Mindfulness?? More like Mindlessness...

Everyone’s been talking about mindfulness lately.  Literally everyone.  My counselor mentioned it during our first session and explained that she would be using mindfulness techniques during my therapy.  I had mentioned that I hate doing things alone, and she encouraged me to dig deeper into that, to challenge myself to spend time doing activities alone that I would normally prefer do with other people.  Mmmmk lady, I get what you’re saying, but I think you have seriously underestimated just how needy I am.  I prefer to do all of the activities with other people.  Doing stuff by myself is lame as shit.

Anyhow, I have a wedding to go to this summer, waaaayyyy up in the U.P.  I still haven’t booked a hotel room or anything, because let’s face it; we ALL know I’m not going to have a date by then.  So the thought of driving 10 hours by myself, staying in a hotel by myself, going to the wedding by myself, and then driving 10 hours back home by myself sounds like the absolute fucking worst way to spend a weekend.  But, on the other hand, I could try to make it a fun, solo vacation doing all kinds of awesome things I’ve always wanted to do.  So I tried to put a positive spin on planning this trip, but immediately started feeling resentful that I don’t have anyone to do these kinds of things with.  (Why am I so sad and alone???  Waaahhhhh!!)

My counselor suggested that maybe I do a little test-run before committing to the whole weekend experience (good call).  So, I decided to take a short day trip to check out a diner I’ve been meaning to visit for years.  And that’s how I ended up spending the day in Paw Paw.

The experience was… meh.  Unpleasant, maybe, and uncomfortable.  Dissatisfying.  But I didn’t die.  I also didn’t really enjoy eating by myself.  The food was good, but as it turns out, I suck hard core at this mindfulness bullshit.  Instead of appreciating my meal and staying “in the moment,” I found myself narrating in my head everything that I was doing, and what I would tell my counselor about my experience.  And then a group of teenagers came in and I immediately felt self-conscious.  Teenagers are assholes, and I imagined that they were whispering about the weird old lady sitting alone, not reading, not playing on her phone.  Just eating alone like a loser.  [I’m talking about myself here.  There was not another old woman at the restaurant.  In fact, until the kids showed up, I was the only customer.]  At that point, I hurried to finish my lunch and headed out for the next leg of my adventure.

I was going to check out an antique store I found online, but they were closed.  So I went to Paw Paw Brewing Co. instead.  Hey, they were right next door to each other, can you blame me??  Much more enjoyable than eating alone, I had three beers there and chatted with the regulars.  OK, I wasn’t exactly practicing mindfulness at the bar, but I was still exploring the city on my own, which must count for something, right?

When it was time to head back home, I decided to get myself back on the mindfulness track by turning off the radio in the car.  The first ten minutes were painful; the deafening silence felt like ringing in my ears, like when you leave a bar where the band was playing way too fucking loud.  Then my mind slipped back into “narrator” mode, and I replayed in my head everything I had done during the day and how it made me feel.  I tried to step out of the past and into the present, so I focused on the other cars driving, and how the steering wheel felt in my hands.  And then, inexplicably, my brain starts playing “Two trailer park girls go ‘round the outside, ‘round the outside, ‘round the outside…”  The fuck is going on here, brain?  Eminem???  Come on, that’s not even a good song!!!  But so it was, for almost 50 miles, Slim Shady played the soundtrack to my “mindful” drive home.  Pretty sure I’m doing this wrong…

My counselor congratulated me, though, for sticking with it.  Even if it was uncomfortable, even if I didn’t enjoy it, I remained faithful to my mindfulness quest by keeping the radio off until I got home. So I’ve got that going for me.

Since then, I’ve been trying to give myself brief mindfulness “time outs” to practice sitting quietly with my thoughts.  What I have come to realize is that, when left to my own devices, I’m quite sad.  When I practice mindfulness, and take away all the things that distract me from my true thoughts, all I want to do is cry.  I don’t like that one bit.  Loneliness and anxiety rear their ugly heads, and I have to make a conscious effort to turn off the negative self-talk.  Between that and sobbing uncontrollably, this shit is exhausting.

Scott (the ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend) gave me a book on mindfulness and in it, the author admits that meditating is hard, and sometimes it sucks balls.  But he promises that it will get easier and it will be worth it.  We shall see.  At this point, I can't even focus on my "conscious breathing" past the count of one without my brain wandering to all kinds of nonsense, like "I wonder what kind of food they eat in Zanzibar..." and then crying because I hate being alone.  *sigh*

Still, I'm trying to stay optimistic about all of this.  Between the mindful self-compassion, meditation, and breathing techniques, I may just become an emotionally stable and functioning human being one day!  One can only hope.