Life outside your comfort zone

I realized the other day I’ve been living outside my comfort zone for over a year. Not just venturing outside it frequently, but living, 24/7, outside any semblance of familiarity. There’s nowhere I can go, not even my own apartment, that is within my comfort zone. The list of things that are strange and unfamiliar to the vast majority of my lived experience extends to every crevice of my life, from the internet to phone apps to clothing to food and water to language to the air I breathe.

I haven’t been sleeping well. I remember being a kid flopping into bed and sighing a deep sigh of contentment and peace. This was my happy place, my safe space. My faith in my ability to sleep was unshakeable. This faith has been broken and repaired so many times the vessel is more glue than material. I go days, weeks, without issue, then one bad night of sleep puts me at odds with my bed yet again.

It’s ok, I tell myself, but I must get a good night’s sleep tonight. I climb into bed like a soldier on assignment. There’s no room for relaxation, this is a mission. Close your eyes and go to sleep. I lay there. Time passes. Eventually a moment of realization comes. Oh no, I can’t sleep. This is when I should: journal, have a light snack, read a book, maybe bring out my trusty vibrator, and go to bed again. Instead I: keep trying to force myself to sleep, getting more and more frustrated and having to run to the bathroom to pee every few minutes (don’t ask me why my bladder likes to join the conversation at these times but it does and I am hella frustrated about it).

There are things in life that can’t be forced, can’t be paid for, can’t be rushed. Love. Body recomposition. Sleep. Here I am without all three, focusing instead on the endless list of things that can be achieved with harried intensity.

I’ve always struggled to relax. It extends to every muscle in my body. My jaw, my tongue, my shoulders, my back, even my pelvic floor. I remember visiting a doctor years ago for urinary frequency. She stuck her fingers inside my vagina and told me to squeeze. I squeezed. She told me to relax. I stopped squeezing. “No”, she said “relax”. I didn’t understand the command. I told her I don’t know that part of my body’s phone number. I feel blind, reaching out for something I can’t feel.

I feel this body-blindness to this day. I work on it in the gym. My entire adult life coaches, trainers, and physical therapists have told me to pull, or push, or hold, and asked me where I feel it. “I don’t know”, I say. They ask again. “But where do you feel the work?”. “I don’t feel it, I don’t know, where am I supposed to feel it?” I feel like my body is working, but I can’t tell you where that sensation is coming from.

Slowly, with lots of practice, I’ve been able to start to isolate sensations. I feel my glutes, my hamstrings, my calves, my quads, muscles in my back. But often, even now, I have to wait a day or two for soreness to kick in before I can answer the question of which muscles were working.

My mood lately has been volatile, fueled by work stress, sleep disturbance, and a raging body dysmorphia that I don’t know how to fix. I really don’t. I’ve written about this at length before and I am tired of talking about it, thinking about it, being ashamed about it, wanting to cry about it. I want to fix it. The root of it, whatever that is. For some reason I still believe if I just became smaller it would be fixed, even though I know it won’t. The virus is in my head, not my body.

Work is draining my spirit. I am exhausted all day. Last week it came to a head during parent’s day when several mothers complained to the principal about me, saying I don’t interact with the kids enough and I’m not warm enough with them. I know I don’t. I don’t smile, laugh, engage. I don’t give of myself to them. I guard my energy. I pull back. I know I do this. I don’t know why there’s such a hard internal block, but I see it.

There’s some kind of awkwardness, some inner fear that stops me from leaning into connection with them. I don’t know what to do with myself. Slowly, despite this, despite me, they are warming up to me. And slowly, I am warming up to them.

But what my principal and administrators see is very much fixed now. Last week’s flame point didn’t help. After several meetings about my subpar conduct and being threatened with watching the CCTV footage of myself in the classroom, I broke down and cried in front of my supervisors. Let me tell you I lost my damn mind. I told them to fire me. I told them I wasn’t suited to the environment and couldn’t offer any more than I was giving. It was bad.

Nevertheless, I slept a good three hours and came back the next day and managed to force myself to be continuously present, chatting, and engaged with each and every child all day. The parents did not complain. One administrator gave me a thumbs up and “good job!” I wanted to quit.

I have my CV out to a primary school across town that has two positions open for next semester. If I go, it means breaking my contract with my agency early. Steep penalties, fines, and from what I understand 6 weeks of harassment await me, plus likely a lot of hassle in dealing with my visa, work permit, and residence permit paperwork to stay in legal standing in China.

I’m not looking forward to that, nor to the hour long commute on the subway to the central business district. My current commute is only 15–20 minutes, my gym is right at my subway stop, I could walk to work if I wanted to. I like my coworkers. I even like my kids. I like the Chinese language exposure I get on a daily basis. I like the two hour lunch break and the long naps I take in the art room. I like the food the school makes for lunch, though it’s nowhere near as good as the food at my old (horrible) school. Figures.

But, my relationship with my principal and admin have turned, and my principal won’t sign off on me doing my clinicals for my teaching certification program, which is a potential dealbreaker. She regards me trying to obtain my teaching license as me trying to get one over on her somehow. Every time she refers to it the attitude is “why should I help you with your school homework? You have a job to do here that you should be more focused on because you aren’t doing it well.” Sigh.

I almost cried leaving the gym today. Actually, I feel like my body wants to release a cry every time I finish a workout. Somatic release in place of my ability to actually process my emotions.

It’s the sleep, I tell myself. I just need to fix my sleep. No pressure.

Time for bed, more later. ❤