Sunday, March 10, 2013

A weekend of "The Cure"


The past few weeks, perhaps even longer have been personally challenging. At this stage in my life I’m okay with admitting I’m completely self absorbed, it goes beyond the only-child syndrome. In fact, do you know how several of my birthday cards were addressed? To The Only Child… J My professors told me the first semester of my Masters Social Work program would be the hardest, and they also said you’ll learn about yourself. They were right! First semester is under my belt, and I’m 7 weeks away from my 2nd being over too, only 6 more to go! So what have I learned about myself? I know what I know, and I definitely know what I don’t know. Without getting too personal over the internet, I will say this…there are several priorities in my life that have been neglected. When the shit hits the fan, so do I. There are moments in that haze that I turn into a stressful version of Roseanne Barr needing a snickers to calm down and “chive on?” and other periods where I find myself enclosed for 24-48 hour periods of time. Why? What triggers this? Why am I on cloud 9 for a few days, and then a ball of nerves the next few? Is it school? Is it work? Is it me? Is it something else? Self absorbed to the extreme, however; I believe it’s needed and long overdue. The great thing about Social Work is that once you’re turned on to it, the hat never comes off and it becomes part of your life. Just as I am taught about how to help clients become self aware, and consider their environment and triggers, I am doing the same with myself.

Through reflection, I learning that I know what I know, and that I know what I don’t know. I know what keeps me centered, I know what’s important for me, I know where there are problems, and I know when something isn’t going as well as it could.  This past weekend after stabilizing from something that was bothering me, I found the sudden urge to cook a meal. A special meal…spinach and chicken lasagna and bloody marys all from scratch. This may sound like a small accomplishment, but making alfredo sauce and my own bloody mary mix is no small ordeal for me. I was feeling great about life and myself during my cooking prep, and I thought wow I need to do this more. After a while, as evening turned into night reality began to surface again. Cooking isn’t THE CURE, nor are bloody marys, but they sure were good!


So what is it? What’s missing? I don’t know, but Sunday was a new morning and I was so looking forward to the beginning of day lights savings. Sunday came, and even though I love this time change, it was hard to get to church at 8am and keep my eyes open. I came home, did the usual and after a while the negative monster began to show its ugly face. I told myself, I need coffee, I need an energy drink, I need to get moving to make the negative monster go away! So I began to clean to distract my mind and put Pandora on, the station was Ingrid Michaelson….no I told myself! I don’t need emo pop music right now. This is not working, I need a different beat, okay, let’s try Christian contemporary, this worked while I was cooking yesterday. So I kept listening, kept cleaning, some of my favorite church songs were playing, some new ones, some I just tuned out because they were too twangy, and then a lyric caught my attention. I can’t even remember what it was, but all of a sudden I left the counter I was cleaning and found myself face down on the carpet crying and sharing and pouring out my heart. I can’t really explain all the emotions that happened during that moment, but something happened this morning. Something that was long overdue. The outlook on my day changed after that, and it was reemphasized to me that I know what THE CURE is…and even though my bloody mary mix is delicious that unfortunately is not the ultimate cure. 

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