My Life...My Rope...

Good evening everyone!

Well it is pretty late in the night, but I can't sleep.  I have had the focus of a blog rolling around in my head so I finally gave up trying to sleep and thought I would write instead.  Now let me first warn you that I probably have enough thoughts rattling around in my head to make up three separate blog post, so forgive me if I start to wonder off or ramble around.

So as a trained counselor I believe very highly in the power of visualization.  But I learned a LONG time ago just how powerful visualization can be to a person.  Imagine...you are a heavy person and you start working out, even though you probably haven't lost any weight in a week or two (or if you have it isn't really noticeable) people start making remarks that you look like you have lost weight.  That my friends is visualization.  It is so powerful that sometimes we outwardly can project those visualization and others notice it in us.  A skinny person eats a dozen donuts and is guilty and thinks they instantly gained ten pounds; suddenly people make mention of them looking they have gained weight.

I think I have always been a person with strong visualization abilities, it is also known as imagery.  Regardless of what you call it, I have been using it my entire life to navigate my way through life.  Sometimes this skill is subconsciously done and sometimes we do it on purpose.  Rehearsed a speech in the mirror, played out a conversation, interview, or confrontation in your head....all of this is the same concept.

Since I have been having "problems" I have realized that I have had lots of problems with imagery and visualization.  I haven't been able to do it.  I hate surprises and the unknown so when I plan on Sunday for the what the coming week will bring, I am visualization all the appointments we have, places to be, deadlines to meet, and anything else that could happen throughout the week.  That is why I never use to worry about today, because I was already a week ahead in my mind.  These days I can't imagine the next hour, much less, already planned the hour I am currently experiencing....hence intense panic and anxiety.

So what does all of this have to do with a rope?  I imagine that our life is a rope.  A rope can be small, thin, and extremely fragile, it can be long, skinny, and shiny, it can be thick, tough, and rough, and you get the idea.  But every person's life is a rope and it starts at birth, even conception as a very thin, fine, fragile, and almost microscopic thread.  Very easily breakable.  As we grow, as we experience life, emotions, traumas, tragedies, happiness, love, laughter, and sadness a new thread is added to our rope.  As we get older and experience life our rope grows thicker and stronger.  As adults our life rope (I like that concept name) is made up of hundreds and thousands of threads.  On its own a single thread can break very easily but our threads become entwined with each other and melded together into one strong rope.  Sometimes threads fray and become thin, some become ragged and break, and some grow thicker and stronger.

For the last year of my life I have slowly visualized my rope getting weaker and weaker, thinner and more fragile.  I see threads fraying and some might even have broken.  I feel as if I have no control and things are spiraling so fast I am loosing the grip and connection to my rope.  I fear what happens when there are only a few threads left holding my rope together.  If a rope breaks and all the threads snap is that death?  I can't let that happen.  I refuse to let that happen.  These thoughts and the things I have been going through has convinced me that somehow I have forgotten or lost many of the threads that have been my life.  At almost 38, I could imagine there are million of threads that have grown together to make up my rope.  Think of a memory from your childhood that you all the sudden remember and that memory makes you smile, cry, happy or sad; you are remembering a thread.  I think remembering those memories, those threads, remind us of who we are and reinforce a frayed thread.  So I think that is what I need to do.  Remember who I am.  I use to be proud of who I was and the fact that I saw myself as a strong, independent person.  Now I look in the mirror and see a weak, frightened, and terrified person hiding in the corner from life.  I am not even sure I look in the mirror anymore.



Some of you may view all of this as utter bullshit.  It doesn't matter how you view it.  It doesn't matter if the concept makes sense to you or not.  Some may think I am continuing to freefall off the deep end (heck I still feel like I am freefalling off a cliff) and some may think I am grasping at anything I can catch to break my fall.  I know that even though I feel okay at this moment, I also know that I am still freefalling downwards.  For tonight I am going to go to sleep dreaming that I am trying very hard to hold onto that rope and stop my freefall.  Tomorrow, the next day, or even next week I will worry that I may actually still be falling and the bottom is getting closer.  But right now I got a fingertip grip on the rope, which in my mind is progress.

Kim this week I am taking your advice and hitting the reset button. :)

Till later....
Becky