Blank Canvas

It’s been a while. I wonder if I can force something out tonight. I guess apathy’s the word. I’m in a transition time in life and it’s so…colorless. I always like to say there is no black and white in life – instead, it has lots and lots of colors – endless opportunity for creation. So recently, all of my colors have mixed up and become muddied – brown. I’ve been going about the past days, metaphorically sloshing brown paint (and a similar colored mood) all over the place.

I’m graduating from college in one week. Shouldn’t I be jumping for joy and skipping down the sidewalk? Shouldn’t I be painting beautiful pictures with luminous pinks and yellows and greens and reds? It’s not happening. I feel bogged down. I feel bored. I feel apathetic.

My norm in college was to take 15 or 16 hours a semester; to take difficult, stimulating classes; to be highly involved in an arts promotion organization I love; and to pretty much put 150% into everything I did. (If it wasn’t perfect, what was the point?) This past semester, I typically woke up at 5 am, ran, showered, worked a few hours, went to class, and had organization-related meetings and responsibilities that took up many hours. I would get home after 8 pm, cook dinner, and continue on into the night with school and/or organization work. That kind of schedule made me feel weirdly energized. In the mayhem, I created compulsive, overbearing structure. I always found some superpower that allowed me to take on more and more.

Today was different. I went for a run, worked a few hours, had time to bake cookies and read mail, went to a end-of-semester class function, and now I’m sitting on the couch. I’m just sitting (and writing, clearly), with not much else to do. And it makes me feel somewhat lazy. And bored. And apathetic. And just…brown.

The majority of my days this past week have had this brown mucky feeling. I’m confused – because I’ve started my post-graduation job, and am still working at my student job. As my friends and peers are cramming for final exams, I am sitting on my brooding about me, myself, and I. I’m receiving a diploma in one week, but haven’t felt like an actual student in ages. (Going to one class a day, four days a week doesn’t exactly feel like going to school.) I still haven’t decided where I am going to grad school. I’m carrying a lot of personal emotions and feelings through my transition. In short, the end of the old phase isn’t clearly defined. The beginning of my new phase isn’t clearly defined. Yesterday, as I tried to convey my apathy to my counselor (because really, when one doesn’t care, one also doesn’t care about articulating that feeling), she said this is my blank canvas. It's my job to figure out what to do when my palette gets all mixed up. I’ve been letting it affect my mood and my outlook.

So I am making a deliberate effort to couch-sit and dwell and be ok with it. And something kind of beautiful is happening. I’m not distracted from what my needs are at this particular moment. I’m thinking, I’m having feelings, and I’m aware of myself RIGHT NOW. I’m starting to feel less brown-ish. The hues might separate so that I can differentiate them again.

But what does this have to do with my eating disorder? When I’m running around with everything all together but really not all together, I don’t pay attention to what I need. Instead of taking care of myself physically, emotionally, and mentally, I deprive myself of really having feelings and relationships. Now though, I am sitting still and thinking about relatively nothing, I have a lonely feeling. I wish I were spending time with a friend right now. Having that feeling is a huge step for me. I once pulled into my driveway late on a Friday afternoon and realized that I had been so distracted and driven to accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, that I had gone an entire week without contacting any of my close friends. I think this feeling has some definite potential for creativity.

I am also aware that I feel like relative shit because in the past few weeks, I cannot go a day without being at some function where someone is shoving dessert in my face. But tonight, I had some red velvet goodness. I brought a piece of cake home with me, and I’ve spent some of my couch-sitting time thinking long and hard about tossing the cake and maybe even telling it off (because it wants to make me fat, you know?). But I’ve decided not to. I’m probably going to eat it tomorrow. And when my eating disorder tells me that the next bite is going to make my ass explode, I am going to tell her she is absolutely full of it. I think that’s a new color, too.

There are lots of other thoughts floating around, lots of other colors with beautiful potential. But the overriding thought is that I can’t do this much longer. I am not a sitter. I am a doer. I am going to have to find some productive action soon, or I might just get even crazier. I’m going to throw the brown paint out and mix some new colors. For now, I’m done brooding. I’m off to go take action, to paint something…not brown. Something kind of pretty and colorful.