When I’m not dissociating, life is beautiful

Do you ever have those moments when you’re driving and the perfect song comes on, the windows are down and suddenly your overactive mind lets go for 3:37 seconds and life feels full of endless possibilities?

Just me? Moments like that remind me of the quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower which everyone posted on their Tumblr pages in the early 2000s: “In that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

It’s cliche, but for 3:37 seconds, I felt infinite.

I’ve been ruminating lately on the notion of external validation. I was speaking with someone recently and she was talking about how she keeps re-downloading dating apps. She will match with someone, she will carry the whole conversation, and inevitably become frustrated and end up deleting the whole app, only to continue that vicious cycle 3 weeks later. Patterns in our life reemerge to tell us something. We are bored. We are numbed out. We are seeking something beyond ourselves as distraction and sometimes distraction is other people. Wanting to feel seen – even if for a moment: for a right swipe, a smile on the street, a good morning text. We want our existence to feel validated.

I had a conversation this week that made me feel anything but validated. A career conversation that left me feeling embarrassed and defeated. I won’t share the conversation, because the details aren’t important, but I should have read the room: neither of us were ready to have that conversation and it ended with one of us projecting and the other feeling insecure.

I probably shouldn’t have skipped therapy this week. I’m going to enjoy the sunshine and chase that infinite feeling once again.

Reminder: Tell the people in your life how much you appreciate them and never mix retinol and vitamin C serums together. Ever.

Until then.