Alcohol

In one of my favorite episodes of How I Met Your Mother, the gang discusses the steps it takes to become a New Yorker:  1) See Woody Allen, 2) Steal a cab from someone who needs it more than you, 3) Cry on the Subway and not given a damn what anyone thinks, 4)Kill a cockroach with your bare hand

Except for the cockroach (I used a shoe...) and Woody Allen (does Kate Winslet count?), I'd consider myself a half New Yorker, after 5 serious years here. The revelation hit me around 2:30am on a late night local A train. As I sat in the flickering darkness, I let the tears stream down my face without a single care what anybody on the train thought of me. I was sad and I didn't care how crazy/depressed/suicidal I looked to my other straphangers. It was 2 in the morning! Leave me alone! And so, I stewed in my melancholy for 16 agonizing local stops. As soon as I crested the stairs into the cool night air, I quickly opened YouTube. I needed to hear "I'm Not That Girl" from Wicked (Granted, I never saw the show, but I know that song...). It would justify my tears. 

After two more replays, a thought penetrated the boozy thickness of my mind: Cruella has a megaphone. And it's alcohol. 

Long gone are the joyous days when I could drink gallons of rum and coke and end up dancing the night away or laughing my head off. Now, alcohol makes all of the nastiest Cruella thoughts echo inside the deepest recesses of my mind. These thoughts increase and magnify into deafening, spiteful comments that torpedo through the boozey haze and straight into my heart. And I become sad.

I don't want to blame alcohol. I'm sure that's not its fault and if it knew what it was doing to me, it'd be truly sorry. Doesn't change how alcohol affects me now. It doesn't matter the occasion I may be celebrating or trying to forget, drinking makes me sad. I may appear happy and seem to be enjoying myself, but as soon as the bar lights dim, I am sad. The darkness after the party is when Cruella is the loudest. She screams all my insecurities and imperfections so loudly I can't help but focus on them. My boozy brain can't seem to focus on the light, fun spirit in which the alcohol was imbibed. My brain becomes a hazy, spiraling pile of self-hatred. And I fester. And festering leads to continued sadness.

I don't want to be sad. I've spent a lot of time these past few months being extremely sad, and that is not some place in which I want to continue existing. I've tried distractions: helping others, aerial yoga, dramatic life changes, Teen Wolf, but nothing seems to work. Nothing except cupcakes.... And the rational side of my brain knows that is wrong. Those cupcakes aren't really soothing anything or making anything in my life better. But they quiet Cruella. And right now, I'll take the quiet over the roar of melancholy.

So, I'm breaking up with alcohol. I don't need it. What I need to do is work past the sadness and find the light again.

Finding Balance

I wrote the majority of this blog post back at the end of March. I was still coming down off my crazy half marathon experience. It was such an incredible accomplishment for me. I had done something I never thought I could do. 

The reason this blog never got up was because shortly after the editing phase, I lost my grandmother. There was no way I was going to find balance for a long time. 

So, here is what I wrote in March 2013. 

My life tends to resemble a pendulum swinging. I have polar opposite experiences, and very little time in the middle. I need balance. And I'm not just talking about nailing a half moon yoga pose (although, that would be nice too...) I'm talking about how, in my life, I tend to swing from a state of overactivity to a completely useless lump of inactivity. For example: I completed a half marathon... A MONTH AGO. What have I accomplished since then? Hmmm... A relatively easy work load, a lot of sleeping/laying in bed, and almost the complete first season of Pretty Little Liars. (As of now, I am completely caught up on Pretty Little Liars, Nashville, and now I'm burning my way through Teen Wolf.) Such wonderful achievements! I hope they hand out medals for hours logged on Netflix, because I sure would be in the running!

Running... Hmm. What a novel idea. Nope, I'd rather lay in bed! (The month of March =) After weeks of spending most of my free time either in bed or a bar, I'm trying to snap out of it. I understand needing periods of rest. I get it. And I can be bad at it. But a whole month of inactivity? A whole month of the complete opposite of a runner's high? That's too much. And unnecessary.

So, that brings me to the point of this post. Balance, I need to find the middle ground. I tend to be an intense, passionate, and driven person. Half of the time. The other half, I'm lazy, melancholy and jealous of what everyone else has. Now, I'm sure I'm not that far off from normal, but I don't want to always live in the extremes. And since I started this journey, I've begun some serious introspection. The first step is identifying the problem, right? So, where do I go from here?

Here's an idea, Ms. All-Or-Nothing: Baby steps. Baby steps are boring, you say? Well, try challenging yourself to maintain them. Make them a status quo. Now there's a challenge! Consistency and balance need to become part of my everyday life. I'm still working on the "how," but I definitely challenge myself to throw all my energy at finding a way to maintain a middle ground. Sounds counterintuitive, right? Maybe. But for someone who views things in a black and white, feast or famine, it's a challenge. And nothing gets me going like a challenge. To find a way to exist. A way to live differently.  Challenge accepted!

...... So.... To recap. I'm still looking for balance. Haha. I haven't been very good about focusing on this challenge, but instead as a way of dealing with the loss of my Grammy, I threw myself head first into a crazy, passionate, stressful consuming project: Raising $5,300 for a charity and running a second half marathon. 

The only difference between the Jes in March and the Jes over the past 4 months is that she's doing both: working stupid hard to accomplish her project, training for a half marathon AND spending ever spare moment moping in bed watching trashy tv. No wonder I feel tired all the time! For the past 4 months, I've actively been avoiding a place of stillness (without escaping. Because I don't know about you, but I watch tv pretty still, bit the zany story lines help me shut off my wandering brain). So, I've caught up on Pretty Little Liars, Grey's Anatomy, Nashville, AND (almost) Teen Wolf. Not to mention trips to visit family and friends, working mostly full time, moving out of my apartment, fundraising for a charity, attending fundraising events AND training for a half marathon. Can I go back to bed please? 

Is my idea of balance existing in both of those states (stressed out overactivity to a completely useless lump of inactivity)? Let me tell you that it is not the kind of balance I was expecting! For all the yoga I do, I imagine balance to be a serene stillness where everything and nothing exists at the same time. Time is infinite and there is minimal stress. HA! 

I need THAT kind of balance. Serenity. Stillness. Low stress?! I've lost some hope that I'll actually achieve a state of balance since it seems to go against every fiber of my being. Maybe my balance is continuing to hold on to the pendulum. The balance exists in not falling off and not losing sight of who I am. My mind replies that maybe balance isn't all it's cracked up to be? Pendulums are never boring! 

Or maybe finding the balance is part of letting go of the parts of my self that no longer serve me. Maybe my balance is really learning when to hold on, and when to let go. What's your balance?