I had a meeting in which I was handed an opportunity - one that I've wanted for three years. Given with joy, excitement, and absolute trust. On the outside, I realized later in retrospect, I am sure I came off as underwhelmed. Unexcited. Unaffected.
I forget that I do that.
It’s how I process, and it’s not fair to the people outside of my head (which is almost everyone I know). I go to overprocess, stay cool, HOLY CRAP mode, and I try to just show up as “fine.” It's like I see myself as so over-emotive that I wreck in the other ditch so far that I read as absolutely stoic. I've been told I'm stoic before (at the age of 15, no less), which made me laugh internally as I ran my imaginary hand over the spines of the imaginary books in the library of my head that contains the records of everything that would prove otherwise.
Outwardly, I'm sure my response was undetectable.
Another nuance to this is I’m sure I assumed it was a given that I’d be excited to take this on – why wouldn’t I be? Who wouldn’t be?? So somewhere along the pathway between thinking "Hooray!" and saying literally anything emotive, all of hooray was lost. What came out was, "Ok, cool." Translation, I can handle this. It's going to be good. I'm ready. Oh my gosh, please let this actually happen.
Outwardly, I'm sure my state was again undetectable.
The truth is that I am so excited about this. About the challenges I’ll face, about the new level of mentorship that will come with it, about the opportunity(ies) it gives me, and the faith it shows they have in me. I can’t wait. I can’t believe I have to wait.
I'm not as underwhelmed as it seems. If anything I’m overwhelmed in the best way. It scares me the way you want things to be scary.
I also realized that part of me not showing up as excited is all the things that affect my ability to be happy in general - rehearsing disappointment and Foreboding Joy. The fear of allowing myself to get too happy, lest it be snatched from me. I became almost instantly terrified I would lose it as soon as I wanted it. So I didn't let myself want it as much as I did.
And then I did let myself. I put it into words, and said I wanted it. And the excitement hit the ceiling... and brought the fear and anxiety level right along with it. I've been a shaking mess ever since.
The final thing that occurred to me is that I fear being happy about what's in front of me because so many times I've been the left-out one. The one without the hope, the opportunity, the next step laid out. I've been there enough to know the envy that comes when someone else is going places. And so I hide my happy to prevent someone else's sad.
But I have to see this all under the lens of what Brene Brown calls Wholehearted Living. Going after joy, excitement, hope, future with my whole heart. If I withhold parts of my heart to mitigate the disappointment I'm rehearsing, the foreboding that I feel, and the hurt that could come with it, I'm also withholding those parts from experiencing the breadth of what could be so good. So good. I think I'm learning I'd rather experience both joy and pain with my whole heart than dampen them both and live in that stoic place.
Because in that place the pain is ever-present whether I resist it or not, and the joy is always so diminished when it comes.
Photo by Sunny Ng on Unsplash
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