Letter 4: On giving too much to everyone but ourselves.
Rogue Humans is a weekly newsletter about how we show up in the world including the Brain Buffet, a roundup of relevant reads and watches for the week.
Reading: Smoke Gets in Our Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty (beyond fascinating and also sometimes hilarious!), To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (sci-fi British time travel fun)
Listening to: Some fun, dancey Roosevelt as the last warm days of summer roll out, The Japanese House as fall wanders in.
I have traveled more this year than I ever have in my entire life.
Houston (soon to be) three times!
France (soon to be) three times!
Norway!
Soon to be Boston!
I feel so incredibly lucky to do a thing I love, and even moreso, that what I’m doing is resonating. I have learned an immense amount from people all over the world. I have to pinch myself when I wake up in the morning.
When, just two years ago, my entire world was about to flip on its head and I couldn’t even see it in the rearview mirror coming at me at full speed.
When I look at old pictures of myself I look sad. I look thinner than what’s healthy for me.
Gaunt.
Almost…empty.
And you know what? I kinda was.
I wish I could hug my Old Self.
But I really, truly thought I was happy - I did! So when my marriage dissolved it was a total and complete shock to me.
And before it ended I gave everything.
I gave too much.
I gave more than was asked.
I gave when I was told there was no point, but I didn’t listen.
And in the end, there wasn’t much left of me.
While I absolutely wish it had happened under less painful circumstances, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Sometimes we resign ourselves to ideas of what happiness “should” look like. I didn’t know any other way or anything other than what I had in my life, in a town far from my beloved city, away from my friends, which I had agreed to.
I think I lost myself in who I thought needed to be for someone else instead of thinking about who I needed to be for ME.
Towards The End I was running about 20 miles a week (which I’m finally getting back into!) and didn’t eat enough and the weight just kept melting off, which was fine…until it was too much.
I think I thought it was the one thing I could control.
And when I was running all those miles every week I was running away from myself. It was the only place I felt calm and at home. It was my medicine, but I wasn’t filling myself back up with enough in every way, shape and form.
And that was BEFORE the divorce, where I lost another 10 pounds and couldn’t run anymore because I didn’t have the energy to do much of anything except exist.
Life was eating me alive…literally.
I lost myself.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rogue Humans - Let's Make Work Suck Less. to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.