A new baseline stress level

We are going through what might turn out to be the most horrific times in my lifetime - the dismantling of our government, the attack on marginalized groups (immigrants, transgendered individuals, women, etc.), the lasting damage to global relationships, and the intentional destruction of our economy.  And I am in the very thick of that in more than one way.  

And yet, this feels like my year to shine, my year to thrive.  My capacity for joy is greater than it was at any point during the 19 years I was married.  The baseline stress that I had started to learn to recognize in my body over the last decade is not quite so consistent now.  My chronic pain is less frequent.  My struggle with weight is gone.  

I'm just so enjoying being me that so often the stress of my life feels like just background noise.  I ran into a woman this morning from a divorce group I participated in last fall and I said something that rung so true as I repeated it in my head - "I'm dancing in the rain despite the fact that I might lose job."  It's kind of crazy to think about.

My therapist last night in the context of all that is going on with my job and this country and the week I had just told her about asked if I felt like I was just enduring life.  And I'm definitely not just enduring life although I wondered out loud if maybe I had been enduring life while I was married.  That made both of us really pause.

I thought I was happy.  I thought it was a good marriage.  So how can I feel so incredibly different now?  How can I have so much more energy now?  So much more capacity for joy?  So much more ability to cope with chaos and insane situations?  Why is there a feeling of relief from what I thought was a good marriage?  There had to have been a disconnect between my conscious reality and my subconscious.  What did that disconnect try to protect me from?  What in my marriage created that disconnect?

On a parallel track in my mind is this realization that I lost in this marriage the essence of my quirkiness, some of the best parts of my uniqueness.  I'm realizing this now as I'm given this new chance to lean back into that quirkiness.  Long into adulthood, my sister would repeat the story of the day I showed up at high school on hat day wearing a gigantic sombrero.  She was mortified because she said people made fun of me for it and so she did her best to pretend she was not related to me.  But I just remember enjoying walking the halls in that hat.  I wasn't focused on what others thought of me.  I was unapologetically me.  And today I'm digging to find once again that unapologetic me and show it to the world.  So what was it about my marriage that led me to abandon that part of me?

I don't have the answers yet.  But I'm going to keeping sitting with it as I sort through the photos from this morning's walk through my local botanical gardens and go about the rest of my weekend.  And I'll be back here to write more as I have more to process.