Friday 28 May 2010

Escaping from myself

In two months time I will escape the 9 to 5. I will no longer have to spend the majority of my waking hours in a sedentary job in an office. I will no longer have to live a lifestyle that stifles and depresses me. I will no longer have to live in a concrete jungle to be close to work because I can’t stand to commute.

The prison gates will be open. But what lies beyond the prison gates? Hopefully peace of mind and perhaps even contentment.

And yet, I still struggle daily with a deep sadness, sometimes, a lot of the time the sadness consumes me. It’s a constant battle to keep up on top of the demons and it has taken years of hard work fighting against them. The past is in the past and we have to live in the now, that is true. But the truth is that I am still living with the consequences of the past, I probably always will be. I acknowledge and try to accept the past but I still dont like the past. I always knew deep down that had the past been different that I would be living a very different life now. That was confirmed to me recently in therapy. It was quite a shock to hear someone else say it.

I am not sure whether therapy was useful or not, it certainly gave me a greater understanding of my “problems”, but no resolution. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s made me worse.

So I fixed the 9 – 5 problem, it took years to fix but I did it. Now I just have to fix me and that job is far more difficult.

5 comments:

Anna said...

All you write here is true. I think the past is always with you but that a different 'context' i.e., where you site yourself might alleviate the pain from that past.
I like Gurdjieff on this issue - the key seems to be: acceptance, understanding and forgiveness (includes of yourself).

Tony said...

Yes, there are no doubt things in our past that we would rather have turned out differently. But as Anna says we have to accept that and move on. Exciting you have an "escape date" - counting down the days. What's the first thing you are planning to do with your new found freedom?

Alice said...

I find it interesting what you say about whether therapy made it better or worse... I think that we all have pasts that shape who we are, and some of us have pasts that make us sad, angry etc... but I think it is important to go through a period of mourning for whatever might have happened and then try our best to move on. Don't let the past shape your future; it really pissed me off when I felt that this was happening to me. I want to LIVE! I want to be glad to have life and not let previous rubbish clog my view.

It is really hard and I don't know anything of what your past means to you, but I do know that by sorting out the 9-5 you are freeing yourself of some of things you dislike and this can only help you on your path to fulfillment. At the end of the day, we cannot erase the past, but we can learn to kick it in the face, stick two fingers up and say 'look at me now' HA!

Time out, I feel, is going to be life-changing for you :-) xxx

A Reformed Manager of Money said...

~I always knew deep down that had the past been different that I would be living a very different life now. That was confirmed to me recently in therapy. It was quite a shock to hear someone else say it.~

I hear you. I am in the same boat and I always say: Unless a person's lived it, they don't know the residual torment that seems to follow like a cloud.

If I may say, I think our biggest problem with resolving both of our pasts lies in the simple fact that the 'perpetrators' (read: parents LOL) never APOLOGIZED for their abysmal behavior. I know for a fact that if my father manned up enough to apologize (or at least acknowledge the incredible destruction that his mental illness wrought upon our family)then a load would be lifted from me. That's all it would take. Then the process of complete healing would have a chance. As it is, I harbor anger and resentment at the way he totally victimized his children and turned us into what we are today: myself, a recovering shopaholic, hoarder and overeater and my sibling, a recovering anorexic who has to keep her weight exactly so otherwise she falls apart.

I don't know about you, but I talk about it and write about it but I can only resolve the past to a certain extent because, minus the much needed apology, it is difficult to work much beyond that.

The upside for you however, as others have commented, is that you have managed to escape the 9-5 and that is a tremendous accomplishment. I think you may very well find that changes of scenery are going to give you a boost. For myself personally I'm banking on it.

Dreamer said...

Anna, wise words thanks.

Tony, I am looking forward to the simple pleasures like, being able to go for a run every day, having a lie in and long lazy breakfasts, as for the bigger picture, arghh dont ask I still dont know!

Alice, :)its like it is stopping me from being carefree, like when you think that you actually might or could even be happy but then "it" smacks you in the face and reminds you. I like the "HA look at me now" x

RMM, yes "residual torment" is a good way of describing the baggage left behind. We were not nurtured, instead brought up by people with their own demons who didnt really want to be there, that really shapes your outlook and a crushing lack of self worth, the foundations for most of my emotional problems. I dont write about it much as I find it difficult to articulate.