In Toy Story 3, Buzz Lightyear gets reset to demo mode. This makes him forget his friends, causes him to speak and act as he did for most of the first Toy Story movie, and makes him subservient to the main villain. Later, his friends manage to turn him back to his usual self. As odd as this might sound, that does a good job describing my life over the past several years.
If you’ve read any of my posts since 2022, then you’ve probably seen references to my dog Sawyer, his death just over three years ago, and the tremendous amount of pain that that caused me. The day Sawyer died, I regressed almost immediately to feeling scared, sad, and angry almost all the time. It was as if all the progress I had made over the past few years with emotional intelligence and feeling better all went away in an instant. I was back to having all the anxiety, anger, and depression that I had after graduating from high school. My shyness skyrocketed, as did the fear and discomfort I felt around most other humans.
Although I’ve released a lot of pain and feel much better now than I have in years, I still have far more struggles than I did before that horrible reset. The openness I had in social situations is largely gone. Both the pain of losing Sawyer and the pain of many humans taking advantage of me has caused me to close up and only show my heart to a handful of trusted humans. I fear being taken advantage of and hurt all over again. I rarely go out socially anymore, especially when it’s just to talk or hang out with others and there’s not a major activity to focus on. This is all compounded by the fact that I have much less time now to work through lingering pain than I did over the last few years, which also makes it much harder to progress at this point. As such, I still haven’t gotten back to the high level of peace, joy, and inner strength I had in September 2021, or even the fairly comfortable level I was on just a few days before Sawyer died. I don’t know if I ever will get back to either of those places or to an even higher place, and I fear that I won’t.
There are some things that give me hope that I will return to that wonderful state of being. One of them is how much pain I’ve released in the years since Sawyer’s death. It’s easy for me to forget at this point just how miserable I felt, and sometimes I don’t notice how much better in comparison I feel now. Releasing all that pain has allowed me to hold down a steady day job once again without breaking down in tears or otherwise being unable to work due to overwhelming pain. The healing plus the money from my job have both allowed me to thoroughly enjoy my trips to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the Magic Kingdom this year. Going to both parks by myself and having so much fun at each one showed me that I’m still able to go on adventures, have a great time, and make wonderful memories along the way.
My life feels like it’s finally settling down after many years of turmoil. I’ve gotten used to my job schedule and have figured out how to make good use of my time away from work, especially on the weekends. Although my mood is still far lower than it was for part of 2021, it’s much higher than it was for most of the years since 2022. That’s encouraging. I hope to continue having fun adventures, releasing old pain wherever I can, hanging out with lots of cool animals, and maintaining good relationships with a few good humans. That, I believe, is doable.