The Blahs: A Permission Slip

A pair of jimmy-jams that are hurtling their way through China’s insanely fast supply chain to make their way to me in my hour of need.

Last night, on my way home from my second dinner, I did a 10:00 PM “I’m gonna need some chocolate now” convenience store run.

Then, after inhaling my chocolate, I dug into my oatmeal toppings because it was the closest thing I had to junk food in my house and my body said, “More sugar, please.”

Shortly after, I resentfully washed my face so the mascara I had on didn’t glue my eyes shut in my sleep (except really I got in the shower because washing my face at the sink was too big of a hurdle to overcome), then settled into bed for a long winter’s slumber.

Ten to eleven hours later (I’m not sure what time I fell asleep), my eyes opened. In my alarm-less, curtains-pulled-to-block-out-the-sunlight lair, my body chose to sleep until 10:00 AM.

Then, after quelling a brief flare-up of guilt (“it’s not fair that I get to do this when Sam needs rest more than I do and he can’t sleep in like this. The way that I earn my in-my-thirties-but-don’t-have-to-work life is by doing good things with my time, not sleeping in until 10:00 on a Wednesday”), I pulled my covers back up and gave myself permission. “If you want to spend the whole day in bed,” I told my tired body, “it’s alright.”

Yesterday, on a call with a wise woman friend who happens to be a brilliant therapist, I told her about my sputtering spark.

“It’s just not there,” I told her. “The soaring feeling I usually get from writing? I can’t reliably connect with it. Same with walks and…” this and that. I gave her the list. “Life’s kind of about going through the motions right now,” I finished.

“Do you think you’re depressed?” she asked, knowing of my history with depression.

“Meh,” I responded. “The thing that feels different is that I’m not worried, nor have I lost myself in it. When I was depressed, there was a pervasive quality to it. Not being able to remember how it felt to feel good. A nagging fear that the low was inevitable. That I’d spent so much of my life there and I’d always end up back in this place.”

“What I’m currently going through feels more like impatience. I know that I’ll feel good in the near future. I just don’t know if it’ll take a day, a week, a month or a quarter to get there…and I want it to happen NOW. I’m ready for the shift.”

Here’s the gift of our call: being able to discuss this heavy, disconnected, blah feeling with someone who knows a lot about the topic – it helped me to surrender. To accept. To trust.

Mostly because my friend cheered me on for sitting still.

I know that, if I wanted to, I could get on a plane to South America tomorrow. I could sit in a few ayahuasca ceremonies with shamans I trust and LIKELY be right as rain by the end of the retreat. The ceremonial medicine work would LIKELY speed up the timeline on my shift back into feeling good.

It’s tempting, obviously. (Though my LIKELYs are important — I try to avoid showing up to a plant medicine ceremony expecting a certain outcome. Hoping for the outcome I want — sure, that feels fair. But to EXPECT it? That’s…ooof…I accidentally did that once and hope I don’t make that mistake again.)

However…the thing that pushed me into this funk was too much travel. When I think of getting on a plane and flying back across the globe, I don’t feel joy or hope or a full-bodied HELL YES. I feel aversion. Also confusion, wondering if I’m a big dumb idiot to be living in Asia (unless, of course, it’s a brilliant decision to be living here…welcome to the open Ajna center in Human Design).

Thanks in part to Human Design, I’m currently experimenting with making decisions by tapping into my body’s wisdom instead of letting my brain run the show. So things that are intellectual yeses but body-based noes (like flying to South America)…they’re a no.

It’s helping me to break the pattern of forcing and controlling that I didn’t realize still ran so rampant in my life until people and plant medicines I trust held a mirror up to my face and invited me to take a look.

I’m writing about it because I want to have a record of this period. I don’t feel lively and playful while writing it. I don’t feel like I’m connected to Source and words are flowing through me. I feel more like I’m on the struggle bus, wondering if even doing this is a sign of forcing and controlling…because here I am, at my computer instead of spending the day in bed.

But it is what it is. Our culture tells us we’re good when we’re productive and bad when we’re not. That we’re good when we’re living in high-vibe states and bad when we’re not. But it feels like probably that’s a lie or at the very least an unhelpful oversimplification that keeps us stuck.

So I’m playing with letting things be. Sitting still. Allowing myself to eat chocolate, sleep in and feel down instead of force-force-forcing myself to be positive and productive and earn my gold star.

And you know what? I suspect there’s actual gold in here. Wisdom, insights and deeeeeeeeeeeep healing. Things that can only come to the surface in this state, the same way there are things that can only come to the surface in other states.

Here’s to celebrating the blahs…I guess? Or, at the very least, accepting them.

Keely