I felt like my brain was saying, "see, it's too late, you screwed up again, now you can't be a teacher, you have to start all over and do something else," and how I was somehow relieved at this, and yet, I didn't think it was too late and I didn't want to quit, and it was very weird to feel like I didn't have any control over my own brain.

Loopy said at that time that I lacked an "adult executive" voice in my head (this is also what my therapist said) because my Mom didn't have one & couldn't be one for anyone else. Loopy recommended inventing one--she suggested a real or fictional (preferably fictional) character that I thought was a good parent or "adult executive," and trying to install that voice in my head (how does Loopy know all this anyway?). I came up with one--I'm not telling who, it's way too silly, but we'll just say, she's fictional. So Loopy said, "what would she say?"

I imagined this fictional character wrapping me in a nice plaid blanket and giving me some hot chocolate. Then I said, "She would say, 'Now young lady, you are not going to give up this time. I won't let you. Pull yourself together, have some hot chocolate, and in a minute, get up and go back & do what you have to do.'" Then I started crying because I never had that Mom, and I wish I did, and it was nice even to have someone imaginary care that much about me that she wouldn't let me hurt myself any more. I also felt re-energized because I realized that if I screwed up, I wouldn't be able to quit, but I'd have to sub for a year instead of getting a job for the fall.

So that was good, and I added it to the little thingys posted up around my computer to keep me focused. Before I left for AZ I felt like I really was making some progress there, between my newly installed "adult executive" and the mantra I got out of my book about anxiety (first posted about this book in February, and one of the major sources of the "rabbit brain" idea):

Fear gets stronger when I believe in it and give in to it. Fear gets weaker when I don't believe what it tells me I "have to do right now or else!" I don't "have to do" any of those things. In each moment, I can choose to act in harmony with my desire to be free from fear.

So I was really focused on that, and it was cool because it tied right in to the Buddhist stuff I've also been studying--it's cool that two totally different cultures on opposite sides of the world came up with the same idea of how to get past these little habits of fearfulness and stuckness...

But I seem to be stuck again, since coming back from AZ. It's so clear to me that subbing for a year would really, really suck and that I could really have a fantastic time if I had my own class. It really could be great, and I would love every day, even if it was hard and stressful. But somehow, the lack of responsibility inherent in being a perennial sub, seems oddly appealing, even though it would just be horrendously painful. What is wrong with me?

In answer to this question, Loopy said that I'm just being three, that three-year-olds rebel against everything, even things they like and things that are good for them, just to rebel. And that that is an age where you have no responsibility for anything, you just do whatever you want, because you can, because you're three. "Everyone wants to be three sometimes," she said. Unspoken conclusion: but you gotta learn how to be a grownup.

Today I wrote to a friend:

I still feel stuck but I'm working on it. I have no advice about how to juggle things because (today at least) I feel terminally unable to do even a tiny fraction, even a bare minimum, of things I want to do with my time. I seem to be addicted to passivity, stuckness, inability... to choosing victimhood over responsibility, panic over decisions, lostness over direction (even when I know my direction so clearly, couldn't be clearer)... It's like, there's this big giant universe of infinite possibilities, but I've locked myself into a small box and won't let myself out, no matter how miserable I get.

Ah, well, you caught me in a low moment, don't let me bring you down (or more down). I do really love what I'm doing, I love my life, I just need to let myself live it, instead of agonizing over it.

And I was pondering how, looking at everything in my life, which has few outside restrictions, I can only conclude that "I'm here because I want to be here." But why on earth do I want to be here? It occurred to me that when you're trapped things are very clear--you just have to get out of the trap, at all costs--but when you're standing out in a wide field, and you could go in any direction you might decide, then that's a lot less clear. "Trap = clarity," I wrote in a margin. I guess that's the same thing as not having responsibility. Like being late, controls everyone's schedule. Being late = being in charge. Ugh. Sometimes I hate myself. The Buddhist stuff I've been reading would say that deciding to hate myself and make a drama out of that, would be just another way to do the same thing (besides, I already did that; it was called being depressed and that was ten years ago). The Buddhist stuff also says that when we start to see ourselves so clearly and honestly that we start to hate ourselves, that instead, we can deflect that into a powerful longing to be free from all that, a longing to stop hurting ourselves and others with our thoughtless habits. A longing for new habits. And that that longing, is the beginning of change. Let's hope so.

I just thought of something funny (sort of funny). When I asked Loopy "well, what three-year-olds do we know?" she pointed out that P (coincidentally the friend to whom I wrote the quote above, has a three-year-old). Heh. P had just written to me that the three-year-old is having tantrums and disrupting the whole family with his little dramas. I commented to her that it's a good idea to avoid training him to think that his emotions can control the family, because then, as he gets older, his response to frustration will just be to have bigger and more dramatic emotions until he does succeed in controlling everything around him, for better or for worse.

Huh. Sounds like me, doesn't it.