Changes (cont’d)
Someone asked me some weeks ago to reflect on why I am the way I am, or why our relationship is the way it is. I met her in Harlem in December 2016. I remember that night to this day. We met at our mutual friend Nathan Weinstein’s concert (Code 509) at the Shrine in Harlem. Our friend Ben Horn (well, theirs more than mine) was opening. Emilia and me were the only people there to really see the show, there might have been some other people there but really they were just at the Shrine hanging out.
We started talking and we got along really well. I got her number, and we never saw each other again. But me being who I am, I will pop in with my thoughts and musings to her, and we’ll catch up periodically.
((Quick aside: after the show we all went our separate ways. I think it was a Monday or Tuesday night in NYC, so they had work but I had nothing to do because I had no job (different life changing story). So I walked around Harlem and heard music outside of a bar that had music playing. I walked in, and it was like live karaoke with a full band with a backing vocals group and stuff. It was incredible, and I’ll never forget it. Classic NYC kind of thing.))
I spent the last two months thinking about what Emilia said to me, and this morning when I had some sort of realization, I of course texted her out of the blue and let her know. And surely enough her first response was, “You are so random lol.”
When you’re going through changes, things that are so engrained in who you are, your personality, and your coping mechanisms, you’re not just stopping something. You’re having an emotional response and reaction to it too. You’re not used to it and you’re naturally inclined to lean on something else because you’re so used to clutching at something when facing uncertainty, anxiety, and fear. I thought a lot over the last couple weeks over what exactly led me to develop bad habits and push away anything healthy or happy. I read a few things that stuck out to me.
“You need to understand that good people exist in this world, you included. Please, trust that not everyone is out to break your heart and hurt you. Not everyone has a hidden agenda. Your passion makes you feel the most incredible things, and when you push people away you deny them of the ability to experience just how deep and beautiful you are inside. People need to experience that, because you hold within you a love that changes lives. Your loyalty, your depth — it is otherworldly. Being on the positive side of that will truly open up the world for you.”
While talking to a friend this week, I realized that my bad habits probably started formulating or exacerbating right around the time I went through a breakup. This happened a decade ago. I loved someone so much and have never felt that before, and still haven’t. My response at 20 years old was to self-destruct whether consciously or not. I got over the person eventually but I still missed that feeling, and feel as though I’ve always been in search of that feeling again. I paid the price for it for a very long time, and Megan Hellerer would call that a HAYWALT (how are you walking around like that?!). Though what the path of self-destruction taught me (among tons of other life lessons) is that you forget how to find joy in the subtleties of life. You’ve seen and done so much that it’s almost like only the polar ends of things can make you feel anything. In all of my relationships, I feel as though I’ve spent a lot of time pushing away instead of allowing people to love me because I selfishly want to see who I can trust, because I’m scared of getting burned again. And then once I’ve figured out if I can trust someone, it’s like they’re a horcrux of mine or something and I’ll give my whole life to them for better and worse.
With changes and in search/pursuit of living a life that aligns with my moral compass, there is the clarity that comes with seeing who is truly your friend, and finding ways to make time for them. But more importantly yourself first.
“Your friend group changes when you get sober. The first thing that happens is your real friends emerge. All the people who loved you, who you were probably hurting when you were drinking, and who had disappeared and were infuriating you and fighting with you, it turns out they were fighting with you because they loved you and they were worried. My wife, Sue, my parents, the three band members in Phish, and my band members in my solo band, and a couple of friends from high school were right there. Ninety percent of the people I was hanging out with just vanished. Boom—they were gone. The party moved on.”
I think leaving NYC taught me who my real friends were and who I love having in my life. I’m grateful to have experienced that instead of learning the hard way by losing everyone first, and then having to get things back (though I did lose a lot when I was leaving/left NYC). Instead it more feels like I have support in changing, which only motivates me to want to be even better. So then it’s like, ok what else can I change? It’s like I have an addiction to quitting/changing right now. I’m not successful every day on some things, but I am making major progress.
Teasing out what’s behind patterns—especially when they’re your own—involves some personal investigation. Looking to the early relationships you saw in your family, whatever that family was, can reveal how you might relate to others now. “A lot of our core learning regarding how to navigate relating to others occurs in our families, what do we observe, how are needs communicated, how are needs met,” says Lopez. If expressing yourself as a child only led to disappointment or rejection, you might avoid communicating now because you don’t want those feelings again. If someone in your early life was manipulative and you learned to doubt them, it’s likely that you’ll doubt other people, too. “In other words, our initial models for engaging with each other can often lead to coping mechanisms, adaptive or maladaptive, that we use to engage with others in an attempt to avoid what we experienced with our initial models of engagement.”
Our responses to things develop over time, and we gravitate towards things that don’t make us feel that way if it was negative, whether it’s to avoid confrontation or whatever. What’s normal for you is not normal for me. However, I need to be a lot better about not projecting that to other people or letting it out on them. If anything, knowing what I know, I need to be much better about protecting people from experiencing that where possible. It took me 29 years to realize and actively do that. To feel comfortable in myself and be able to express myself to convey what I’m feeling or struggling with without jumping to a negative behavior or catastrophizing, though I still struggle a lot. A cousin of mine recently asked for a gambling tip because he was in a tough money spot. I told him I’d rather spot him the money and he can pay me back than for him to develop a habit because I have been there and would never want that for him. All things are solvable over time with a plan if you work at it. It took him 5 months to pay me back, but he did it.
Establish a regular “worry time”. Start by setting aside half an hour every day. Write down all your concerns in specific terms. For example: “I felt nauseated this morning. Do I have stomach cancer?” Assign a score on a scale of 0 to 100% to estimate how distressed this possibility makes you feel. Next, list all the possible explanations for your concern, then rank each one according to how likely it is to be correct. Make use of external sources if necessary, but stick with reputable websites and professionals. Finally, score your worry for the level of distress it is causing you now. Gradually, you will be able to reduce the amount and frequency of worry time.
Thinking more on what Emilia asked me, my anxieties or worries lead to impulsive behaviors. It’s almost like you’ll run to the next thing that’ll console you just to have some sort of belonging or community so you know you’re not alone in your rut. What happens with the self-destructive behaviors are that it’s like a major dopamine rush of its own. When you’re letting go of all of that, your brain has to adjust too because it’s not getting what it wants at the level it’s used to. Like if you’re addicted to cookies and you stop all of a sudden, it takes a bit to wane off and eventually eating an apple gives you the same feeling of excitement at a less of a rush.
That’s a lot for now, and I can obviously keep writing/talking for days. In short, unlearning how to be myself has been a lot to process and I feel pretty overwhelmed right now. And learning how to replace negative habits has been another thing I wasn’t entirely ready for. One day at a time, though!