Sometimes it takes days, weeks, or months to see you’re beyond your limits. Sometimes it takes just as long to realize you’ve made a mistake.
You learn about work-life balance. You realize the hours you work are isolating. You feel regularly taken advantage of. And you find it difficult, with everything else going on, to look for a way out.
You’ve been at the first job you could find in a new city for over a year now. You worked at a different branch for four years before that. You spend the precious little time away from work in therapy and spiritual direction. Your mind is reeling with class struggle rhetoric, without the will to push anything forward. It felt better when you didn’t realized you were trapped.
A large part of your savings was spent on a summer seminar your wife really wanted to go to. It would look good on a CV. It was a good investment. But now, due to a filing mistake, it’s not covered by the university. That money you floated together, you’ll never get back. And you’ve lost your money you can use to leave. Your conversations with the Divine feel like screaming at a wall. You go to sleep with a pain in your neck that should have left a long time ago.
Some days are better than others.
You’ve only done one or two sessions on embodiment, but you’ve found some things you’d like to try. You practice breathing the way they taught you, listening to the complaints of your body as you go about your day. You find a home within your own body again, and walk taller than you ever have.
Some days are worse than others.
You realize the way you apply to jobs is panic-driven. You sense anger blooming from you each time your voice can be heard. It’s been a year, and nothing. You wonder if you’re too jaded to find work elsewhere, too used to a system that makes you feel discarded.
Again, you use what little time you have to leave the house. You notice a pattern you can reimagine. Diving into observation of yourself has given you strength to find another perspective. You acknowledge what you have learned. You acknowledge where you excel. You find jobs and fill out online forms like you’re breathing in, allowing the hope to nurture all you do. Find something you like about the position. The exhale is leaping forward. You make yourself presentable and leave the house.
You find a home within your own body again, and walk taller than you ever have.
You put a face to the application. You stop feeling like you’re selling yourself. You assume the employer will benefit from you as well. You no longer think of yourself as a taker. Spiritual direction highlights and seeks to further a connection again. You feel it as you walk through the halls of your place of work. You feel it now when you’re about to give up.
And nothing happens. You sit, in a place of hope and desperation, for months. You are so close to the edge that you can’t sleep well. At night you realize you could be doing more. You stay awake, in bed, weighing whether or not it’s a good idea to wait until the morning before you enact a new plan. You never feel like you’re going to get out. But you know that, when you do, it’s going to impact what you’re able to bring into your marriage, your friendships, and your relationship with yourself. Still, you feel like a child. Your therapist calls you an adult. Apparently, working a job you hate is a very adult thing to do. Does that make you feel better? Your wife says that people who see what the world can be take the unfairness of it that much harder.
You take a phone interview in a bathroom at a friend’s house. The cat tries to get in to use the litter box while you talk. You’ve had better starts. But you breath. You remember that you’ve been preparing for this. Your body is not against you. You pace and you quietly stretch. When you speak, you don’t sound broken. You hear optimism in your voice. You hear the optimism returned. You can’t feel your neck hurting. Sometimes, things get better.
You have the power to feel at home in your own body. Learn more here.
September 17, 2019 | Denver, Colorado
#spirituality #bodytheology #spiritual direction #spiritual advice