I felt very bad earlier today. Making plans often triggers me in ways I don’t readily become aware of. I’ve dealt with flakey people a lot and I’m a firm believer that you should never chase people to hang out with you. If they want to, they will. Period.
However, my past and my anxiety I think lead me to be hyper aware of planning. I like knowing what is coming at me and when for the day, even good things, like kayaking. So if I text a person a question about plans and they don’t respond to that part of my text, I often assume they just don’t want to go. Which is fine, I just want to know. Sometimes, though, that isn’t always the case and people are actually excited to do things with me, but other factors come into play for them not being as responsive via text. This is always really hard for me to understand, but I try.
My anxiety I think contributes to me misinterpreting that people don’t care about me or seeing me when they actually do. I try to be very responsive to people who are responsive to me. But after a pattern emerges or I perceive that me and my feelings are being ignored … I’m out. I have no time for flakey people. Lately I have been choosing to spend my energy on people who SHOW UP for me and in general, I have been so much happier. Putting my energy into me and the people who show up. There will always be blips along the way because I can’t change how my nervous system got wired to be anxious when I was little, and it developed that way for good reasons. All I can do is try to be aware of it so it doesn’t drive me to push good people out of my life.
I’m getting back to me. Every day I feel it. When I was upset I retreated outside to sort things out and found myself sitting on the ground by the creek. Completely surrounded by lilies and plants. This is exactly what I did when I was little. All. The. Time. I would go to where the plants were taller than me and sit where no one would see me. Today, I did this without thinking and felt better. Here are some photos from my time in my yard when I was coming out of my anxious fog.
You can see that deer frequently visit the area and someone had a snack. But the butterfly was most striking to me today because … well, it’s not perfect. You can see parts of the wing are missing and tattered and that’s ok. It still flies.
I’m that way too.
Eternal Ocean of Words 