i was driving home from a friend’s house, a week after arriving in michigan, when the tears began to fall. as they dripped down my cheeks, i realized they were not the occasional tears of grief, but tears of exhaustion.

this was not the exhaustion that comes from a spontaneous decision to pack up my life and move 2000 miles away. in three weeks.

no.

this exhaustion ran much deeper.

in that moment, i realized that i felt completely and totally responsible for myself.

not in the way you might think – because i am responsible for myself – but in a way where i felt absolutely alone in the world, a world in which there was no one i could turn to for anything.

and i realized that i was completely and utterly exhausted.

another day. another story.

it was a chilly michigan afternoon and my car wouldn’t start. i tried and tried to start it, but nothing happened. i know absolutely nothing about cars; when something is wrong with my car, i feel a sense of panic, completely and utterly helpless.

i was at my parents’ house, and my dad was home, so i went inside and told him that my car wouldn’t start. my dad came outside with me, got the car started, told me what happened and how to start it myself if it happened again, and went back inside.

i got in the car, put my hands on the wheel, and realized that i was crying.

right now, i am working on my relationship with abundance, with money, and i keep coming back to these stories.

i don’t even want to write about this. i am so full of confusion that i don’t know what to write. and yet i still feel compelled to do so.

maybe i am waiting for the perfect words, for the right words. to be the person who is on the other side of this, not the person who is lost and confused and in it.

i don’t know how to give up this sense that i have to do everything on my own, that i have no one to rely on but me.

intellectually, i know this isn’t true.

i can ask people for help and support.

i can ask the universe for help and support.

sometimes, rarely, i ask the universe for help. but the truth is, unless i am at my wit’s end, and just can’t see where to go from there, i don’t really mean it. (and i am hardly ever there.)

rarely, almost never, i ask a person for help. but oh, it is so hard for me: to ask for help, to receive help. even when i really need it.

how on earth is asking for help related to my relationship with money?

quite honestly, i have absolutely no idea.

when i look at my relationship with money, i find things like: “i am smart, not creative, so i can bring in money using my smartness but not my creativity.” or this: “i don’t know what i really want, and so i can’t create it.” or this: “i don’t deserve it, so i can’t receive it unless i pay for it in pain and suffering, and i’ve done so much work on my stuff that i can’t force myself to suffer anymore.”

and yet, i keep coming back to these stories.

well, there was a tiny clue related to receiving.

apparently i cannot receive.

unless i give and give and give.

but really, even if i give and give and give, i can’t receive, because the giving is just payment for whatever is on the other side of the scale to be on the scale at all.

if i somehow manage to let something in, to receive, i have to pay for it, because i didn’t deserve to receive it in the first place.

intellectually, i can see that none of this is true. i also sense that the clue about receiving is a small clue, not a large clue, and in fact it is something that has already shifted.

and yet, i am still in this place of confusion, and it is immensely frustrating to me.

i am not in resistance. i know how to look at my stuff. i am willing to look at my stuff. i like looking at my stuff. i am not afraid of what might come up in the process.

i feel like i am in a fog and i am waiting for it to lift and there will be a glorious sunrise on the other side. only i don’t know what to do to get there.

except. oh. i just now realized that i am in resistance.

i am resisting this place, this place where i am, this place of confusion.

i am here, and maybe this is a right place to be.

even if i can’t see it.

even if i don’t like it.