Sunday Creative: Comfort

I did not complete the creative prompt this week.  I started to write a character sketch but instead ended up with this:

This week I've been teetering between comfort and discomfort.

The discomfort of my childhood and adolescence, with its glasses-wearing, braces-needing, bad haired, uncertain where to sit at lunch, stumbling over words, awkward self.

The comfort of being a woman, being loved and loving.

The discomfort in exploring the possibility of a new job, learning new people, cultures, systems, deciding if I would fit in, succeed.  The discomfort of turning it down; the greater discomfort of quitting.

The comfort of a team, co-workers, clients, my tiny office with its golden light, the predictability of me, knowing my role and my possibilities.

The discomfort of fear and anxiety.

The comfort of rhythm, pattern.

Deciding how much discomfort I can tolerate.  And recognizing how much I already tolerate well.  Knowing that I sit in my discomfort quite often:  listening to and sitting with pain, tears, hurt, hatred; riding through another's anxiety; searching and probing; knowing when I am being lied to and not being able to do a thing about it; talking to people who should be helping who are not.  I handle more than a lot.

I recently read about the transformative power of sitting in something distinctly uncomfortable, like anger, and exploring the intensity, the jagged edges of the feeling, the power.  I'm learning that it tells me that I am alive.  If I can sit in my discomfort, I can tolerate another's.

Somewhere along the way I grew so comfortable in discomfort that I forgot that it was okay to push myself within the parameters of my comfortable boundaries instead of picking up completely and moving squarely into the middle of uncomfortable.  I tend to use that escape to mask the need to focus on something else uncomfortable.  I may change my mind by tomorrow but right now I am going to stay in comfortable, but push some of the other uncomfortables that I have.  That's a new discomfort, staying put.