The LIFE Project

Chapter 10: Learning to Let Go

I've been very quiet. Almost deathly so. And honestly, I haven't really been feeling alive in the past six months. So I got stuck because I couldn't bring myself to write anything new here. Nothing I wrote felt authentic in the face of what was truly a shit storm of epic proportions. 

See, for there to be authenticity, the author needs to know what they want to say and honestly? I've been struggling to compute for the past few months. I wanted to make meaning of everything that's happened and move forward, bring you along for the ride, but I was consistently unable to do so because what happened was this. 

After a year since starting the LIFE Project and seeing a seedling of a good new life coming up... I had that seedling ripped up and trampled right in front of me. Not once, but three times in three months. 

It started with my living situation suddenly becoming abusive, with my aunt verbally and physically attacking me because I tried to put up a boundary after she threw out her trash basket on the floor for me to pick up. So I moved out on my own. 

While that was happening, a contract that was supposed to be an absolute godsend turned toxic to the point where I haven't recovered in the six months since it had started. While that was going on, I caught my third bout of COVID-19. 

I healed and finished my contract, and thought everything would be okay because I landed a new contract right afterwards that should have given me continued financial stability for another three to five months. Instead, that project started late, and when we got about a month in, my client asked me to cut down my hours. 

I accepted this because I understand where this request came from, but that doesn't change the fact that it definitively and possibly permanently yanked the carpet out from under my feet. So I tried to double down and build out my contract business to compensate, only to realize that after eight years of working contracts... I got left with nothing, and with burn-out so bad that I don't know if I'll ever be able to go on. 

Until I wrote all this down, I didn't realize how absolutely devastating this was. I guess for the sake of survival, my brain kept that detail from me. But I sacrificed everything to keep the business going, both for myself and my family. 

Family who took basically all of the money (we're talking five figures in dollars) and left me with nothing to show for it. All I really got out of the deal was the realization that, for all the pretty words and after all the sacrifices I made, the connection and the relationships I thought I had with my loved ones actually meant nothing. So really, it wasn't the contract work itself not being good enough so much as the financial and emotional abuse that I suffered as a result of it. 

And the worst is, the work was only ever supposed to supplement my creative output. But try telling your loved ones that when they're leaning on your income to ensure their lifestyle. Try having someone you considered to be a best friend call you a failure at life when your biggest contract ends while you're dealing with a chronic condition that is further limiting the amount of energy you can spend on stuff. 

Oh yeah. That's the other thing. The whole tantrum where the bitch threw the trash on the floor for me to clean up? It was because I didn't wash the dishes and empty the kitchen bin fast enough to her tastes... due to doing work. 

So. To sum up... I started contract work because 1) I wanted to supplement my income so I could write more 2) I found value and meaning in the work itself. The work became a stick with which to beat me until I bled. And then I got squeezed for every drop of blood that I could offer. And now? 

I got nothing. 

Before, I considered burn-out to be a form of exhaustion that could be recovered from by resting and replenishing my reserves. But where I'm at right now, it's more akin to having my tank so empty that even the fumes have evaporated, and somewhere along the way, something (or someone) punched a hole into the bottom. 

In short, for a book about making positive progress, I not only hit a set-back but I'm so well and truly fucked that I don't know where to begin with recovery. The fun part of this is, I'm living on my own, so I don't even get to have the illusion that at least I'm not going through this shit alone. 

The thing is (and I'm a little scared to say this in case something throws me a shovel), I think I've hit rock bottom now. Complete with the earth-shattering quake and rising dust from the fall. There's no meaning making here as I mourn the loss of yet another attempt at leading a joyous life. 

There's no sense of easy recovery here. Any thought I had about any recovery to speak of was me being delusional. I had been locked in a desperate search for validation that "no, if I keep pushing, I'll get back to where I was before and everything will be okay. I just need to keep going and everything will work out." 

I won't. 

I can't. 

If I look into the tank to see how much I have left in terms of my reserves, I see the ground underneath. And pretending like that isn't a huge fucking issue to my recovery to "optimal" is lying to myself. 

This is where the turn happens, right? Where I go: but I'm strong. I can do this. I will claw myself out of this hole and get back to the person I was. NO ONE WILL STOP ME. 

Fucking please. 

That thinking never worked before and won't now. All it does is add expectations as extra baggage. Also, consider me fucking stopped. And I don't mean this in a "hey should we be calling in wellness checks on you?" way. I'm not there. But you know how I've been wanting to get off the toxic positivity and productivity merry-go-round? 

This is me setting fire to it. 

I'm done. I will plant another seedling for a good life and see if this time I can get it to grow into something beautiful. But on my time. Within my capacity. 

On my terms. 

Which brings me to the whole point why I wrote this chapter. I'm done with people's expectations of me. More importantly, I'm done with my expectations for myself. 

I'm letting go of all that superficial bullshit. Because real talk? Digging myself out of this fucking hole hasn't worked for me. Not once in my entire adult life. So let's consider for a second that maybe this hole is where I'm supposed to be. Maybe, given the fact that my fingertips are bleeding and my bones are battered and bruised, it's time that I learn the lesson that I'm not supposed to be trying to climb out. 

Who am I trying to impress with this fucking tenacity anyway? What was I trying to achieve? 

I was trying to do something to escape the fear. To escape that gaping void that comes from thinking "This can't be all that my life will be." Not after being fed the narrative that I'm special and that I deserve greatness for my work. 

Fuck that. I don't even want greatness. Not really. I was just told that I'm supposed to want it. So why in the hell am I expending so much energy trying to achieve this moving target? Especially when I already achieved what many would objectively call success and it honestly wasn't so great. Honestly, the whole effort to get there and the stress that came with the inevitable ripping away was what punched the hole in my tank in the first place. 

So here I am, facing the abject terror that is acceptance. I'm not really emotionally prepared for this. I don't know how not to strive. To push. I don't know how to just be and come at my life from a place of organic growth. 

I just know that I have to come at this a new way because repeating the same approach again and again while expecting a different outcome is insanity. This way starts with acceptance and letting go, and I guess we'll see where I go from there.