Genesis: Project NO to be deleted
It began with a significant, borderline serious mental health full-stop. Minutes before midnight. On Valentine’s day. In the year of our Lord: Twenty-twenty-three.
Now, I’ve had meltdowns and sitdowns and breakdowns before. I’ve even had life-changing bathroom floor moments ala Elizabeth Gilbert, but this was completely different. This was a strange combination of panic, anxiety, grief, confusion, resentment, anger, thirst, and memory mixed together in a marbled cacophony. This had me so at my own edges of sanity that I was considering the option I actively rule out: mainstream psychiatric counseling. I met myself in the middle by settling on finding a 12-step program meeting with CODA, Codependents Anonymous, and that satisfied the issue for a couple days.
Then… Valentine’s Day came and went, and right as it was exiting through the front freaking door complete with a door slam, I realized what I really needed was just to practice saying No.
Years ago, before it was popular, I adopted the habit of saying yes to nearly everything, but it wasn’t because I was on a quest or because I wanted to write a book about it. I said yes because I didn’t want to miss out on a life that had been denied me for the first 20 years of my life. I didn’t want to disappoint people by turning them down, although I did; I did turn them down on occasion, and I did disappoint. I said yes because while I wasn’t afraid to be alone (solo trips to the restaurant and movie theater are essential life skills, by the way), I was tired of being lonely. But most of all, I said yes to everyone but myself, and while it brought me life experiences and good times, it also kept me from a level of self-care I didn’t know I needed let alone a level I knew existed. I neglected to say yes to myself because I didn’t know I had a self to say yes to. Until I almost lost her.
So there I was, in my bed, alone, curled up under my weighted blanket and more, calling out to God yet again, when the answer came. PROJECT NO: ONE WOMAN’S QUEST TO FIND FOCUS AND EMOTIONAL FREEDOM. That’s it! I’ll write a book! My dream pursued!!!
I knew that the first week would be a settling in period, a time when I lived with the idea, examining my daily life to see how it would fit. I bought a calendar to keep track of my progress in tiny notes, and I lavished myself with oral processing into my voice memo app on my phone so I could sort through the complex emotions and racing thoughts while I figured this thing out. See? Even that run-on sentence expresses the chasing and racing I was in.
Then, tonight, February 20, it came to me.
It’s not a book—it’s a blog. A daily journal of what I said no to today.
I expect it to be clunky at first, and I haven’t decided if I will backtrack my entries or just move forward in real time, but I feel really good knowing that I have found the outlet and support structure to guide myself out of that mindfudge I was uncomfortably close to. See, that mental health full-stop isn’t something that someone else can fix or medicate; it’s something that I must sift through myself. And while I believe wholeheartedly in the 12-step format, it isn’t a match for me, not for this time of my life. No, this is about saying No to the world so I can say yes to myself, so I can find the focus and emotional freedom I so richly have earned.
