Seek
For example. I have a dear friend who to this day cannot look at pictures of her own wedding because the day was so traumatizing. She literally wept and vomited her way through it, she was that anxiety-ridden. It took all the stoicism I had not to tell her to RUN, that a wedding shouldn't be this traumatic.
But that was a few years ago, and she's happily married now. So, what do I know? In my mind, there's no way you should be violently weeping and throwing up because you're so anxious about spending your life with someone, yeah? But for her, it really was neuroticism and nerves.
So, how the hell can you tell? How do you learn to trust your gut when your gut is constantly lying to you? If the body keeps the score, what do you do when it seems to be throwing the scorecard?
Jade's perspective is this: You go with your gut... but if the thing you avoided keeps coming back around and won't let you rest, you accept the idea that on some level, you really do want that thing and you steel your nerves and plow through the fear.
I thought that was pretty good.
I 100% do NOT want to travel to Croatia on my own.
But even more than that, I don't want to get to the end of my time on Earth and think, "Why did I let a lack of traveling companions stop me from exploring the world?"
I see travel as a political act. It is saying with your life, "My place is not the best place just because people like me live there. I have a lot of things to learn from you and your place. Teach me, please."
As you know from previous blogs, 42 has always been the year during which I was going to shake up my life. Jared thinks this is stupid, but no one asked his opinion.* Some people are born adventurous and ready to take risks. And some people (like me), only take risks when it becomes more uncomfortable to remain curled into a tight bud than it does to burst out and grow.
Someone told me once that you build self-confidence when you make promises to yourself and keep them. I promised myself that if my life didn't look like I thought it would or like I wanted it to by the time I was 42, I was going to start doing drastic things.
So far this year, I have:
1.) Quit a tenured teaching position to take a one-year-only job on the off-chance it would allow me to permanently teach high school. This blew up spectacularly in my face. But I still tried it.
2.) Taken on a position as a yoga instructor despite clear evidence that I do not have the balance to guide anyone in the ways of balance. But I persist.
3.) And now, I've used all 200,000 of my credit card points to book a SOLO vacation to Europe, despite my last solo vacation (to Turks & Caicos) being a complete bust. Apparently, having a car makes a big difference because then you're not just trapped on a beach somewhere, staring at waves and rethinking all your life choices while couples frolic in the surf around you.
There are a number of things I find terrifying about spending 2+ weeks alone in Eastern Europe.
First of all, I literally get lost inside of restaurants and garden supply stores. My entire family knows that if they want me to make it somewhere, one of them needs to either drive in the car with me or plan on me being an hour late, after 5 wrong turns. And yet I am allegedly going to make my way from Dubrovnik up to Zagreb in a car, by myself. So again, hard to say what is fear and paranoia and what is legitimate concern about my known limitations.
Second of all, I am extremely trusting. When Lucy and I went to Maine a few summers ago, I found us some kind of online coupon code for our AirBnb. I told Lucy to read me my credit card number and then started typing it in before she had the presence of mind to say, "Wait. How much do you know about this website?"
"What's to know?" I said breezily, sipping my cabernet. "They're giving us a discount! And look at how many 5-star reviews they have! It looks great!"
"No. Just hold on. Look up their reviews on a third-party site first, please."
"Fine." *types in Better Business Bureau website* "HOLY SHIT!!!!! They have like 1 star and over 300 complaints!!!!!!! Who even knew!?!?!?!"
"That's exactly why you don't just go handing your credit card out to people and websites at random!!!!"
So, to that point, just because Croatia is a safe country does not mean that an unsafe and trusting individual will be all right there.
Dr. Bev -- a badass in my yoga teacher training program last summer -- at one point was offered this spectacular job in another state and turned it down. But months later, while we were still in training, she told me that I inspired her to go back to them and take the job. I found this absolutely mind-boggling. I have never inspired anyone to be brave. And here is one of the most brilliant women I know telling me that watching me take a one-year teaching position gave her the push she needed to be brave, too.**
I thought about how terrified I am. I thought about my neighbor -- whom I can only handle in very, very small doses -- begging me to take her along. And then I talked to Therapy Elsa.
"You are going to be extremely uncomfortable either way," she said sagely. "You'll be anxious while you're there because there are so many unknowns and so much uncertainty. But if you cancel, you'll be anxious then, too, because you will not be doing something that you've told me gives your life meaning."
I thought about 3 girls:
* Lemon, age 5
* Lula, age 1 1/2
and
* Marian, age 18
And I thought to myself, what kind of woman do I want each of them to be? Someone too afraid of the unknown to take risks? Or someone who -- admittedly -- struggles deeply with anxiety but refuses to be permanently knocked out by it? I want to be the woman each of them can look at someday and say, "I can do this because Elle did and she showed me the way."
That's why I've spent the last hour watching the clock tick down until the 24-hour "buyer's remorse" window expires with Air Canada and I can no longer cancel my tickets. I've spent it writing this blog instead.
"I think you should do it," Dr. Bev said during her most recent visit. "What's the worst thing that could happen?"
"I could get nabbed and sold into a human trafficking ring."
So. At least I've thought of everything.
* It's like 1% possible that someone asked his opinion.
** This backfired for me though because when she left, there was an opening for a yoga instructor at our studio, and so now I have to get comfortable with discomfort on a weekly basis to teach the class.
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