Put It On The Shelf

On learning a healthier way to cope.

I’m compartmentalizing like it’s an Olympic sport these days.

When life gets real, which it has, and the burden of carrying on in your day-to-day remains constant, which it always is, I’ve found that the only way I can move forward is to divide and conquer, so to speak. I fold the heaviest bits into manageable, bite-sized pieces and put them on a metaphorical shelf to deal with later. That’s not to say I’m ignoring my feelings or refusing to confront them altogether; rather, I’m allowing myself to set down the weight and return when I have the space to feel however I need to feel in that moment.

This is a particularly difficult exercise for someone who has a pesky need to control the majority of what is happening around her. In my experience, that is the simplest way to ensure that you won’t end up getting hurt. Address it now, take care of it now, fix it now. But as we learn with age and (sometimes painfully) acquired wisdom, that’s simply not the way the world works. And so instead of constantly ruminating and spiraling over things I cannot control (as much as I would like to) I’m exercising some rusty mental muscles.

Everything should be bite-sized, including this perfect caviar and soft scrambled egg situation

It would be impossible to confront all the different emotions that I’m experiencing these days at the same time and not be completely overwhelmed.