The ESC Key

I'm building up to the meaning of the title of my blog.  If life is one big problem, than that phrase is my answer.  But it's not that simple, of course, so I want to share bits and pieces of who I am, and when it starts to come into focus, I will have a ta-da post explaining it.  I'm not ready yet.  If you follow along, you can be part of the process.

Today I want to write about hitting the escape key.  I am not going to tell you my whole sob story and bring it to a dramatic conclusion.  I am so many stories, mosaic bits that you (and I) see at odd intervals and angles.  There is nothing horrible going on for me to complain about, but my life tends to be chaotic.  I am so used to spinning around in it that it can be hard for me to see what I do to keep things in chaos instead of inviting order.  Chaos is to be expected when you live with other people, when both adults in the household work full-time, when there are two kids, and now two dogs in the house! 

The dogs were just added last week, and some may judge our adding them to our terribly messy, disorganized, in many places dirty, house (CHAOS by FlyLady's definition) and busy lives.  They are choices, though, like everything.  They are bringing joy to our lives and I do know that it was a decision I did not make lightly, and I did not bring them into my life in order to distract myself from important work.  I pack my life too full and it is frequently a way to avoid some ugliness or fear or sadness.  But that is not the purpose of the dogs, so I feel good about it.

I have an eating disorder.  I have been making strides in recovery and feeling really, really good.  Very happy.  Many of the chaotic bits of life have been becoming orderly and I have been HAPPY and not using food as a substitute for love, to ease anxiety, or... any number of ways I have made food dysfunctionally useful beyond its actual value as fuel for the body.  I have dealt with many changes and worries in the past through week, in a variety of adaptive ways, and have been grateful to people in my life, especially my spouse, and proud of myself, and hopeful. 

In the past couple of days, however, I hit some road blocks.  I'm not saying what they were, but I wasn't taking good enough care of myself to access the sense that obstacles can be overcome.  Part of the stress was grief over letting go of the eating disorder itself, which I let propel me right back into it, bingeing and inviting old [unhelpful] messages from one part of me to the others to repeat themselves.  I left my fine spouse thinking I faulted him for my foul mood.  I thought again of needing to escape.  I hadn't needed the idea of "escape" in a long time.

The word "escape" reminded me of a message I intended to give myself.  The escape key on a keyboard has these 3 letters:  ESC.  I've discovered that I like to ply language into positive self-talk (to combat the negative messages that I seem to give myself too readily), and one of my favorite methods is using acronyms.  ESC to me needs to represent Exquisite Self Care.  The phrase came to me from SARK, and I have found it all over the Internet, now.  The word exquisite is essential because self-care has to be so much more than the basics.  Here is parenting blog that shows someone else's experience with ESC, and her resource (one I haven't tried yet).

I created a chain in my mind that is helping bring me back into balance.  When I thought, "I just want to escape," it triggered the phrase "hit the ESC key," which reminded me of Exquisite Self-Care.  So I looked back and saw that despite all the fantastic things happening in my life, my self-care has not been exquisite.  I will post more about what "exquisite" means to me, but for now, I just want to share the book that I got the phrase from. I'm tempted to try to say it all at once, but I am sticking to the mosaic approach.

Theme and Variations, Permutations, Combinations

Did you  ever feel like you were working equally hard to belong and to be unique?  To blend in and stand out?  To be normal and special?  To be understood and enigmatic?

I think that some of my friends would be surprised to know that I struggle with these aspects of defining myself.  Some may think I wholeheartedly embraced my quirks; maybe others think I'm not that different, what's the worry?  I have been writing and rewriting my own story for a long time.  About a year ago, my most desperate need was to be authentic, and felt like life wasn't letting me.  As I became braver about sharing, surrounded by many very kind people struggling to be true to themselves, too, I discovered that I can tell my stories over and over in different ways.  Changing the delivery does not makes the story (me) less true.  Withholding certain details from certain people does not erase my reality.  Choosing to perform in certain situations does not make me a fraud. 

Some of that anxiety is still there.  Sometimes, when I want to connect with my friends on Facebook, I stare at that faint question: "What's on your mind?"  I try to catch the thoughts as them go by.  I try to pick one that is clever or amusing, or Important.  The perfectionist editor kicks in again, and won't let me post unless I find the best status.  I get to thinking that if I pick one thought to share all the other thoughts will be jealous.  Did you bring enough candy for everybody?  Then, sometimes, I say, forget it, I won't update my status, I'll just pick a friend to catch up with.  And the same thing happens.  I read some of this and some of that, I consider chatting but can't decide which of the people I love can have my attention at the moment.  Next thing I know, it's bedtime, and I haven't shared a smidgeon of myself.  The lessons here are:

1. The indecision, perfectionism, and identity questions come from the same place:  FEAR
2. I can choose, and choose again, and choose once again, who I am and what I share, and how I make myself matter.  I choose LOVE, not FEAR.
3. A vital choice, time and time again, is to LET GO.  There are so many things I've wanted to do, but thought I couldn't do, because it had already been done.  When I let go of the need to make things happen a certain way, I get to emerge as a creative variation of the universe.
4. If you happen to be one of my Facebook friends, chat me up when you see I'm online because I really need someone to snap me out of it!