Can’t Shake It

I’m trying to shake the feeling that I’m waiting for the summer to end to enjoy myself again. It finally did, and now I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop—what shoe?—I guess it’s the anxiety.

If you asked me how I’ve been, I’d say my week was stressful with work.

But when I look back on my camera roll all I see is soft light, homemade muffins with unicorn sprinkles, the morning walk and cortado I got before my presentation that I didn’t think I was “allowed” to take (🧠: “you should have spent every free moment preparing, you’re not good enough”), but I did anyway to do something nice for myself...

I see the church-turned-restaurant that hosted my brother and me for a good talk.

I see princess dresses on my little girls for a day out. Public art. A cloudy afternoon I didn’t know I needed.

I see a spur-of-the-moment return to a date spot Jake and I hadn’t been to in years (“HAVE YOU TRIED DATE NIGHTS?” Ugh. Fine).

I see a sparkling lake and smiling friends on a Sunday morning run.

The outlines of a joyful life are all there. What’s not adding up? I guess there are hard parts. Not pictured are the hours where I’m schlepping my busted-up body (hamstring tendinopothy for the last three months and two ankle sprains in six weeks) to the gym, and slowly lowering myself off the edge of a box, again and again. I can kind of run, but the moment I pick up the pace or there’s a 1% incline, my leg hurts. No end in sight.

There’s also work: I’m at my desk for hours a day, chipping away at projects in a company of 20,000+ people where my brain inexplicably tells me I’m so important that I need to know how to do my job and probably 19,999 other people’s jobs for good measure too. So I spend a lot of time thinking about all the ways I’m not measuring up or all the ways it will go wrong.

The thing is, I’ve been here before, seemingly trapped, but where? In my stable family and career I’ve been investing in for a decade? I suppose there are stakes. Trapped doesn’t feel like the right expression. Fear, maybe, of not measuring up.

I’m not doing it by myself though, I never have. And am I aiming for no stress? All ease? Shouldn’t work be a little hard? Raising humans? Don’t I like the challenge? The grit of rising to the occasion, emerging victorious? Isn’t that why I ran marathons?

I lead a life of privilege as it is, and I know all the financial security in the world is no insurance policy against loneliness, grief, guilt, pressure or any other negative emotion I’m experiencing.

I don’t want to be somewhere else, floating above it all without any feelings. I guess I just want to feel the highs as highs, instead of feeling them by proxy, numbly, as I’m scrolling my camera roll.