I am a very compulsive person. Somewhere along the line of me becoming me, I don't think anyone checked the "self-control" or "she's had enough" gene mix. I literally lack the component that says "enough is enough" and will do something until I am a burned out wreck of a human being, overloaded, saturated, burned out. Whether it's a chemical ingested, a habit, or a behavior, I go until I can go no more and then I spend time recuperating and refilling myself. The older I get, the more I find myself needing quiet time to rebalance and correct my head and heart. The older I get, the less I can saturate myself with news of the world and drama queens, people that turn any situation into a panty-bunching, hand-wringing episode of idiocy.
When I first met my ex-mother-in-law way back in 1986, she walked in the front door of her house after she got off work. It was September and the sun set about 6:30-7:00 at night by that time. She was home from work by 5:15. She entered the front door, shut and locked it, and then went around the living room and drew all the blinds closed, while it was still fairly sunny outside. I looked quizically at her and she said, "When I come home from work, I want nothing to do with the world or anyone in it, this is my time and my space and my family time." I thought she was nuts.
Until I became the age that she was at that time.
When I'm home, the doors are shut and locked, unless it's a nice day, the windows are shut, nighttime comes and the world is shut out by the blinds, and I am completely and fully happy shutting out the world and everyone in it. I want nothing from the outside or the world making its way inside and when I get to where I'm at today, I don't even want the news on. I sure as hell don't want to hear the voice of the White House squatter. It is an unspoken rule in our house: The television is muted before one word comes out of his mouth.
World overload sneaks up on me. It's not something I'm truly conscious of, I just know that all of a sudden, it's very clear to me that I've had enough and I can't get away from the world fast enough. I'm worn out. Add to that worldly exhaustion a husband that needs seemingly constant medical attention, a nearly 10 year old with the normal 10 year old angst and heavily immersed in puberty, and a business that can suck the very life out of me, and I hit a wall head-on, very hard and very fast. I am not unusual or exceptional or extra-special. I'm just me. A woman of 49 that is tired. I realize the world isn't going to give me a break so I do what I have to and take the break myself.
Facebook is a contradiction of itself. Social media is supposed to make us more "social" yet Facebook can be one of the most isolating phenomena I've ever seen. For something so "social", people isolate themselves by sitting in their houses "chatting" with "friends", most of whom they've never met, as is the case with me. Having these "friends" has been a blessing because I've met many believers and like-minded people through Facebook, while at the same time, I've been shunned, unfriended, and cut-off by people I've known since fifth grade because, even though they've known my outspokenness since childhood, I'm suddenly not worth "knowing" as friend on Facebook, yet if they see me in town they will act as though I'm a long-lost buddy. It's ludicrous and much of the time, comical. I'd MUCH rather they just completely ignore me if that's going to be the case, and thankfully, many do comply. In some ways, a person's true colors come out through their words and some actually save you the time it would take to find out they're not really worth having in your life after all.
I've seen people use Facebook to go on rants about family, completely upsetting the apple cart and destroying relationships. Such as the case with my husband's daughter. Her husband posted a ridiculous rant about a family member, without pointing out WHICH family member the rant was about. We responded thinking it was about us, and because of all of that, and I'm sure many more things, doors were shut and we no longer communicate with them, much to our relief. God has a most wonderful way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
So, I'm spending this down time catching up on rest, cleaning out, tossing out, organizing, restructuring, my annual purge. I relish the fact that there are drawers in this house that are completely empty because I don't feel the need to keep anything past its usefulness. Unlike my mother, who keeps everything to the point someone will need a front loader when she dies and the house is cleaned out, and since I'm persona non grata in that house, it won't be me, thank the LORD, I don't have to worry about it. I keep what is necessary or important to us and get rid of the rest. Most importantly, I'm ridding myself of the black cloud of overload and over-information and over-stress by shutting out social media for a while and the news.
My favorite saying has become "with age comes wisdom". Such true words, but the biggest gift of wisdom is the realization that although I may not have been born with the gene that allows me the self-control to not over-indulge, I now recognize the signs when I've done that and I realize how valuable the power that I possess is that I can just shut the world out with the flick of a switch or the click of the mouse. t Log out of Facebook, click off Fox News, shut out the world, and find my little island of peace in a world of chaos.
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