I'm just fine, but I'm struggling

Since I was laid off over a month ago, concerned friends have asked me with puppy dog eyes, "How are you DOING?" And I always reply that I'm just fine. And I am, really. Layoffs happen. I didn't take it personally. I'd been at that company for a long time and was, honestly, probably ready to move on anyway, so I took the shove out the door as a nudge to try something new!

And we're okay financially, so that's not much of a worry. I have severance for like another week and then unemployment. We're doing okay for now.

So I've been using this time to build up my side businesses (we still can't afford for me to be full time freelance - at least not for a few years while I build up my client base) and just apply for jobs that look interesting and I've had a few interviews. I really do feel confident that I'll find something I like and that I'm on the right path, career-wise.

The other question they ask, since I got back from my honeymoon less than a week before the layoff, is, "How's married life?" And I reply that the only big change is that I'm not working anymore, so I feel like a goddamn housewife, something I'd never planned to be nor am I particularly good at.

Laughing out loud.

So I'm fine, I guess. I'm just fine.

Only I've been struggling too. I think I finally nailed why, which helps, but for the last month, I've been a bit of a live wire. I'm cranky, I'm sensitive, I struggle to fall asleep. I've felt immense pressure to be BUSY, to be as busy as I was when I was working, as if that were sustainable any way. Everyone told me to enjoy this time off while I can, and they're right, but that doesn't mean that 38 years of capitalistic social conditioning isn't worming its way into my head, telling me I should be productive.

So there's that.

And I know I'm not getting enough exercise anymore. Not that I'm worried about getting fatter, but physical activity both creates endorphins and (surprise!) makes you tired! I've been a lifelong insomniac, but that battle is always easier when I've been moving a lot. And in the job, I moved A LOT. Maybe I didn't make it to the fucking gym, but I had a minimum of 20 thousand steps a day and that's not even during busy times. I was always on the go. Now, that's not necessarily a good thing, as I was with a chiropractor and physical therapist to recover from the job, but I haven't exactly found regular and healthy replacement for all that movement I was doing before.

But mostly, I think the problem comes down to two things: I'm lonely and being alone in my head all day is a scary place to be.

First: general loneliness. I'm a social introvert, meaning that I like people and I like socializing, but I require alone time to recharge. Because I socialized so much at work, I was never all that social in my free time, so being laid off was fun for like a week. Then I started craving the social contact. And, yes, I've been doing as many lunches and happy hours as I possibly can to soak up my friends that I so very miss seeing every day, but it so doesn't feel like enough.

I feel like I need someone to talk to all day. I need people to bounce ideas off of, to bitch to about life, to laugh with! I forgot, in all my need for aloneness, that I actually really like being around people. I miss the people!

And maybe I also miss the distraction, the distraction from myself.

Turns out, alone with my thoughts takes me to some dark places I hadn't visited for years, places I'd visited in therapy many times, places I thought I was over! But alas, here I am, overthinking my identity and issues. I think my therapist would tell me to lean into it, to sit with my thoughts (and I see her tomorrow, so that should be a fun appointment), but sitting with them scares me.

I don't think I have to call myself depressed per se yet. I honestly think that I'm doing okay on that front, but, having suffered depression before (see this old post), the idea of falling back into it scares me. So I've been avoiding! Avoidance is self care, right? (Don't answer that)

The irony is that I'm the first person to scream about leaning into your feelings and to not pretend to be happy and that the positivity movement is bullshit. I believe in being mad or sad or happy or whatever when you feel those things, but trauma is different, PTSD is different. It's not healthy anger and sadness. Trauma lies to you. It confuses you. It pulls out your fears and tells you they're the only real thing.

And since my first 32 years of life were mostly trauma (especially the first 20), you can see why it can be a struggle. Which is why I'm scared to go there, to sit alone with the lies and not be able to discern what's real.  I don't want to get sucked back down into the mire of my trauma, especially when it's not like I haven't done the work. I KNOW it will be lifelong. I KNOW I will always have to work on this, but I'm no stranger to mental health care. I've worked through so much of this that I am exhausted with living with it. At some point, some healthy compartmentalization is necessary to survive.

Again, my therapist is gonna love all this.

But I think I found a little nugget of truth in the darkness.

I'll back up. Most of you know I'm adopted. I was also abused by my adoptive mother.

Well, I guess it was last week, I was having a discussion with a dear friend about adoption and I found myself telling her something I had barely told anyone (least of all myself, which is a testament to how much I love and trust this friend): I told her that I felt unmoored, rootless. I feel like I don't have ancestry or heritage. At the time, the shocking truth of those words suddenly real and out in the world, made me really sad, really triggered me. (Again, Laura love, don't feel badly; this came as a surprise to me too.)

Yet, I think all this is a good thing as, since then, it's maybe led me to do some more digging on my adoption and to actually sit with the darkness a little.

See, my adoptive identity is fraught with pain, not just because just about every adoptive child struggles with identity and abandonment, but precisely because my adoptive mother abused me and part of that abuse was manipulating my adoptive identity to control me.

When I wasn't behaving in the exact way she wanted (and keep in mind, my mother is a narcissist, so unacceptable behavior was often not logical.), she would often threaten to send me back to the state. Imagine how confusing for an adopted child, who didn't totally understand why her biological parents gave her up, who was so afraid of abandonment, whose home was abusive, to be told that if she wasn't perfect, she'd be abandoned again.

I craved love and home so badly and it was used as a carrot to control me. It created an environment that was both incredibly scary, but the most preferable place to me over that boogeyman, the state. It also created a situation in which my abusive mom was again in control and officials were the bad guys. I would never tell anyone of my abuse, because I didn't want to be taken away. My home, full of fear and pain, was all I wanted. And none of it is my fault, of course. I place the blame were it properly lies: at my mother's feet, regardless of how, as a true narcissist, she doesn't realize how horrible she was to me. But, it's still my trauma to navigate.

Yes, I feel rootless. And I think it's not just because I'm adopted, not just because I don't know my genetics or my heritage or my medical history or any one single person that I'm genetically related to (all valid reasons, tbh), but because my mother never let me truly grow roots in my family. I love my dad and I love my cousins (who are like sisters) and my aunts, but true roots would never have grown, because the ground of my childhood home was too shaky. It was never a reliable or solid place to grow.

And so maybe part of why it's so hard to be alone all day is because being left alone was a fear cultivated in me from day one.

It all comes back around, doesn't it?

So what's next? More therapy, for one, and I think I want to work on developing trust in the roots I do have, the small little family I have with my new husband and our cats, the family I do have with my sister cousins and the large chosen family of friends I've built over the years. And maybe it's time to do some more digging on my biological family. I don't expect them to be family, but I'd like answers on where I came from and what their story is.

There's something to be said for sitting alone with yourself. I just have to learn how to do that.