![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI can still feel changes under the surface.
I've stopped actively doing headspace work, but that doesn't mean that the changes already in motion have stopped. Day after day, I can still feel growth happening, even if I'm not entirely conscious of the details. This is the settling period that I remember from years ago, where the big and deliberate changes percolate down into the foundations. These are the little micro-tremors that follow the aftershocks.
When I become aware that my headspace isn't what it was yesterday, I try to remind myself that it's expected. My habits aren't settling into the grooves I want, and that's expected too. I have months or years to go before I've healed enough from my mental surgery that I can direct my energy in the ways I really want to live the rest of my life. The surgery may have gotten rid of a lot of scars, but that doesn't mean I'm miraculously better and I can go climb mountains. I have to give it time. I have to be willing to put up with missing out on social functions I don't feel like attending just now, falling out of touch with people, passing up opportunities I'm not ready for.
I'm an introvert, but I'm a social one. I enjoy being with people regularly. Becoming a hermit is something I accept as necessary because my reactions tell me it is, but I get impatient with it. Only the fact that I can feel changes happening daily keeps me quiet, because I know that as long as I'm still actively consolidating my personality, I'm like a caterpillar in cocoon: open up too soon and all you get is a mess.
The other day, while waiting interminably in a grocery checkout line at the end of a 21-hour day (it was three in the morning) I observed that one reason I have such reserves of patience may be my history with chronic pain. Both physical and emotional. When you live for a long time with significant amounts of pain, you become accustomed to it. When it's gone, and you've had the time necessary to heal from the experience and put it behind you, you find that it's marked you. Your metrics have expanded, your rulers have stretched. Your dials go to 15. And you discover that discomforts that you would once have considered distressing barely register anymore -- they exist, you feel them, but they aren't worthy of much more than a sigh.
Standing in a checkout line while the person in front of me works through some complex issue, with all my joints aching and my body thirsting for a chance to lie down, with my own personal toddler whining in my ear that she's HUNGRY and TIRED and when can we go home? -- I weigh those pains against the memories of what I've endured, shift my feet, and sigh. The itch of discomfort that might make me cranky (even in the depths of my pain-filled years) vanishes into a sense of how small my problems are.
If I endured *that*, years of that, ages of that... what is this in comparison? A gnat's whine. A mote of dust on the camel's back. A moment, soon over. It's a perspective it takes going through hell to get, but it promotes peace of mind. Because if the little indignities of life don't even register anymore, you can stop thinking about the pebble in your shoe and focus on the journey.
I've stopped actively doing headspace work, but that doesn't mean that the changes already in motion have stopped. Day after day, I can still feel growth happening, even if I'm not entirely conscious of the details. This is the settling period that I remember from years ago, where the big and deliberate changes percolate down into the foundations. These are the little micro-tremors that follow the aftershocks.
When I become aware that my headspace isn't what it was yesterday, I try to remind myself that it's expected. My habits aren't settling into the grooves I want, and that's expected too. I have months or years to go before I've healed enough from my mental surgery that I can direct my energy in the ways I really want to live the rest of my life. The surgery may have gotten rid of a lot of scars, but that doesn't mean I'm miraculously better and I can go climb mountains. I have to give it time. I have to be willing to put up with missing out on social functions I don't feel like attending just now, falling out of touch with people, passing up opportunities I'm not ready for.
I'm an introvert, but I'm a social one. I enjoy being with people regularly. Becoming a hermit is something I accept as necessary because my reactions tell me it is, but I get impatient with it. Only the fact that I can feel changes happening daily keeps me quiet, because I know that as long as I'm still actively consolidating my personality, I'm like a caterpillar in cocoon: open up too soon and all you get is a mess.
The other day, while waiting interminably in a grocery checkout line at the end of a 21-hour day (it was three in the morning) I observed that one reason I have such reserves of patience may be my history with chronic pain. Both physical and emotional. When you live for a long time with significant amounts of pain, you become accustomed to it. When it's gone, and you've had the time necessary to heal from the experience and put it behind you, you find that it's marked you. Your metrics have expanded, your rulers have stretched. Your dials go to 15. And you discover that discomforts that you would once have considered distressing barely register anymore -- they exist, you feel them, but they aren't worthy of much more than a sigh.
Standing in a checkout line while the person in front of me works through some complex issue, with all my joints aching and my body thirsting for a chance to lie down, with my own personal toddler whining in my ear that she's HUNGRY and TIRED and when can we go home? -- I weigh those pains against the memories of what I've endured, shift my feet, and sigh. The itch of discomfort that might make me cranky (even in the depths of my pain-filled years) vanishes into a sense of how small my problems are.
If I endured *that*, years of that, ages of that... what is this in comparison? A gnat's whine. A mote of dust on the camel's back. A moment, soon over. It's a perspective it takes going through hell to get, but it promotes peace of mind. Because if the little indignities of life don't even register anymore, you can stop thinking about the pebble in your shoe and focus on the journey.
