When the target keeps moving.

(I made this earlier this year to try and remind myself to breathe. 

I think I might have to put it next to my bed.)

Pick a point and focus. That's what I tell myself. When everything is moving too fast and it seems like I'm about to be overwhelmed. Easier said than done some days. Easier said than done most days. I can feel it build. The days where the rubber bands are wound and wound and wound, until they sit stretched and pale on the brink of snapping.

Tiredness doesn't help. The all pervasive exhaustion that wraps around you and through you tying you down and pulling you apart.

No one thing stands out. It's all the things. All at once. When the respite is missing. When you keep thinking it's not supposed to be like this. I should be able to deal. By now. It's nothing new. It's the same old same old. The items are on shuffle, but the playlist is the same. But the down time is measured in moments, not days. Not weeks. And never in months. If there can be caring fatigue, surely I can have coping fatigue. You can take your strong and stick it.

I keep waiting for the planets to align. Those mythical moments where hope is fully realised and something happens. Something. I don't even know what that would constitute at the moment. Some sort of relief? Perhaps. An end to pain. I wouldn't knock that back. An end to nausea. An end to weakness and those days where even the sunlight on a light Winter day is too much for overstretched nerves. The advent of enough energy to do something. Something once more. Still no idea what that something is. But it is. The ability to do something, anything, I want. Just because.

But the planets continue to mock me from afar.

I keep thinking if there's one thing, just one, that rises above the rest, I can focus. I can concentrate my energies on that one point. I can set a plan. I list out my steps and write up dot points. I can address it and solve it and move onto the next. And then reset my focus to the next issue at hand.

And then the target moves. Or another rises up. Or one I thought sorted starts to spring up again. A hint at first. Then a nudge. Then a body slam. And I am back to square one. Or square negative ten, again.

Pick a point and focus. Pick a point. One point. Any point.

Take a breath. Start again.

Take a breath.

Take a breath. 

Shut out the world. Pull down the blinds. Batten down the hatches. 

Ride it out. Ride it out. Ride it out. 

Discard. Remove the layers of burden. Burden self-appointed. Burden appointed by others. Prioritise. Deal with the unavoidable. Ignore the rest. Shake off the unnecessary. 

Focus on the self. The primal self. The needs of now. The keystone without which the rest will fall. 

The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I know it, and yet I keep falling back to old patterns. I know it, but it is so much easier to retrace old paths. I push too far. I fall. I push too far. I fall. The familiar two-step. I know in my heart it'll end in tears, yet each time I convince myself that this time it'll be different.

Pacing. Self-compassion. Tied inextricably to a personality that wants to fight them on the beaches. Them being me. Them being my body. Them being systems comprised of nerves and neurotransmitters, cells and blood vessels. I dig in my heels to fight unconscious processes that simply do what they do. No plan. No intent. And I fall.

So I curl up and binge watch programs that I have seen a dozen times before. I curl up and look out the window. Watching the finches flit in and out of the bushes by the fence. I curl up and feel the soft fur of Freyja under my hands. The comfort of her warmth and familiar doggy smell. I curl up and watch the candle flicker on the top of my tallboy. I curl up and smell the soap sent by a friend. Part of a non-casserole care package. I curl up and breathe. I curl up.

And I'll stay curled up for a while. Tightly wound in my shell. In soft clothes and soft sheets. In soft light and soft sounds. Until it finally suffuses my being. Until I can feel it's gentle hum throughout. And I am restored. And healed. In the ways that matter. In the ways of the soul and the spirit.

So that's where I'll focus. That's where my small amounts of energy must be directed. Must. Must and Me not two words I normally associate with each other. It grates and feels wrong. But I will tie them together. Bound until they become familiar and comfortable. 

And I'll write it out again. I'll spew the words onto the keyboard. Empty it all out, so there's room for the things that will sustain.

Michelle

That not everything is gonna be the way

You think it ought to be

It seems like every time I try to make it right

It all comes down on me

Please say honestly you won't give up on me

And I shall believe

And I shall believe.

Sheryl Crow - I shall believe.

This is one of the songs in my angsty play list that tends to be on high rotation when a bump in the road sends me off into a ditch. Not everything is gonna be the way you think it ought to be. Time to learn that lesson again.