Hard

Getting out of bed is hard, making breakfast is hard, remembering appointments is hard, going outside is hard, deciding on a healthy thing for the day is hard, staying vigilant is hard, getting up from the nap is hard, meeting friends is hard, making appointments is hard, writing is hard, taking photos and developing them is hard, watching a movie is hard, taking a shower is hard, playing a story game is hard, remembering to drink water is hard, shopping is hard, breathing is hard.

Highly subjective, indeed! What’s hard –and what isn’t– varies greatly from human experience to human experience.

Often times it seems a great compliment, if you make something look easy. Finishing a video game is seen more honourable, the higher the chosen difficulty was, and driving a manual separates the drivers of the street.

The more we are able, the less things are hard. It will shift with age and experience(s), but for every person, regardless of age, there will always be things that are harder and things that are easier.

Only we are not always too honest about the level of difficulty, be it in order to appear strong in front of others or in front of our very selves.
A rather advanced method, which I haven’t mastered in the slightest yet, is not thinking about the thing at hand at all. This makes the words easy and hard irrelevant, up until the bare physical level.
As getting started with anything is universally harder, we would win over others by downplaying the difficulty: “It’s easy!” and kids might hear this more often than adults.
But we then learn, pretty soon, that the hard way yields more rewards, especially in terms of recognition of others, and they sure will tell us.

On productive ventures, we make every effort to get things to be easier, not harder.
So, looking at our lives as a productive venture, we appear successful by having an easy time wherever we are and whatever we do.
As when we portray hard times, people are having a hard time in turn to relate, to solve or just to be exposed to that hardship. Mind you, this can be rewarding for them in its own way and would likely make it easier for us.
As explored earlier, we might stretch the perception of reality to convince ourselves (and others) of easiness or hardship (I like to stay away from the latter). But if the motives are noble, we are not causing harm by telling tales of ease to those around us.
Up to a point, again.

This is what I always aimed for in life: To have all around me have an easy time. With more or less success, I worked myself into a state of apparent ease, and that’s how people know me.
Until I couldn’t stretch my own perception any further.
Until I noticed the pain of showing ease only to the outside.
Until I wouldn’t have any energy to carry my shiny suit of armour.
Because more things are hard for me than I have been admitting.

One of the hardest things in this process of change is admitting it. Admitting that you indeed have a hard time, even worse: That you had a hard time for a long time. And that you still want to make things easy for everyone involved in your life, just not the way it used to go.

There was a time, when I managed as a well-put-together person, but now even logically trivial things seem to be a challenge daily. Or were they always? Where did I take the ability to do them?

Living an adult life and also being out of energy takes away all cushioning and lets me feel the bumps fully now.
Why are all those things hard? Because I lost the context for them, for the things that drove me internally, the things that are just there, and you don’t even recognize them, until they are missing.
Call it the autism or ‘how I operate’, I have always been thinking in a meticulous way about my reasons, my drives, my motives, my higher goals. I can’t do anything ‘just because’, it is unbearable.

So, was it the tight routines, going to work daily, living inside cosy Hotel Mama™, the leftovers from the energy reserves of past years, or all of them together, that made me hold up my life?
The question for this year is: How do I get my life back in a healthy order and live easier and more honest with myself and with you as the people around me?

Luckily, I have much support, love, compassion and hope still. Those create a promising environment for Sir Oliver to Evolve! ❤️