Full Plate

All too often I come on here and talk about how chaotic my life is, juggling work, college, being a wife and tending to every whim my sons can dream of; meetings and appointments and planning a cross-country move and helping to train a new girl at work while trying to start looking for a new job in a city more than 2,000 miles away; not to mention trying to figure out why I eat when I'm not hungry, why I can never stick to things that are good for my health and why my knee hurts this bad for this long after surgery.  My mind is always darting from one topic to another, making lists of "have-to-do's" and "don't forgets" without ever feeling like enough things have been done to rest and settle down; stop looking for more stuff to add to my lists.  

I used to look on my situation with apathy, woe is me, I never get any free time to myself but tonight I realized that I do get some time to myself, I just usually spend it on Facebook or playing a game on my phone (assuming I have done my other tasks).  It calms me to a good degree, but it doesn't fix the lump of junk in the pit of my stomach that I am trying to smother with food.  I pass it off as happy indulgence, pleasure and rebellion, but a bloated gut doesn't feel good physically, and yet I still try mindlessly trying to convince myself that there is some definitive amount or type of food that will make that stupid coal-tar-black-mass of doubt, guilt, and self-irritation and disgust leave.  I know the weather change plays a part, and the mood of so many people around me has been so foul lately too, I internalize it unnecessarily.  Yet, I'm always feeling like I need to try and find a way to fix things when they aren't ideal, and that affects me emotionally, despite trying to numb myself with withdrawal and food.  I know this is a defense mechanism and I do feel like I have to have my guard up right now but I think I'm only getting a small glimpse of why.  It will take some meditation to figure out what's going on. I tried to meditate tonight, after a long break from it, and it was pretty fruitless.  It will take practice to be able to calm my mind again.  

I am not making any major proclamations about change, I know by now that I don't have enough order in my life right now to start going that route just yet, but I am thinking about myself, my unsuccessful mechanisms and things that genuinely make me feel good.  I'd like to say I'm going to start meditating consistently again, but it takes a lot of energy to go to these places inside that are dark and so very emotional, yet leaving things on autopilot isn't working for me: I don't feel good about myself, I feel like I'm hiding from someone or something and not just the stuff I'm ashamed of is hiding, but I've stashed away the good stuff too.    I don't want to use my busy schedule, escapism or food to try and shove down my feelings or cover up emotions or perceptions.  I know I won't feel better until I figure out what is causing all this hiding and defensiveness.  So this is where I am.  It's a continuation of stuff I never healed and fixed from the last attempts at sanity.  I know this is a lifelong journey but oh!  What a roller coaster it has been!