I’m not healed. I haven’t obtained enlightenment. I still say horrifically mean things, find the crack in my partner’s insides, twist it, and break him apart.
I say mean, condescending, judgmental things that hurt.
I know Nonviolent Communication and the Imago method, and I don’t always use it—especially when I’m mad.
I teach people how to heal from their wounds, I share divine wisdom from higher guidance, they listen to my words, my life experience.
I forget that I don’t know everything and that my life experience isn’t for everyone.
I think I know the solutions—the thing that helped me out would help them.
I forget to not give advice.
I am supposed to just ask probing questions, notice behaviors, propose tools for my clients to reach their own understanding. I get impatient; I want to just give them the answers, the ones that I think are right.
I still see myself as right too often and others—especially my partner—as wrong. I still look down on him when I’m mad, I still turn him into a failure in my eyes, a disappointment, when it’s just me who is disappointed.
I’m writing a book about belonging, and the chapter sounds as if I have figured everything out. My audience is coming to my book looking for answers—don’t come to me for answers. I still flip out, slam the door, and sleep alone after a fight.
I still have my brain going so fast that I can’t meditate at times. When I’m riled up, I have a hard time listening to higher guidance.
I even occasionally doubt the presence of my guides and wonder if it’s all bullshit too. Am I creating this? Am I just fabricating a good lie to myself?
I have to pull up my fact list: true, I have given successful readings time and time again, true, I have felt waves of love and bliss wash over me when I’ve asked for support.
But sometimes I doubt all of it. I doubt my journey, my spiritual calling, my reason for being here, and wonder if I’m the one who is actually living in an illusion of self.
I’m called to Hawaii, and now, out of the blue, swimming is almost boring. Seeing the same fish and coral isn’t exciting me anymore.
I know the phrase: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
How can I expect to keep getting high off of parrotfish and yellow tang, keep getting high off of the same ocean view from my window, still delight in Hawaiian reggae music over and over?
But everybody else seems to. What does that say about me? I mentioned I was feeling a slight boredom the other day with a group of semi-enlightened friends. They asked me, Is that normal for you? as they are all taking in the fact that we live here with a heart full of gratitude every day.
I was doing the gratitude meditation daily; now when I do it, I don’t feel the rush of oxytocin and serotonin flow into my body. It feels mechanical and doesn’t shift my vibrational state.
What’s wrong with me?
I do love novelty. I get off on exploration, discovering new things—but then I’ve also touted it as escapism, an inability to be satisfied with the present moment.
Now I’m on an island in the middle of the giant ocean, and I’m craving something other than water, but I don’t know what it is.
Maybe it’s the “call of my soul,” as I so often like to name it, but perhaps it’s just my constant internal dissatisfaction—and if that’s true, then I might as well stop being a therapist because I’m as screwed up as everyone else out there.
The lucky thing is I am resilient. I am keenly aware of myself as I watch myself dive into a dark hole. I’m standing at the top looking in: There you go Carly, have fun massaging your old shadow wounds.
I can see myself doing it. I know it’s temporary. It’s not my entire existence. I am not Carly who lives at the bottom of the hole.
But today it feels like that. Tomorrow, once I make up with my partner and I take some time to be present at the beach and see community and dance with friends, my serotonin levels will go up, and I will once again join my semi-enlightened group of friends giving thanks for this extraordinary life I have.
I have an Airbnb guest who seems slightly off-kilter. Arrived here on a bus and is planning an entire week only on foot and with the unlikely public transport. A courageous feat.
I spied him from my window as he headed out on foot, as he paused to hug a palm tree in our yard.
He says he works 3 jobs and he earned this vacation. He’s seeing stars everywhere—helpful locals, loving the geckos, and the coqui frog that got in his room. I tried to tell him that a frog in the room is not welcome; I don’t think he got it.
He’s enjoying every moment of being here. I feel sad thinking of him slinging 3 jobs in his normal life.
The other day I had a guest from South Korea who works from 6am–9pm, 5 days a week. He was sad to leave and left a review about how wonderful it was to sip his coffee while watching the feral cats on our balcony play, with the ocean in the distance.
Makes me think. I am pretty darn fortunate and I’m complaining. It goes back to the story: eat all your food because kids in Africa are starving.
It doesn’t make a difference to anyone in Africa if I eat all my food, but it does remind me that I am blessed to have food—not everyone is as privileged. Puts me in my place.
I think I might be slowly climbing back up the hole. Thanks to you for letting me write this and for reading all the way to here.
And maybe I’ll just wallow a bit more in the humid dark environment halfway up the hole, just because it feels comfy and familiar, and maybe I’ll just enjoy that. I’ll take that as novelty instead of all this gratitude and joy stuff.
Thanks for reading.
Have a nice day.