The Anxiety Of An Echoing House
I’ve been feeling really anxious and emotional this week. Anxiety is common for me, and when I feel it, there is usually a cause. The cause wasn’t obvious to me and since my Life Coach isn’t available til July, I knew it was something I’d have to figure out on my own.
So I grabbed the air pods, put on some acoustic folk music and decided to walk. I walked quickly until I felt my body start to burn the anxiety away. It’s sort of like clearing a flower bed of winter debris. You can’t see what’s there until you clear the gunk away.
When my body started to tire, a simple idea presented itself: “I know how to be a wife, but I don’t know how to be a girlfriend.”
That was an interesting thought. What did it mean?
Honestly, I’m not sure I AM a girlfriend, not yet, but I am seeing someone wonderful and we’re having trouble, well, seeing each other. We have opposite parenting schedules so when he has his kids, I don’t have mine. When I have mine, he doesn’t have his. And we both have busy lives. He has some travel coming up and there just isn’t space to see me. It’s okay. It really is. I understand it.
Why the anxiety then?
Because I don’t know how to be in this spot of dating-but-sorta-not, or rather, I don’t know who to be. How much do people dating see each other? Once a week? Once a month? What’s the new normal I’m supposed to have right now? Are we dating if we don’t see each other for a month? What are the rules?
And then I walked some more and I realized it’s not really this new dating experience that’s causing these feelings of anxiety. It goes deeper than that.
The real core of my anxiety is that I don’t know how to be in this life I’m creating.
I remember when I bought this house and I finally had the keys. I brought over some boxes, and I just walked around the empty rooms, my footsteps echoing on the bare wooden floors. The walls free of pictures. No furniture. The fireplace cold. It was just an empty house.
Walking around, I could see specters of what would be. Not ghosts of the past, but ghosts of the future: the Christmas tree by the window, my kids and I sitting down for dinner, my back porch at night with the fairy lights on, friends sitting around laughing and talking in that slow murmur that floats in the air. I could feel that this house would be filled with good things and good people and that I would be safe here and loved.
And that has come true. I have filled my house with color, stoked the fire in the fireplace, added comfy chairs, blankets, couches. My kids and I sit at a white table with pretty dishes and we have dinner. And the Christmas tree was just as I imagined.
Now that I have the physical space I yearned for, I’m now filling my interior space. It’s like, right now, my inner house where my soul resides, is vast and still echoing. There is the space of crazy wonderful chaos where my kids are and where my love for them dances, and the flickering lights where a few close friends chat. There’s my warm kitchen where I cook and sing. There’s the interior space filled with lush green and growing things where I am creative, where I try new things, where I walk until my body trembles.
There are spaces though that still echo. The place for more laughter, for more adventures, for more love.
I want to fill my interior house and it’s the echoing that is scary to me.
The thing is, I can’t expect a single person to fill that space. It’s MY house. And while they can share some of my house with me, I have to fill it first with the things that matter to me. A house isn’t a home because of one thing or one person; a house is a home because of the many experiences within it.
Not so long ago, I was a wife and I knew what that was and what it meant. And now, I’m just… me. A mom sometimes. A friend sometimes. A lover sometimes.
I am a house filled with many things.
When I finally got home after an hour or so of moving my body, my mind felt a little better.
I don’t need to know how to be a girlfriend. There is no need for rules here. It is enough that I’m just me, in my house, filling my life with the things and people that matter to me.
It takes time to make a house a home.
I’m finally, slowly, learning how to be my own safe space.
****
TANYA EBY is a performer and a writer. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her two kids and two dogs. Her home is colorful, and comfortable, and sometimes messy. Her interior life is much the same. :)