Who needs drugs when you have real estate?

Not me, it turns out

Hello, friends! I’m not usually in your inboxes on a Saturday, but it’s been a crazy week in a historically crazy time. And the wonderful

Mike Sowden

(whose newsletter you should be reading, by the way) instructed me years ago that no one cares if I publish on schedule every week. It’s more important that the work be good.

This week, I decided to listen to that wisdom. Thank you, Mike.

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It’s the first day of early voting in New York State. My son and I got there fairly close to the polls opening and it was hopping! This was Otto’s first federal election as a voter, and it was like they knew, putting a cute, little frog on the “I Voted” sticker just for him.

Back in the day, we used to talk about having an “addictive personality.” Does anyone use that sort of language anymore?

I’ve been thinking about it because, about a year ago, I finally laid down many of my most destructive habits. I quit drinking. I quit smoking cigarettes and marijuana. Quitting was both easier than I would have imagined and also harder. Easier, because I was finally ready to be fully emotionally present for my life, having been recently provided with evidence of what the alternative could look like. Harder, because then I had to be fully emotionally present for my life.

It turns out that not running away from yourself will change your life for the better. After you wade through the swamp of shitty feelings you’ve been carefully avoiding for so long, of course. The poster for clean emotional living conveniently leaves that part out. Still, I don’t regret wading in, even when there’ve been rough moments. Like kneeling alone on the bathroom floor, vomiting up grief and loneliness moments.

Slogging along, I’ve been learning to lean into connection. That it’s okay to ask for help and company when things get mucky and dark. I’m incredibly lucky, it turns out. I have the sort of dear ones that show up even when things are heavy and hard. I have the fortitude to show up for myself through all my swampy feelings, too, without being lost in them forever.

Memes circulate out there that insist “No feeling is final”, which is true, luckily. But it sure feels like they are sometimes. Coming out on the other side is like crawling out of quicksand, and the relief is just as enormous. Every damn time.

Despite all this learning and transformation, though, it’s recently been brought to my attention that I’m still me. I still shy away from big feelings. I still reflexively reach for things outside myself as if they can somehow magically erase my discomfort. I still keep hoping, deep down, that there’s a remedy for me and my life.

This is a cabin on fourteen beautiful wooded acres that I’ve had my eye on for five or six years. It’s finally up for sale and my mom and I are collaborating on a purchase. This will be the realization of an enduring dream of mine and an investment in the next phase of my life, sans live-in children, assuming our offer is accepted.

After Mom and I had agreed it was worth pursuing, though, I found myself up in the night, fixated and obsessive, my thoughts endlessly looping. My breath was fast and shallow, like a rabbit’s caught in a net.

At first, two voices were vying to capture my attention as I lay there, spinning. The Expansion Gremlin sat on one side of me, insisting emphatically, This will be perfect! You’ll find the money! Do all the projects! You’ll be HAPPY! Look at you, manifesting your dreams!

Meanwhile, the Contraction Gremlin eyed me side-long, demanding, Where will the money come from, exactly? How will you do all those projects alone? What about your kids and your mom? How does this take care of them? Isn’t this all just a little selfish?

Then, finally, a third voice waded into the fray and whispered, I know this speedy, trapped feeling and this desire to do anything to get away from it. What are you running from?

Oof.

Honestly? My kids are leaving soon. I’m unpartnered. What could feel like impending freedom feels untethered, unknown, and deeply uncomfortable. I want to know what will happen, to feel some control. To distract myself with an enormous, all-consuming project.

Oof, again.

It was tempting to call it all off in the face of this realization. To hang my head in shame that I still stumble into this particular emotional rut so easily. But giving into that impulse requires believing there’s some future in which I’m not me, where everything I do is completely emotionally clean and unfettered by uncomfortable feelings. I don’t believe that. I don’t want that life.

Instead, I want to be everything I am and believe I’m worthy of mercy, regardless of whatever emotional tumult grips me. I want to accompany myself wherever life takes me with some rueful tenderness. And I want a place where I can be surrounded with more trees than people. Where I can be profoundly quiet and get some peace. I get to want that.

So, what to do?

Breathe, first of all. There’s nothing like a willful plan to stop my breath entirely. Next, let go of the outcome. Imagine not buying this property with my mom and that being okay. Remember that even if we buy it, it will not fix me or make me someone else. I will still be me, just in the woods, and that’s okay because there’s nothing wrong with me. Even when I fall into old emotional habits, and get a little jacked up.

Finally, get honest with myself and Mom about what purchasing this property would realistically mean for the next 3-5 years until my youngest is done with college and living at home— what I can reasonably handle financially, what I will need to do to make the property habitable (considering that it currently has no working plumbing or power) and finally, what help I’m asking for and will continue to have to ask for, from her and others, to deal with all those contingencies.

I can’t manifest my dreams by myself. I never have, not once.

I don’t know what will happen with this cabin purchase. If it is the “right” thing, the next thing, or ultimately will come to nothing, in the end. I don’t know what my life will look like in five or ten years, any more than I knew what my life would look like now five or ten years ago.

What I do know: If I keep myself loving company no matter what happens, I’ll be okay. Help is available if I ask for it. Being fully emotionally present for my life is worth what it requires of me. And there is no remedy necessary for a rich, complicated life.

What do you know and not know?

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Vote as if your life depends on it because it does. Please and thank you.