in the desert

Posted November 27th, 2005 by Michelle

Only in getting away do I realize just how stressful my life is at home. Every day, here in Palm Desert, I’ve gone to the gym and been acutely aware that I didn’t have to be somewhere as soon as I was done. I go to the gym on my lunch break during my work week, and I probably exercise my neck, craning up to see the clock, as much as any other part of my body.

I’ve been thinking about the word “stress”, as in “stress fracture” and “stress-induced breakdown” and “stress-related diseases” and I’ve decided I don’t like being aligned with the word. I think there are better words that could be used to describe my life, only, I have to change my life so those words would apply. Words like “fulfilling” and “rich” and “restful” and “rewarding” and “balanced”. Clearly, some of these words fit some of the time, and I don’t need my life to be “restful” all the time, but I do need it to be “balanced” all the time. It’s probably going to be one of my life struggles.

But I am thankful for not just this weekend, not just the utterly delicious sheets I’ve been sleeping between, nor just the quiet, nor the opportunity to be by myself if I need to, but for absolutely everything that is going on in my life right now. Even the hard stuff. I feel very alive, very awake, and although many of the feelings I’m having are difficult, I know they are growing pains of a sort, and I welcome them.

Socrates has also been hanging around my brain lately, particularly this little gem: “Let him that would move the world first move himself.” I have a lot to move, in myself, before I can do the work I’m supposed to do, and the more self-aware I become, the longer the road stretches in front of me. I don’t know if it’s being around my stepmom, who often jokes about her long list of regrets, but I was plagued last night when trying to fall asleep with my own list, and I wonder how tmy regrets shape my behavior. There are those in my world who have had a certain relationship with truth- as in, some of us have chosen to bend the facts when the situation suited us- and I am no exception, and those choices haunt me. Lies I told at 14 years old were haunting me last night, and although I don’t lie like that anymore, any sort of charade, any time I’m complicit in a show put on for the sake of those around me, it feels awfully similar to an out-and-out fabrication.

I’ve been working through this with a small circle of friends and coaches, but this “bag of tricks” I use is often very upsetting to me. And every time I use it, it lessens the true me, and the true impact of which I’m capable.

Well. My hosts have returned, so I’ll have to return to this subject at a later date, but I’m hopeful I can work through all of this personal stuff without it adding to the stress of my professional life. And that I’m able to move myself, so I can finally move the world.