When I have a lot to process, I shut down.
When I was at training camp processing TONS of new things I began to shut down. Not because the staff members, my squamates and teammates are bad or mean people, they’re wonderful people, but because I was taking in so much in a short period of time. I was meeting new people, eating new foods, learning new things, being broken down, being built up, being tested to see who I worked well with and didn’t work well with. I was being examined, watched and taught 100% of the time.
When I arrived home, I didn’t understand what world I was suppose to be living in… It was as if I was now living a double life. I felt like one life the people at home could’t understand and one life the people on my squad could’t understand.
I began struggling to understand myself; where I fit in.
I mindlessly began to process…
The people at home, I’m about to leave them. They’re going to go on with their lives and when I come back it’s going to be an entirely new world to me. I’m not going to be up to date on the “what’s happening,” heck I lost touch simply not being home for a few weeks. People are going to change, their lives are going to progress and I am not going to be apart of it any more. I may even be forgotten. But to them, it’s not going to seem like much has changed at all. When I arrive home after the World Race they may even expect me to slip right into the “natural rhythm of life at home,” but it won’t be a natural rhythm to me. It will be a whole new world.
It felt like a whole new world, arriving home after training camp. Except one where every time I went somewhere people wanted to understand my “training camp world” by asking me questions about life there. Questions I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t know how to answer them. Questions I didn’t have answers to because I had not had time to process life with my squad. I began to feel unworthy of going on the World Race because if I couldn’t answer these simple questions, if I couldn’t keep people informed and process “simple emotions” while I’m at home and “comfortable”, how am I going to keep in contact, keep everyone up to date and write decent blogs while I’m gone?
For weeks I continued to feel unworthy.
To be honest I still feel unworthy.
But I’ve learned a few things since I’ve been home.
I’ve learned there is comfort in community.
Comfort like I’ve never experienced before.
Comfort is found in the most unexpected places and sometimes from the most unexpected people.
The first time I was shown unexpected support and comfort by one of my friends occurred while I was at a cookout I honestly didn’t whole-heartedly want to be attend. I went because I knew I had secluded myself for long enough and I wouldn’t have much longer to see everyone. During the evening I was in conversation and this friend was listening in from nearby. I was asked what things I still needed for my trip and how much money I still needed to raise. I mindlessly listed off a few items, feeling guilty for not being prepared and ready to go yet. At that moment my friend who was listening piped in saying she had a sarong, one of the items I had listed, and she would be willing to let me have it. She did not hesitate in getting the sarong to me, the next morning she came to where I was playing soccer to drop it off and watch for a while.
How selfless of her and how selfish of me. I had not wanted to go to the cookout, yet she went out of her way to bring me the sarong. I was too overwhelmed and was going to go without a towel for the trip because I no longer wanted to stress over little items and she gave me something she had bought for herself while on a vacation, something to remember the vacation forever. She didn’t have to listen to the conversation I was having, she didn’t have to pipe in and offer her sarong to me, she didn’t have to drive, meet me where I was and give it to me, but she did.
With a to do list that feels never ending, giving me the sarong took a tremendous amount of stress off my shoulders. Not only did my stress level decrease, but she reminded me there is comfort in community. There are people who want to help, people who will go out of their way, but they can’t do what brings them joy if I am unwilling to meet them half way; if I am unwilling to show up and be open with them.
I’ve learned I have to at least be open with people in order for them to be able to be comforting; in order for us to live in the manner community was designed to work.
I can’t shut down and try to control my emotions and the world around me.
Sometimes, being open – sharing your struggles, needs, wants, doubts, etc. – allows others to speak truth into your life and love you in a manner they otherwise would not have been able to do.
I’ve learned when I don’t understand how I’m feeling, why I feel that way I do or when there is “too much” to process I control life by entering into an “emotional dead zone.” I go through a phase of life where I should be feeling quite a bit, but instead I feel nothing at all. No incoming emotions and no outgoing emotions.
When asked at a housewarming party how I was feeling about my upcoming trip I took into consideration what I had already learned from my sarong experience and decided to open up to the girl I was speaking with. I told her I was in a emotional dead zone, similar to a cellular dead zone, and felt guilty for not feeling anything. I explained I felt like I should be feeling tons of excitement or nervousness, since that is what everyone keeps asking me if I’m feeling, but I don’t – I feel nothing. She looked at me with a gentleness in her eyes and a smile on her face and told me, “That’s okay! You don’t have to feel the same way everyone at home expects you to or everyone on your squad is feeling. I felt the way you do before I left for my trip.”
I had completely forgotten she had left and lived in Australia for a year. She had told me earlier in the summer about her trip and how difficult it was, but how it was one of the best things she had ever done. When I remembered she too experienced life away from everything “normal,” I all of a sudden felt a wave of stress wash off of me. Again, at a housewarming party I had debated going to because I did not want to socialize with people, I wanted to be a recluse, God placed the right person in my life. We talked for probably too long, as I kept repeating myself and the lack of emotions I was having over and over, but she was reassuring the entire time.
After walking away from the housewarming party I felt the release I needed which in turn allowed me to begin processing emotions. I had felt guilty, but was reassured I was normal and it was okay. I did not know it, but that was exactly what I needed. I needed comforting from a friend who I believed in my heart was not stringing me along with empty words of validation, but heartfelt understanding.
Over the course of the days to follow I cried, multiple times. I talked with my two best friends and opened up about emotions I had been keeping pent-up inside. I started to miss my life at home. I began to realize I was really going to miss people – my friends, my community, my co-workers, etc.. I also realized, I’m REALLY going to miss MY PEOPLE. You know, that little bandwagon of people you keep close to you and can tell anything and everything to… The people who get your raw emotions, regardless of whether they want them or not.
I began having a series of emotionally spastic moments because I started to process the fact that I’m going to be a part of a squad of people and NONE of them are MY PEOPLE. I don’t have anyone I trust fully, anyone I can go to and ugly cry without feeling judged, anyone I can go to and receive comfort from… That’s when I began to feel like I don’t want to go any more. I don’t want to go around the world with these complete strangers. These people who are not my people. I want to stay home in my community, where I know my place and what is expected of me. Where I know I can go a little bizzerk, but my people will always be there for me. Then I realized, I didn’t want to leave because there is no one on that squad who is with me… The people who are with me – I’m leaving them behind.
Then this morning happened. I woke up, looked at my phone and had a ton of messages from girls on my squad talking about how they too don’t want to leave home. How they too have been reminded of how sweet their communities are and how comforting it is to know where you fit and what is expected of you. In the moments of reading all of their messages about how they are going to miss home and their people I realized, they are my people too.
They are my people because they are the only ones I know who are going through and processing the same emotions I am. They are the one’s I will be sharing experiences with that others will never be able to understand. Not because there are not empathetic people out there, but because they won’t be there with us. They are my people because God has placed us together. We don’t quite understand where we fit, what our roles are or who our ugly cry friends will be yet, but we will.
My squamates and I have moments of loneliness, yet regardless of how alone we all feel in the moments when Satan is trying to bring us down, we have each other. They don’t know it, but they brought me comfort this morning. Because when I was too afraid to open up and tell them how I no longer had a desire to leave and live life with them, they opened up and expressed they too feel the same way I do. I didn’t have to say anything and they were still there for me.
You see, I may feel like I’m living a double life at times, but that is because it is exactly how Satan wants me to feel. He wants me to compartmentalize my emotions. He wants me to shut down and shut everyone out, because doing so hinders community from working in the way it was designed. Shutting down, deciding not to show up, deciding not to be open, it all inhibits others from being able to comfort you. But look at how good God is, how He places the right people in your life at the right moments in order to help you through. Look at how he places community around you, old and new, using them together to bring comfort.
I don’t know what season of life you are in as you’re reading this, but I hope you don’t do what I did. I hope you don’t shut down and decide not to show up – I made that decision too many times. Instead, I hope you choose to show up and allow God to love you through the people around you. I hope you choose to be open when asked that one question you dread others asking you; and when you answer, I hope you’re answer is the raw truth. Because community was designed to care for each other. Community was designed to love each other, love with actions and in truth.
