While procrastinating doing research on the internet recently (instead of getting on with the millions of projects I have ongoing right now) I saw two affirmations that hit very close to home. I apologise that I don’t know who to credit for either of them.

“If you wait until you feel ‘better’ to start living, you might be waiting forever. Go live your life. Do it sad. Do it anxious. Do it uncertain. Because healing doesn’t always come before the experience. Sometimes, the experience is what heals you.”

and,

“If your art helped you survive something, it’s already a masterpiece.”

I feel like I’ve been living my life on “pause” for the past three years, with occasional bursts of intense energy keeping me moving forwards. It’s been frustrating and, often, downright depressing. I’ve had to focus on things I really didn’t want to focus on, or on things that failed to inspire me. I’ve had to spend time, energy and far too much money on putting things right that should never have been wrong in the first place. I’ve weathered it all with stubbornness and spite—yes, I’d love to say it was through gentleness, tenacity and strength of spirit, but honestly, it was my absolute rage that got me through most of it. That, and the invaluable support of my family and friends. And now I’m at a crossroads. I have healed. I have grown. I’ve fought my way to a much better place physically and emotionally. But some days I still feel like I’m on “pause.”

I know why, of course. Because while I am better, I don’t always feel better. I’m still often locked in that place where trauma has taught me to expect something terrible is just around the corner. That I should prepare myself for Bad Things because my neurospicy brain has decided to tell me it was my lack of preparedness that caused bad things to happen in the past. (This is rubbish, by the way, and logically I know it, but Brain Weasels are tricksy little buggers.) 

Recently, the Universe (or whatever you believe) has been nudging me in some interesting new directions. Projects and opportunities I wouldn’t have even considered as options to me have arisen. This is good. In fact, it’s excellent! It’s also scary. Those same Brain Weasels are telling me I will fail. That I don’t deserve any of it. That I am Doing Things Wrong. Excuse me one moment while I stuff that particular Weasel back in its box…

When I look back to the time when I felt like I couldn’t possibly survive, that nothing would ever get better, I can see just how far I’ve come. When I remember how I wanted to spend every day in bed and disassociate from real life, I also see the many tiny things I did that made me feel just a little bit connected and hopeful for a while. When the physical pain was at its worst and I was mainlining opiates just to stay functional, it gave me the most spectacular creative ideas. (One of those ended up being featured on the cover of a magazine. How cool is that?!) It was an awful, awful time, and I’d be doing myself a disservice to gloss over that or fail to acknowledge it. But it took me down, not out. It didn’t kill me, and it didn’t make me stronger (I hate that saying, by the way) but it made me think a little differently. To appreciate everything I still had, rather than focus on what I’d lost. 

In a moment of self-reflection while working on IFS therapy (Internal Family Systems. If you’re interested, you can find out more about that here) I wrote a list of all my achievements over the last three years. Some of those were “material” and career-focused. Many of them were more about emotional growth and who I am as a person. Those ones, I think, were more meaningful. 

And maybe I am still on “pause,” waiting to get better. Or maybe I’m just taking things a little slower and being mindful of how everything has purpose. Even if I don’t know what that purpose is yet. The experience is indeed healing me. Pause is only temporary. It’s a deep breath before the plunge.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer told us, “I’m cookie dough. I’m not done baking. I’m not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I’m gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day, I turn around and realise I’m ready.”

I’m not “done” either. I’m cookie dough. And I’ll always be cookie dough: never knowing what my final form will be but being totally okay with that. Sometimes I’m simply a random blob. Other times I’m more moulded into a recognisable shape. I don’t even think I’ll ever get baked; I can’t imagine how it would feel to become hard and stay fixed in one specific spot. Never changing or adding more ingredients. It doesn’t feel right, somehow. 

That second affirmation is particularly meaningful to me. “If your art helped you survive something, it’s already a masterpiece.” Because I realised that sometimes the “art” you create is yourself, and you are the masterpiece others will admire and remember. Not necessarily for what you did, but for who you are, and who you will continue to be. 

So whenever that Brain Weasel tells you, “you can’t,” remember that you have, you are, and you will. It might not seem like much, but it’s enough. As the poet Max Ehrmann wrote, almost one hundred years ago: “… be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

I like that. It comforts me. It makes me feel like although Bad Things can and will happen, Good Things can and will too. Rest, if you need to, but don’t quit. Oh, and up yours, Brain Weasels, I’ve still got many more masterpieces to make.