Sam hates it when I’m gross. If I exercise enough to get sweaty and stinky (or spend a few days in non-shower-y places, like retreats), he wants me to rinse off before I cuddle up with him.

“You know, Napoleon would write to Josephine and specifically instruct her NOT to bathe when he was on his way home from a campaign,” I’ll tell him. “He wanted every drop of Josephine-scent he could get.”

Then he’ll tell me that he’s not Napoleon while pushing me off of him. I’m a personal space kinda gal, except when it comes to Sam. He signed a paper making him my legal property and waived his right to breathing room. 

“You just did three hours of hot yoga. Go shower.” He’ll say, smacking me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. “Bad!” 

On my end, it doesn’t matter as much. If Sam’s a little ripe, he can come as close to me as it wants. I don’t have a high bar when it comes to physical hygiene. (Except that time when the person sitting next to me on a plane kept prodding at the world’s biggest pimple and I was afraid the juice would hit me if he popped it. I was DYING until I found a new seat at the back of the plane. It was so gross.)

I do, however, have a high bar when it comes to emotional hygiene.

I am, at this moment, perpetually one bad day away from sobbing on the bathroom floor. I know because yesterday, Sam came home from work and I greeted him with a teary-eyed kiss before returning to the cozy spot I’d chosen on the bathroom floor to finish crying.

I don’t believe in suppressing emotions. I believe in letting them move through you so they don’t get stuck. I came into adulthood emotionally frozen and I never want to go back to that place.

I know why I’m having all these feelings: I made poor decisions when it came to our October, November and December travel plans and I’ve run myself into the ground.

I won’t make these same mistakes again…but I’m still in the middle of the trip. The travel calendar we oh-so-proudly shared (“look at our excellent planning!”) has five more stops before we go back to Asia on January 1st.

So, yesterday, after we landed in Florida at 1:00 AM, checked into a hotel at 2:00 AM and I couldn’t fall asleep until 3:30 AM…after perpetual travel since September 26th…well, the bathroom floor makes sense.

But that’s where the emotional hygiene comes in. My hubbalicious has far too stressful of a job to have a stressful home life. So I take not being a wreck as a sacred duty. I don’t personally enjoy feeling down AND I very much prefer not to break my husband. 

It’s like when Oprah’s said: “I’ve learned that not everyone is going to take responsibility for their energy, so I have to be picky about who I let into my space.”

I want to be the kind of person who takes responsibility for her energy. And, for me, that includes taking responsibility for my emotional state.

To be honest, I’m a little intense about it. I don’t just expect it of myself; I also require it in my key relationships. 

That doesn’t mean I expect anyone (myself included) to be on a perpetual pink cloud. That’s not realistic.

But it does mean that I expect action. When I’m physically icky, Sam expects me to prioritize a shower before coming into his space. When I’m emotionally icky, I expect myself to prioritize actions that will shift my state. That doesn’t mean I expect my mood to immediately change. It just means that I prioritize things that I know will shift the trajectory so that I begin going up instead of sinking further down. 

In other words, when my cup is empty, I stop pouring from it and instead focus on filling it. My favorite kinds of people do the same thing.

That’s what the path of shamanism is about: personal power. Taking responsibility for how you go through the world. Erasing any trace of victimhood from your system.

There’s no victim here: I created this mess and I know what it’ll take to get out of it. That’s why I spent my evening messaging Airbnb hosts, begging them to give me a rate that won’t make Sam’s head explode so that I can stay in Florida until it’s time for us to leave.

If traveling isn’t working, then it’s time for me to stop traveling. Aren’t simple solutions the best?

Also showers. Sam wants me to remember that showers are the best.

Wishing you a full cup,

Keely

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