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I mentioned in a previous post that I ran into a wall around May, last spring.
Looking back on the episode, I now consider that what I went through was some sort of ”burn-out”. I even consulted for a while during that period because I wanted to die litterally everyday. Not because I did not want to live anymore, but rather because I felt like I was living way too much.
It’s hard to describe, but when you live too much, there is a certain point (let’s call it the ”breaking point”) where you suddenly become completely and utterly overwhelmed. I had so many things going, and I had been on that path for so long… I would say now about 2 years, or maybe even a tab bit more.
J’ai de la difficulté à cerner exactement comment et pourquoi tout ça a commencé. J’ai passé plusieurs années à m’occuper de mon équipe de bateau-dragon. Bien que cette tâche en soi ait été déjà relativement exigeante par moment, il y a eu une sorte de déclic un jour et je me suis dit que je voulais faire plus. Ça a commencé tout bêtement… je me suis joint au comité de division de la discipline BD au club. En fait, plus j’y pense, moins je suis certaine de l’ordre des choses, mais je vous expliquerai pourquoi plus bas. Je me suis aussi mise à donner un coup de pouce pour les élections municipales… je ne sais pas trop dans quel but, sinon que de me lancer dans une aventure, me faire vivre et apprendre un paquet de trucs! Je me trouvais tellement chanceuse d’avoir toutes ses aptitudes différentes que je me sentais en devoir d’en faire profiter la terre… Si tu es en mesure d’aider, tu es dans l’obligation d’aider. Une sorte de ligne de conduite comme ça… Un guide pour ne pas gaspiller la vie et toutes les chances qui nous sont données. J’ai une sainte horeur de gaspiller la vie moi!
Une chose en entrainant une autre, je me suis retrouvée directrice de la division bateau-dragon et puis également membre du CA du club. Tout ça en construisant une nouvelle équipe de bateau-dragon dite ”élite” à partir d’à peu près rien. Et puis tant qu’à faire, pourquoi pas me charger d’organiser la Fête de l’eau, qui était à reconstruire également car nos prédécesseurs nous l’avait laissée dans un état lamentable.
Je peux continuer, car ce n’est pas fini… je me suis aussi lancée en affaire… en politique aussi quelques instants… La complexité et le niveau de stress de mon emploi ont également quintuplé du jour au lendemain. Et par dessus tout, le projet, ce qui est devenu la trame de fond de mon existence… Le début de l’entraînement qui allait me faire perdre 20 livres, l’idéal à atteindre (qui ne l’est toujours pas d’ailleurs): Hong Kong 2012, les World Champs de bateau-dragon auxquels j’ai décidé que j’allais participer, avec tout ce que ça coûte – et le fait que je doive me séparer (ou me multiplier?) entre Montréal et Sherbrooke depuis plus d’un an pour cet objectif.
The thing is, while each of those, separately, are decent-size projects, each of them also brings its complexities – people, emotions, stress, personal reflexion, unexpected events or reactions (mine or other’s). There is disturbance factor in each of them. Some more than others… like all the negativity around the club management. And while all of those are going on concurrently, the rest of ”regular life” follows its course: friends, family, love (or absence thereof).
I struggled through it all in what now seems like the longest roller-coaster ride ever! (I’m sure I could call Guiness on that…) While I still enjoyed a few ”off days”, that felt like hell frankly because they were so empty, I have never left the ride since then. That seat has my name on it. I just wrote that and now sit here thinking about those off days. The emptiness. I would make an educated guess in saying that they most likely have something to do with the begining of the ride…
The problem with the adventure is that if you manage to stretch yourself to the limit, there better not come any other life event. And just like a budget, we all know that when you are broke, that’s when you’ll get a flat tire. It’s like the falling slice of buttered bread. That dear Murphy. I think about him a whole lot for a stranger I’ve never met.
So Murphy did come knocking at my door… Well through my cellphone to be precise. I received the call of death, litterally. Someone died. And the way it all rolled out was such a trauma that I thought for a moment that I was no longer in my own body. It was a 5-part trauma. 5 heart-wrenching, soul-killing parts that took the life right out of me within 6 hours.
The call, the announce. The sky that suddenly turns to black in mid-afternoon on a terrasse.
The request, hell the mandate, to go announce it to the man I admire the most in life.
The second call… the correction on who died… confusion, relief and immediate guilt about that relief.
Panic… agony… 4th part… telling a mother that she has just lost her son.
Lastly, closing the day with the announce to his sister.
Mes mots sont si petits comparativement au drame qui s’est déroulé ce jour là. Cette journée précise en est venue à incarner pour moi la définition même de ce qu’est l’enfer. Car le feu de l’enfer, de ce que j’en conçois, ne brûle pas la peau que nous avons à l’extérieur… Il fait rage au sein même de notre corps. Au lieu d’être dans la maison enflammée, nous sommes nous-même le brassier et nous mourons, nous mourons, nous mourons… sans jamais que la vie nous délivre.
Le lendemain matin, j’étais au bureau. (Je vous entends penser vous savez…) J’étais assise sur une chaise devant un assemblage de bois qui soutenait des machines de plastique et de métal qui servent à accomplir des tâches et communiquer. Voilà où j’étais. Une sorte d’univers parallèle où on regarde chaque boulon en le séparant de son contexte. Un endroit où rien n’a de sens. Bien entendu, je n’y suis pas restée longtemps.
Il y a eu toute la suite bien entendu. Chaque moment si bien gravé dans ma mémoire. Car les traumatismes n’étaient pas terminés. La cause du décès qui est devenue un mystère. Le long chemin du retour lorsque j’ai été chercher ma cousine à l’école. Le salon, les funérailles… mon rôle. Oui, mon rôle… Voyez, je suis la ”résumeuse de vie”… Celle qui manipule la plume pour dire ce que tous veulent dire à l’heure du départ du proche, et qui ensuite livre la performance devant l’audiance. Combien de fois j’ai crû perdre conscience tellement j’étais envahie. Je m’y sens si agile et si inadéquate à la fois, dans ce rôle. Comme si je devais un instant laisser le défunt me passer à travers le corps, l’âme, le coeur… m’en imbiber pour mieux le ranimer, pour un petit moment. Je décide de nommer ça mon privilège ingrat.
Enough of the event. It’s good to lay it on my screen, under those fingers of mine. The key strokes are the liberating truth. But the point was that I did not run into a wall. The wall built itself into my face in a fraction of a second and there I was, in it, without knowing what the hell had happened to me. Under any circumstances, that event in itself is enough to throw off anyone. But imagine a sheet of fabric, stretched to the max into some sort of parachute. A tiny tear would be enough to rip it all off at once. But instead, mine did not tear a little… It cought on fire and dissapeared into smoke in a split second.
So down I went. I did not even spiral down. I had nothing left to even make me spin. I went straight, very straight down.
But I did not die. Instead, I lay on the ground with every single bone broken, ever organ punctured and bleeding. And the worse part is that, even if my voice was still intact, I was in the middle of a field, alone, for no one heard me call out for help. A lot of the aftermath is thick fog. When I think back, I remember the smell of my own blood, but not much else. All I did for a while was scream… Scream for help, scream out of pain, scream for someone to come to my rescue, glue me back together perhaps. But no one came. And I will admit that being the turtle that I am, I probably would not even have appreciated any piece of help. I can recall some conversations… two in particular, with people who tried to throw me a rope. But when you are laying on the ground with all your bones broken, you can’t pick-up a rope and you burst into some kind of mad laughter at the thought that this is the best they can do for you. And you feel so alone, so empty.
So then, I met the mean therapist. He gave me a taste of my own medicine. Why the hell do you think you are broken young lady? Who do you think you are, that you can do everything at once and that nothing will happen to you? I got so upset… no… really pissed off! For he was right. And I hated it. I thought so highly of myself that I figured I could do anything I wanted. Hell… that I HAD to do everything I wanted. Remember, I hate to waste life. He even called my sport ”entertainment”… a leisure I could not afford to put so much effort into! Yes yes… my elite, world championship sport… While the aim and context were a bit off (I can’t blame him for not knowing what that represented…), I had to admit that he reached his goal. I started shedding… shedding projects… One by one, I got rid of all my ”other obligations” and recentered my life on 3 main streams: Work, Training, Family. (Oh, I didn’t tell you? The Monday after the funeral, we were at the cardiologist for my father, and received confirmation that he would have to undergo major cardiac surgery… Remember Murphy, my best friend?)
Vacations came… the spin of work had not stopped, although at that point, my capacities were badly tainted. So it all came as a relief that I had managed to let go of all that extra weight and that I now had almost 3 weeks to keep cleaning up, focus only on the 3 core elements, and rejuvenate with a major fulfilling event, the national championships.
For a while, I even felt like I had been put back on my feet because I found some things that carried me and had let go of things that were pinning me to the ground. I even met someone significant. While I was hesitant at first, I thought about letting go and exploring something that could feel right for me. And so I did. Life picked-up right were I left it. The fog had cleared, or so I thought.
But while I got back to work, continued on with the training, tried to find time for family…. the persistent fog started sneaking up on me again. One day, I realized that it had been a while since I had been able to process any new knowledge. My memory was not the clear sharp tool it usually was. My concentration felt more and more like a bad case of ADD that had broken out into daylight. I accumulated multiple little mistakes that felt like tremendous failures. I became insecure. I noticed that I was having a lot of ups and downs and had great difficulties reading social interactions and processing them correctly. I invested into a relationship based of what I now feel were different degrees of misconceptions. The line between what I wanted, what I needed, who I was, and who my significant other was became blurry, drunk-like. And such as I am, I jumped in because I always seize opportunities. I hate to waste life. And I wanted to try that path, because it felt rich with potential. It was one of the few things I thought I had finally identified correctly… since the rest was so drenched-up in fog.
But unfortunately, that relationship was no exception. The road to my healing is long… extremely long. I never realized it would be so long or that the events had made so much damage. When I noticed that I was not out of the woods yet, I tried to change my glasses. I took things, one by one, and tried to focus on them. I let go of the last of my obligations at the end of the season when I resigned as team captain and while another weight was lifted off my shoulders, I decided to accept that the fog was still there. Slowly, I noticed that I could look that fog straight in the face. Accepting its presence made it a tad less thick. Il fallait que j’approvoise mon brouillard et que je travaille en équipe avec lui si je voulais m’en sortir en jour.
So I let go and I opted-out of my relationship as well. Because while it did bring me great gifts and pleasure, it was ultimately simply not what I was looking for. There is nothing else to it. C’est aussi simple et pur que ça puisse l’être. Je me suis trompée. J’ai cru, et j’ai vécu tout celà intensément, car c’est ainsi que je vis. Mais une fois certains brouillards dissipés, j’ai constaté que j’avais malheureusement entraîné quelqu’un avec moi dans un rêve qui n’avait pas les bons acteurs. Je me suis déçue également là-dedans. Je m’étais jurée de ne plus jamais réaliser de films avec les mauvais acteurs, parce que ça fait perdre à tout le monde. Mais je dois l’avouer, dans l’état où j’étais, je n’ai pas eu la clarté d’esprit de reconnaître que je me dirigeais dans cette direction. Si je n’avais pas vécu toutes ces choses, si la vie n’avait pas mis le feu à mon parachute, je ne crois pas que ce serait arrivé. En fait, si je ne m’étais pas retrouvée suspendue à un parachute au départ même, tendue de toutes part, le feu ne m’aurait pas faire tomber car j’aurais eu les deux pieds sur le sol.
Et si je n’avais pas ressenti autant de vide, je n’aurais jamais enfilé de parachute et sauté en bas de l’avion.
Et si je sortais de ma vision de choses et acceptait ce qui m’entoure, je ne ressentirais pas autant de vide.
Et si j’avais plus confiance et moins d’insécurité, je sortirais de ma vision des choses.
Luv
K
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