Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
-Lewis Carroll
A few weeks ago, I sat in a psychologist’s office trying to figure out how to answer his question, “What’s been going on?” I didn’t know where to start. Do I tell him about the postpartum? The phobias? The panic attacks? My childhood? My current stressors? I went through the list in my head and chuckled. His eyebrow raised. Great, now I look even more crazy. I started with the recent stuff and worked my way back. At the end of the session, he came to the same conclusion I came to years ago. I have a diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Dissociative Disorder. Yeah, I’m crazy.
Just between you and me, I sometimes wish that if I had to be crazy, I could the kind of “chemically imbalanced” crazy. Instead, I’m the “tell me what happened to you then stop so we can go to your happy place” kind of crazy. Pills just aren’t going to fix the main problem. And even if they could, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because I’ve suffered from a drug phobia ever since I was unknowingly drugged!
For the most part, I’m ok. I compensate and hide it really well. I accomplish a lot, even though I panic the entire journey. I’m grateful that I can function and feel what happiness I do. But I can’t pretend I don’t stumble. All of this- this happy life, these accomplishments and successes- they are a lot of upkeep. I’m exhausted. I’m running twice as fast just to do what others do at regular speed. If I slow down, I will trip and everything will snowball until I am a giant mess. It happens. The momentum slows. If I try to shut down my anxious brain, my body will hurt. If I pause for a second, the panic catches up and depression seeps in.
If I introspect, I sometimes get angry. I think about the perpetrators and how they’ve altered my brain and how I’d do anything to feel normal. What would that feel like? What would the world look like at a regular pace? What if I could hand this over to someone else just for a minute so I could feel the weight lifted? But that’s just the thing, isn’t it? No matter how altered my brain is, my core remains the same. If given the choice to hand it over, I would never take it. I would absorb it all a million times over, because I am good. No kind of crazy will ever change that.
Maybe I need this. Maybe I would get bored at normal pace. Maybe I wouldn’t do half the things I have done if I didn’t have anything to prove or to run away from. So often when we’ve gone through hell, we think about what we’ve lost or the hardships we’ve endured. How it’s changed us. But there is no telling what we’ve gained. We can’t possibly know.
What if, maybe, it’s a race we can win? What if I keep on going until reach something that resembles happiness and safety and comfort? What if the skin finally sheds? I don’t know, but tonight, instead of feeling down about how hard everything is to maintain, I’m going to look for a reason it’s so important. What about you, friends? Are you keeping pace?
❤ K.S. Boyer
Broken Girl, Whole Woman 
There is no normal. It doesn’t exist. My sister told me that years ago. I don’t know a lot –but I know a lot of people. Smart, good and experienced people. …A priest also told me something I thought of while reading this. He said that fear is like the bags tied to the bottom of a hot air balloon. They weigh you down and keep you from flying. You can only fly if you cut the ropes and set yourself free from those fears. I am just trying this out and the closer I get to weightlessness, the more free I become. It isn’t easy, but I do believe that this freedom comes in the form of letting go. Of being able to say…”so what!” sometimes. “So what!” can mean so many things. For me it’s a way to not take myself so seriously. Its also a way to forget about the race and begin to live. Living means choosing a life without the constant anxiety from my past (or worries for the future). It means being inside of every single moment -one moment at a time. To be inside of a moment, you have to let everything else go. All worries, all hardships, stresses, thoughts even. And just be. I can only succeed in this difficult practice with my kids and my husband. And only when I deliberately practice the act of being [in the moment] by forcing myself to only think about them in the then and now. Bringing my thoughts constantly back to what is in front of me…not behind me or ahead of me (or them). Just now. Just them. Just me enjoying them -that’s living. The race isn’t. But it’s hard to stop running. I haven’t learned how yet either, but I plan to, I try to and I am.