You Do You, Boo

I’ve spent a lot of time in counseling. I firmly believe that having a good counselor is one of the best things a person can do for themself. And having a different counselor for different seasons of life isn’t a bad idea, either. Someone to help you navigate life with a perspective different than yours is a great way to stay grounded, relatable to others, and steady.

In my line of work we carry a lot of other people’s heavy. We hear it all day long for years. It’s so incredibly difficult to not tote the burdens of the people you come to love and appreciate. Over years it can become too much and sometimes we need someone to offload it on to. Then I sit and wonder how counselors off load their picked-up burdens, and who they talk to about it, and then I tote THAT around. Good grief. But I rabbit trail. I would say “but I digress,” but that wasn’t really a digression, more like a rabbit trail, so I rabbit trail. Clearly.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that we all could stand to run things by a neutral party who will listen, challenge, and help pick up the pieces with no ulterior motive.

So I’m going to back this train up a good few years and begin my free therapy session. I’ll probably type, delete, and type again before it’s all over, but you’ll be none-the-wiser. I still attempt to be careful what I post, as I want to tell my story without throwing ‘others’ under the bus. But sometimes that is a difficult task, as the ‘others’ are sometimes the why on the why-I-need-therapy bus. So, just hang on for the ride.

I’m not exactly sure when this vein of trauma began, as it was slow and subtle and crept in like a cancer. Though I knew it was there, could identify it, and literally prayed for it to be irradicated from my home, by the time it was dealt with, it was too late. And look, I use the term ‘trauma’ for lack of a better. I fully appreciate that my ‘trauma’ is absolutely NOTHING compared to others’. But until I find another suitable word, and the fact that all these years later I still have to talk to my counselor about it, kinda tells me it may have actually been traumatic. So there you have this paragraph’s rabbit trail.

The first time I ever mentioned the trauma to my then-counselor I nearly had a complete nervous breakdown. Through hot, thick tears and a difficult time breathing I ended the story with, “so, I’m here because I’m questioning my sanity. I think I’m going crazy. I think I may truly be going crazy. I’m losing my mind. I’m losing my sanity.”

I was completely come apart.

Sweet man looked at me with a gentle smile and said, “honey, I assure you, you’re not the crazy one.”

I was on the floor.

Not sure I believed him, but he was so reassuring that I felt like I should at least try to believe him. One of the most difficult truths I’ve ever tried to truth out in my life. Ten years later, and I’m still trying to truth it out. It messed me up more than I thought, and more than I like to now admit.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.”

A sound mind.

Is it me who’s crazy? Or the person who thinks I’m crazy, who’s crazy?

Depends on the day, some days, I guess.

The people who believe the brand of crazy that was being thrust upon me are a tight-knit bunch. A person on the outside, if observant, can begin to see traits, qualities, habits, and obsessions in these folks, and can pick up on subtleties that people who aren’t looking could easily miss. And it becomes frightening. These people slowly become less and less functional in the present, and more and more isolated and exclusionary.

Interestingly, the folks who are “enlightened” have a very unique way of finding their people. Subtle statements, gentle leads, key words and phrases, all thrown out with a soft hook to see if someone bites. If the bait is taken, the conversation turns. If the bait is not noticed, the conversation continues it’s course of how’s-the-weather boring, casual everyday talk. Like I said, fascinating to watch. Or was the term “frightening?” I don’t even know anymore. Which is all-the-more frightening.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again, and I’m always shocked at how many people bite. They’re everywhere. Hiding, finding one another, in effect giving the secret nod and handshake. And you don’t even notice it. But I do.

When all of this was being pushed on me over the course of quite a few years, my spirit was disturbed. The dawn of the internet opened up a portal to hell that I’m quite sure will never be shut, and that portal’s door was in my living room. I tried to address it, but was shut down. I tried to ignore it, but it was the most prevalent action in the house. I tried to pray it away, but nothing changed. I fasted for months and begged God, “take it away, or change me, which ever needs to happen.” But still things remained the same. It took every ounce of self-control I had to not take the laptop and stomp it into a thousand pieces. Only thing that stopped me was knowing that I’d have to spend my money to buy a new one, and I wasn’t going to spend my very hard-earned money to perpetuate the problem.

“The problem” was also a time-sucker. Obsessions slowly take up more and more of a person’s time, until the person is only doing the bare minimum of responsibility and spending every other waking moment on the obsession. That life plan leaves the people surrounding the obsessed person holding all the responsibilities. It is exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally, and begins a slow and painful death march. And I do mean death to all aspects of life, not necessarily life itself. The marching is quiet at first, just one pair of soft-soled shoes walking over carpet. But over time the sound of the shoes slamming the ground becomes louder, more pronounced, until it sounds like an army of boots on gravel. The death march drowns out everything in its path until it becomes make-or-break.

I broke.

I could no longer breathe. I could no longer function out of anything other than rote. I felt as if the inside of my chest had been ripped to shreds, was oozing and bleeding and raw, and would never be given the opportunity to heal, because this was never going to end. Remember in the movie “The Hunger Games” when Peta would ask Katnis, “real, or not real?” That’s where I was. Questioning, wondering, quietly and subtly asking those around me, “real, or not real?” It’s an incredibly surreal alternate parallel universe in which to reside.

Oh, those around me were none-the-wiser. I kept the pace, worked the job, smiled the smile. Ran the miles, lifted the weights, cried the tears. Made good and, more often ,horrible decisions, held it all together, until I could no longer, finally gaining permission from those wiser than I, and eventually from myself, to walk away from the crazy.

It was brutal.

I wasn’t wrong, however. The crazy hasn’t stopped. The crazy causing people to be paralyzed into not holding responsibility still has a stronghold. But it is no longer my worry. Walking away from trauma is debilitating in and of itself, but once on the other side, doing all the things one does to survive looks so very different. I still work harder than I should, tote responsibilities, run the miles, lift the weights, cry the tears, and sometimes miss the mark in my decisions, but I do it in a clear-minded world. A world where no one is trying to make me think I’m the crazy one. Where no one is putting me in a position to have to be the responsible party. A world where crazy isn’t in my face all day every day.

It’s been years now, a good handful of them, and I’m still chatting with my counselor about it on occasion. Like, last week, for instance. I was struggling through some thoughts on the matter when I heard myself say out loud, “just because I don’t believe like they do doesn’t mean I’m crazy. I don’t have to believe what they believe. If they believe something I don’t believe, it doesn’t mean I’m crazy if I don’t believe it. I get to not believe it. It’s ok. It doesn’t mean I’m the crazy one. You get to believe what you believe. Just because I don’t believe it, it doesn’t mean I’m crazy.” Or something to that effect.

Then I stopped in my tracks. Did I hear what I just said?!?! More importantly, do I BELIEVE what I just said???

It doesn’t mean I’m crazy if I don’t believe it.

That is now my goal. To wholeheartedly believe it when I say, “you do you, Boo. I don’t have to.” To believe that I’m not crazy if I don’t ascribe to what you believe. And that you trying to make me think I’m crazy is on you, not me. I have a sound mind. You get to believe whatever nonsense you wish, and I get to not be affected by it.

You do you, Boo.