Retro-manticizing

The human experience is so extraordinary. Every lesson begets new perspective and another conundrum or opportunity to reflect.

A lot of people experience life through an anxious lens, focusing their energy primarily off into the distance, attempting to predict the future outcome of every situation…

Real or imaginary.

Not a single one of those people would be likely to suggest this is a worthwhile use of their energy. People just can’t help but worry about what is coming because we all know in our hearts that you can’t ever really know. We all know how quickly it comes crashing down around you. The future is a wild variable and we could spend our entire lives pretending we are in control.

A lot of us flip out because there might be curveballs coming, even when there aren’t.

No amount of time spent running through the possibilities is going to make the future less unpredictable. Worrying doesn’t change anything for the better, least of all the way we’re feeling.

The preoccupation with the future keeps us from living in the present. It robs us of a lot of joy, a lot of moments of connection and love. It keeps us from seeing the beauty of what right in front of us.

There’s another way to achieve this, though.

The disease Lindsay has isn’t so much one of futurizing. It’s frustrating to spend my energy panicking about scenarios I’ve made up, a practice I tend to save exclusively for my interpersonal relationships.

Rather than being anxious about what’s to come, I have been entirely preoccupied with what’s behind me.

It’s not just reflection for the sake of learning, you understand. It’s lamenting. I become my own whipping boy. I’ll take the lessons, the hindsight, the growth… And then fault myself for the way I did things before I knew better.

In tandem with this charming habit, I also romanticize things in some kind of weird euphoric recall blind spot.

For many years I’ve been looking in my rear view, thinking about a very specific period of time in which I felt I had my life together. It was peak Lindsay, I had decided. For whatever reason that girl could make all her food from scratch, engage her preschooler with adventures and experiences, work out, write every day…

I never understood why I could do those things for that limited part of my life and every other period of time is chaos.

Recently I realized something.

When I reflect on this period of time, I have always been reflecting on how much I was doing and not once on how I was feeling.

I wasn’t looking back at the time in my life I felt the most joy. I didn’t reflect upon whether I was fulfilled or how much I was learning.

I know in my heart that the time period I yearn for was one of massively harmful and disordered thinking and behaviour.

I know that my “ability” to make everything from scratch, work out regularly and keep my body firmer than it ever was before or has been since was actually an obsession based around body image.

Even when I was in control of every ingredient in everything we ate, I was throwing up my meals. My “dedication to fitness” was a compulsion that consumed my every thought.

I wasn’t happy, well-adjusted or spiritually well. I was just as much an addict to the feeling of control in that time period as I was using cocaine alone on a random Tuesday morning.

My disordered behaviour was simply channeled into things society encourages.

In the 10+ years I’ve been romanticizing this version of who I used to be, I was totally missing the beauty of what that person made way for.

If I take inventory of my life to date from a new perspective, based not on how well I looked like I could “do it all”, and identified the very best version of me…

It’s this one.

That’s the honest truth. There’s never been a version of me who has this much knowledge available to her. I am questioning the validity of my beliefs and practices, working to create a better version of myself every day.

I am not distracted by the drive to shut off my emotions, but rather choose to sit with them and see them through.

Today I am more joyful, more grateful, more careful with where I put my heart. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than any me I’ve ever been before.

What a wonderful feeling it is to fall in love with me.

Not who I’ll someday be. Not some fictional character version of me.

Peak Lindsay.