Tomorrow or another day, I’ll answer Gideon’s Day 17 on the Seven book. Why do we Sevens need extreme experiences to feel alive? (em, I don’t. do i?) What pain are we avoiding to get the drug-like adrenaline hit? (all of it. but that’s just the cheeky-smart-butt answer, even if it may be true.)
Looking at Day 17 properly, now that I’m awake, Gideon tells a story that ends with his friend “spend[ing] that night throwing up as his body processed the stress of our experience.” The next line went, “It had been terrifying. I was exhilarated and felt alive.”
He ends off with “Only a Seven can read about being beaten with rods, pelted with stones, and shipwrecked and experience FOMO.”
I am amused, because I see how, as an Enneagram Seven, I’d be able to take the perspective of “COOL. Tell me everything!”
But do I want that? An extreme rush of adrenaline and think that it’s life?
Why do we Sevens need extreme experiences to feel alive?
Extreme? Perhaps I need a bit of perspective, because what I consider normal might be extreme to others…
Ah. I know where this fits. I chased highs in relationships. I kind of miss the time when Jarrod and I were getting to know each other and trying to figure out if we liked– he already knew he liked me, so really it was him waiting for me to figure out that I liked him and that I was safe.
We comfortable now. It’s good, I’m not complaining, I’m actually really grateful we’re calm and safe and steady, and surprises are pleasant. It’s life now, together, no time-consuming, mental takeover, all-effort-in phase. I recognise it’s a phase — imagine if we spent all our life in that stage, nothing would ever progress and we won’t be where we are now.
It makes me wonder if I spend so much time in limbo in my business because I like the uncertainty. Starting something new is always fresh and exciting. Having a few things up in the air is potential: sizzling, waiting to be turned into steak and sauce and sides, or to dissipate into the air. (When no one knows, isn’t it exciting??)
The everyday is sleepy compared to it, and no wonder I end up sleeping half the day away.
But the everyday is where the work happens, the real work. Like me, here, typing on my blog, this is everyday. Without knowing, I’m working on my mind, my ability to craft messages out of my brain, putting one word after another, one letter after another.
I’ve convinced myself that life only matters when you’re striving, in flow, dancing, deep in something that takes all of me. Can you really blame me? It’s what the movies show, how the books read, what the songs sing. We skip the everyday experiences and show the highlights, so much that I think life has to be a highlight or it doesn’t mean anything, because it’s not worth showing.
It’s like dying and going to the place where you’re being judged and all they show is a lifetime of laundry and routine. Even if that’s real life.
Strangely, because I’m making tiktok vidoes almost every night, I’m seeing the point of consistency and the mundane everyday. Skills stack over a lifetime, by a little bit every day.
The books that I’m working on for my clients, this website that I’m building for myself, it’s all in the little everyday moments. On the floor in my parents’ home, in café chairs in front of a drink, on the steps of the Esplanade.
This isn’t Gideon’s question, but
What highlight do I want in my life?
If the everyday builds, little by little, what would I like to have, to be judged on, when I am dead?
What thing can I create that others can hold and use and help themselves with? What did I learn that I can say I’ve grown with? What did I make that I am proud of and want to show off with my name and face beside it?
I’m really proud of the relationship I’ve built with Jarrod. I’m proud of who I’ve become to be the person Jarrod wants in his life: I’ve grown to work through some big issues and traumas, I’m a lot more stable, I’m a lot more aware of my own state and tendencies and I choose against them sometimes.
Jarrod’s a highlight, because he is wonderful, and he’s a part of my highlight, because he sees though excuses and so I have to face up to my own truths. He’s a mirror, and I’m told that’s what the best relationships are, and I have to love what I see.
There’s a book inside me. There are topics that I will one day need to speak of. Not just to myself, but in speaking to myself, I speak to the world.
One part of me knows that I’ll end up on stage. I am both young and old and just the perfect age to begin. Old enough to tell my stories, young enough to be open to learning.
The work that I’m doing for others is just to prepare me. I’ll have work until I learn the lessons, then I’ve got to flow on my own journey (as in, work on my own things, not that I am alone).
Back to Gideon’s question:
What pain are we avoiding to get the drug-like adrenaline hit?
The pain of being alone. Of facing life and realising it was empty, going as far as I can to find the light of sparklers without knowing that I am running away from the work of laying the wires to the lights that are bright enough to shine to the heavens.
Chasing highs because in that drug-addled state, I don’t have to think, don’t have to judge, don’t have to choose — life happens to me, and I lie to myself and say that it’s enough, smothering myself even more if a tiny awake part of me peeps up to say it isn’t.
The same way drugs are not the problem, it is a solution to a problem, adrenaline isn’t a problem, I’m using it to run.
Nothing can feel wrong if I’m high. Nothing feels empty. There are no responsibilities except to follow the feeling.
If I’m high, I can’t feel sad. I won’t be angry. I won’t feel the rage I own against myself for leaving my own life. Or the rage I feel against the others who left me too.
I won’t sink to rock bottom, underneath the ocean, look up at the shadows looming, huge, realising that I am small, tiny, miniscule, and still enough to get myself out of this. (No one’s going to save me, even though everyone’s willing to play with me.)
If I’m high, I don’t have to deal with how the journey back to earth is going to be hard.
Easier to be a helium balloon, even if I hate how empty it feels (and to avoid that, I get higher still).
*phew*
That was heavy, and that was me, not too long ago. Some parts of it are still me, but the distance from earth to high to ocean floor, I think, is shrinking.
I carry so much rage it surprises me, and I don’t know what to do with it. It is clear that I need to come back to me. To choose myself and allow it to be wrong and sad and hard.
Because that’s the only way to make it right, to fill it with real joy, to lay the wires to my own lights.
To do the work to learn, to write that book, to get on that stage.
I don’t need to keep running away.
💖
