One of the things I wanted to accomplish in my recent, two year, personal makeover was simply to get off my couch. This, as I have stated before took me months. I liked my couch. It was safe and comfortable and everything I needed was steps away. There wasn’t anything I needed to do on that couch. There wasn’t anything that I had to do on that couch; I sat and was perfectly happy with watching the world pass me by. But despite the fact that I lived on my own couch for years, there came a time when I sat looking out the window and realized that I had to actually get off that couch. I had to rejoin the living after years of playing dead.

If you have read anything I wrote recently you know the struggles then and now this caused. The almost breathtaking fear of trying to find my way into this world. The setbacks. The curves in the road and the walls that I had to build in order to succeed in any meaningful way. I think that I am the kind of person who when she decides that something needs to change, especially within me, I don’t do it half-way. I am an all-in kind of person. I don’t just get off my couch, I go hours away (this took years and many, many failed attempts). I don’t just decide that getting off the couch is enough. I have to do everything that I can to not go back on that couch.

That is the crux of what I am dealing with now; the fall out that comes from radically changing not your life so much as how you approach that life. Being an all-in girl, I cannot go backwards. I cannot allow myself a quarter of the feelings that brought me to that couch in the first place. I have to build walls on the vulnerabilities and insecurities that put me on that couch, and make sure they don’t touch any part of the life I am trying to build. Of course I can accept setbacks, those are a part of the journey, but my response probably isn’t healthy. Those walls that I have built are reinforced by setbacks and disappointments. The setbacks and disappointments become code reds that I know I could easily succumb to and allow them to lead me back to that couch or I could fight them by destroying my own expectations and transform myself into something that is different.

But like I said, there is a fall out. For instance, you can’t actually decide to knock down walls, at least not easily, that you build to protect yourself. You can’t actually allow yourself respite because you see that as a weakness. You can’t allow yourself not to check every box on that list, every single day, because to do so means that you were on that couch, either figuratively or literally. You have to fight against the fear of going back to that couch. You have to fight against the weariness that seeps into every facet of your life. You have to fight the knowledge that it is possible that you have taken this all too far, because taking one step backwards is simply not allowed. The fear, the instant fear, is to great. There was fear of getting off that couch and now there is fear of getting back on.

Maybe it is the mental illness, or the medications, or the personal philosophy I have and live by that drives this. I can sit here and I hope adequately spell out what I am going through; I can even acknowledge the fear. But I can’t walk backwards and give myself the simple break, the simple day off, the simple compassion that we all deserve. Even the compassion that we need to give to ourselves.

I have built walls so high; and what is left while not what I thought it would be, is exactly what it is.

The other day, my bank card was hacked/stolen – something happened to it, and people I don’t know decided to send Doordash meals to a number of addresses. Luckily, I had set alerts on Doordash, I knew it by the next morning (the orders were made in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping, not eating $70 meals from some restaurant I have never heard of). I saw the alerts, realized that there was no way I ordered several meals in the middle of the night, and spent the next four hours calling my bank, Doordash, pulling up my credit reports, and basically working feverishly to try and stop any other charges from coming. It is Christmas and people want to buy presents using money from other people’s accounts; I couldn’t let that stop my own Christmas.

As I said, this took hours. The banks, Doordash, the other places I called were so helpful; they refunded my money and they disabled any way for the thief to make my financial life more painful. But after I was finally able to take a breath, I realized that I was incredibly, out of control angry. I wasn’t angry at the thief. I wasn’t angry at the institutions that helped me so kindly. I was irrationally angry at myself. I was in tears with the anger building inside of me, out of my control.

You see, those lists I have, are as real as I am. I have lists of the things that I must do each day. They include meditating, learning something new or completing a puzzle, cleaning, running errands; you get the idea. It is a list of tasks that keeps me off the couch. But because I had to rightly protect my family from this thief, I wasn’t able to complete or even start my list. And the anger I felt that I could not, and did not do what I was supposed to, despite doing something that was required for my family’s health, overtook me. I don’t know the last time I felt that angry. The walls I have built don’t allow for spontaneous, if necessary detours. The walls I have built to keep myself on a very narrow path don’t allow for time to deal with a threat. The walls I have built don’t allow for any type of deviation. There is a path I have created to follow to keep myself above the water I am currently living/drowning in and that is as simple as it can be.

The other thing I have found recently that those walls don’t allow, is any true emotion. I can hurt inside of myself, but I can’t allow myself to consciously feel it. I can be sad, or happy, or excited, but it now has to be tempered. The big emotions of my mental illness are there, but they must be kept private.

I realized this when I finally broke. And I broke hard. I cried so hard and so long, I literally made myself sick. It was a release, I have come to realize. It was a valve turning so that I could keep walking down this path I have created, and complete those tasks on that list. I have, since that day I broke, continued to cry, although as privately as I am able. Whenever those emotions get so big, that all I can do is feel, it now comes out as tears. Where once it might have come out as laughter, or a simple sadness, or even a quiet reflection, these days any emotions bigger than a smile cause me to simply cry. And if you live in this life, you know, there are a lot of emotions and for me, that means there are a lot of things to cry about. My teenager being a teenager…tears. A person I thought was a friend, not being able to be a friend…tears. Fear of not doing my best today…lots of tears.

It might seem obvious to anyone, but for me, I am just starting to realize that this new path I have created to get off that couch, and be for all those I love more than what I once was, might not be exactly healthy. It seems I have exchanged the safety of that couch and my ability to not confront any of life, to being in it and not know how to deal with it. Emotions are a currency I have studied for years, but this last month has been a revelation.

I didn’t know I was that great of a builder. I didn’t know that if you build a wall to protect yourself, your own self will find a way to act out despite it. I didn’t know that by becoming this new person, a person I can’t abandon to sit back on that couch, meant that I was going to be a person who wouldn’t be able to handle anything that wasn’t on a list in my head of approved tasks. I have built a strong wall and there isn’t a part of me, despite knowing that I am not being healthy, that wants to actually break it down. Because what is a couple of tears, and a couple of hours of self-hatred, when you completed your list for the day? Am I going to have to confront this? Probably. But today, I need to get back to my list.