Fish out of water

I just had a muuuch needed massage, first one since so much trauma got triggered and inflicted upon me on my last return to the United States. Amazing how much toxicity has entered my body since then, and that is so much if what it is: I no longer had a car, effectively found myself trapped in a place that was untenable and had me feeling trapped like a prison, triggering my fears all over the place, got messed with at these hospitals and then found my way into a shelter that was so rough in a lot of ways I had to put on so much armour to survive it even though it was preferable to staying in a house with my mother’s husband. Now, here, I feel welcome but still quite on edge in a lot of ways, and staying here, isolated from any opportunities to get out and explore the world freely, is not going to be good for my nervous system long term. I don’t want to upset anyone and I can’t quite relax; maybe if I were with friends who understood and nurtured me I would be so much more able to relax and since I can’t relax and have so much less capacity to make even short travel excursions I end up hiding from my overwhelming feelings and staying in bed all day. But if I tried to force myself to get up and do more things I would probably be doing it for the wrong reasons and don’t think that would be good for my self-care either.

My muscles needed it but more than that the fear and stress and trauma came to the surface and I couldn’t believe how much there was; it almost felt like being at the top of a roller coaster ready to go down. Without the touch and the comfort of a massage the release of those energies would have been terrifying and might have made me have thoughts of wanting to die or at least find some way to numb the pain, but I was able to experience it more like an observer, like wow, there is *that* much icky inside me! Now, again and again I get frustrated that people suggest, maybe get a therapist for the sorts of things you are going through; yeah, a massage therapist or bodyworker! They don’t get my neurology, that soooo much of the problem is my nervous system and until that feels better there is not much I can work out even with a therapist. When I have balanced my system through release in my body tissues I will be much more capable of discerning as far as choosing a therapist and so much more on point as far as narrowing in on what my needs are and what I might want to explore… most things most therapists offer, I can probably work on on my own, it takes a special talent or a specific focus and there are so many niches and specialisations that most people do not have that are kind if important to be successful working with me. If you don’t have a budget, maybe you can get free therapy somewhere and free massage is less likely; but if you do have a budget, if you are me, budgeting for massage and bodywork before traditional therapy is definitely the way to go; I am not going to get into balance through talk therapy (maybe EMDR?), but I might figure something out over the course of months or years. It may look to others that wow they need a lot of therapeutic help but actually maybe it is a combination of my neurodivergence and trauma history that may make it look like talk therapy is most essential but I assure you it is bodywork and anything that will get my nervous system into balance; then social support like these meetings I am attending and connecting with friends, and then thirdly perhaps, therapy. The more I need a massage, the more it looks like I need therapy, let’s put it that way, and this is a powerful observation for me. If you know this about me, it might be easier to sense what I might might actually be needing…

It is not that I have heard this too many times but if instead people told me, investing in massage could really be therapeutic for you on all sorts of levels, I would be more likely to remember, and I always forget, how helpful massage really is for me… and it would affirm what I know about my own nervous system. I feel like after even just one massage I will be more likely to be able to focus on things, too, which has been a struggle. I don’t even know what it feels like for people to take my neurodivergence seriously and to make an effort to understand and accommodate it, maybe because I don’t even know what I need around that either. I too often do feel alienated and alone though and so much must be a combination if neurodivergence and trauma. And society is not kind to neurodivergent and autistic people; way too many are institutionalised or abused with supposed treatment in ine way or another; my feelings of not feeling at home in the world make so much sense but I don’t know what to do with them. Are there places where it is easier for neurodivergent people to ease their way into community and make friends? It must be part of why I feel Latin America is so much better for my nervous system in a lot if ways, and why I sense it is easier to make friends in a lot of places there, but of course wherever I go I always leave and unless you have cultivated them for a while a lot of these friendships are likely to just fall away. How and where do I go to start making friends that are likely to be lifelong friends? I know there must be places where that is more likely to happen — herbalism retreats, maybe, ecological retreats, songwriting workshops.

I kind of wish I could interview a lot if people who are interested in something a little different than mainstream culture, maybe people who travel a lot or are open to travel, and ask, where have you found community, where have you found places that feel like your spiritual home? When people make location specific suggestions for making friends I don’t know if it works so well for me because I am not in one place for long unless (unfortunately) it happens to be somewhere I don’t really feel comfortable being and then I can’t put my attention into making friends anyway. Lately I find myself freaking out too much about death and eventual outcomes and such to focus on making friends, but I honestly think the solution to that is a massage rather than talk therapy. The fears I had earlier today feel at least right now maybe 50% better thanks to my massage. It is easier to start to come up with ‘solitions’ rather than just being stuck in fear; talk therapy around these issues might not help at all. It is not a matter of thinking my way through them but releasing what is stuck and scared in my body so I can feel my heart. Massage helps me think better, to see more clearly how to solve problems when ordinarily I am too overwhelmed and might incline towards making bad decisions or staying stuck. The key for me is to find myself in less and less alienating internal and external environments and one thing that makes any environment feel less alienating is massage. I don’t think talk therapy can do that and I don’t think thinking my way theough fears of death and impermanence would do much but encourage me to brood on such things. When my body is treated with gentleness and kindness and I feel some kind of connection that seems to be where these fears start to fall away.

As far as what helps me to feel comfortable making friends, the process that happens in a lot of these twelve step meetings that they call ‘getting current’ is really helpful for me at least: just sharing consistently day by day whatever is up and whatever is real, what’s going on in life in the inside and the outside, which is kind of what I try to do in these journals, but I don’t have a lot of folks to share that with, and I would love to have a friend I like to consistently text with ir something. I wasn’t even ready for that forever; now I am, and I am so much more aware of myself in a lot if ways, but maybe I burned my bridges with old communities and they’ll never trust me afain. I am so sorry I disappointed people who cared about me and had my back. Maybe it is time to move on but I feel less and less fear around giving them another chance, if my old retreat leader would be open to giving me a chance, is not closed to loving me. I don’t know though… I wish I had some clarity. Finally I feel like I can talk in a grounded and honest way about what is going on with me and I feel more capable of knowing what I need to feel intimacy and of being responsible for my fear and intense emotions. I am sorry I responded in ways that I did and probably broke a lot of trust in me. Maybe I don’t deserve another chance.

I don’t know how long I will be able to stay here without a car or anything like that, and… where I feel like I do not have total control over my own time, which is kind of important to me. During the massage today my mind came back to Guatemala. For a little while I knew I went to the beach in Guatemala and thought I had a great time but couldn’t remember any of it. Now I remember: and I remember what it cost me to stay in that great little place by the beach. That is an easy place I could go that might be relaxing, where I could focus on reading books and improving my Spanish, and grow my bank account while I am at it. It might be a good place to figure out what comes next. But a lot of times I fear I share too much on this journal and I’d rather be ‘getting current’ with a friend, sharing the day to day about what is going on with me in Guatemala or wherever I am, which I think would sooo help me discern my way into better and better places physically and metaphorically in my life. Getting to share my process and experience of traveling with a friend day by day is one step away from actually sharing travel experiences with a friend, and then I will feel a little less like a fish out of water. What I need is support to help me figure out how I might feel a little less like a fish out of water. To be doing what I feel meant to do, in a real flow with life; but I need support in diagnosing the problem (like the Buddha did with the Four Noble Truths). What are the root sources and causes of my distress and malaise and sense of being a fish out of water and out of flow with life? What are the causes and conditions of more freedom and what is the path towards alife in more flow with more sense of belonging and more reilience to trauma and depression and fear? I did not realise but helping me figure these things out would probably take a lot more more than one conversation, it would be a process and a journey over time. In particular if people don’t really know the essential facts of my story and who I am (how I operate, neurodivergence, INFP, 4w5, etc.) and the way I look at the world and what I yearn for and what causes me stress and what feels lacking and what I dream of, it seems it would be a lot harder to give me the sort of feedback and perspective that will get me on my feet again. So the task if being able to help me could really benefit from listening to me deeply and taking inventories of my passions, strengths, talents, story, uniqueness, etc., and holding it all in mind and in the light. I need help discerning how to move into a joyous, flowing life, and I am tired of getting stuck so often, but people aren’t necessarily able to give me the best feedback because we haven’t taken these inventories. I don’t think I am hopeless, or I hope I am not, but I might need more creative solutions than most do to get my life feeling good again. I need friends who can remind me when I forget: this is who you are!

People who do not know or understand me would be less likely to think of immersing myself in Spanish and traveling in other countries as a solution to my problems; like, when I told my acupuncturist I was thinking if moving to Mexico, she talked about how much work that would be and everything, and… well, I did it for what, six months? And it really wasn’t. But coming back to the US was depressing and alienating and exhausting and life here felt way too hard.

If you don’t understand my struggle with feeling content staying in one place for a long time it might be harder for you to understand how you might support me. If you don’t understand that I am so much comfortable with freelance and preferably location independent self-employment, likewise, it will be harder but not necessarily impossible to support me in no longer being that fish out of water and feeling like I am living the life I’m meant to live. If I am not talking to people about it and being hinest about who I am I’m not going to get there.

Right now I still don’t know if ‘Jane Eyre can be happy’, to use a metaphor, and by Jane Eyre I mean me; but I am trying to courageouslt take it step by step, choosing not to reject that possibility, of being happy, of easing my deep proclivity to suffering (that I know could be eased so much if only I had juat the right kind of support around me), choosing to believe that I will not feel hopelessly out of place forever, and what I was made for, what I was made to belong to and with (and I am sorry I am using language that might remind me of or be reminiscent of somebody who may want nothing to do with me, that isn’t my intention…), will become clear and maybe one day I’ll find myself right in the middle of it… with a little help from my friends.