This Isn’t Working for Me Anymore
Surrender to the way things want to happen next, even though this often involves a vast and terrifying loss of control. Trust the magic that was born into your soul. - Martha Beck
It starts with a whisper. A nagging sense that something is not right. That what seemed OK up until now, even something you chose or wanted, no longer is.
A relationship. A job. A situation.
You resist. Try to numb this feeling with food, with alcohol. You even take up running. You add more things. Busy busy busy. Don’t feel this. Don’t think about it. Don’t question things. Don’t shake the boat.
You convince yourself it’s all OK. That it’s your fault. You chose this. Nobody forced you.
You tell yourself you want too much. That you’re not trying hard enough to make it work. That you’re never happy. WHY CAN’T YOU JUST BE HAPPY??
It would be so much simpler if you could just suck it up. Go through the motions. Act like everything is OK - because in so many ways it is! YOU SHOULD JUST BE GRATEFUL!!
It would be so much simpler. It would be…and yet you can’t.
You get to the point where the whisper become more persistent. Where the whisper becomes an incessant thought. Where it it morphs into an obsession. NOT WORKING. NOT WORKING. NOT WORKING. DON’T WANT THIS. DON’T WANT THIS. DON’T WANT THIS.
You can’t ignore it anymore.
Resigned, you give up fighting. You give up and you begrudgingly listen. You listen to what is going on underneath the obsessions. Underneath the chaos.
And when you really listen, you realise:
This isn’t working for me anymore.
And with this come the desires, the needs you have been trying so hard to ignore.
I want something different.
I want more.
The realisation hits you like a ton of bricks.
This isn’t working for me anymore.
With this honesty, you feel a wave of sadness.
This isn’t working for me anymore. It once did, and now, it no longer is.
Maybe because you’ve outgrown it. Maybe because you want something different now. Maybe because you’re finally being honest with yourself. Maybe because you’ve learned to respect yourself. Maybe just because.
This isn’t working for me anymore.
You allow yourself to hang out in this space. This space that Nancy Levin calls the “space between no longer and not yet”.
You don’t know what the ‘not yet’ looks like. You only know that the way things are no longer works for you. That you can’t continue like this.
Being honest about this opens up a space where you recognise you need something to change, even if you don’t yet know what that looks like.
You stop fighting your own truth. You allow yourself to want what you want and to no longer want what you don’t want, even if this feels shaky and uncomfortable and unknown and scary.
You allow yourself to hang out in the space of
This isn’t working for me anymore.
and
I want something different.
Without necessarily doing anything different in the outside world yet. You don’t make any big decisions or changes. You don’t know where you are going - you have no idea - but you start there.
You start by simply being honest with yourself.
You start there.
“it is being honest
about
my pain
that
makes me invincible.”
- Nayyirah Waheed