Redefining the ‘Comfort Zone’

I still laugh to myself when I say that I’m casually [short-term / he is moving] dating a man who has a wife and a six-year-old kid. Ethical non-monogamy & polyamory in general is a concept that I’m still trying to wrap my head around comfortably.

The truth is I haven’t been comfortable in a long time even before he came along. I have been working outside my comfort zone for six months navigating what it means to be a single woman at thirty from spending more than half of her twenties in a serious relationship with a woman.

I’ve been navigating working at a start-up for the first time ever where being ‘scrappy’ and being comfortable with ‘building the plane as we fly it’ minus well be the values rather than the wordy ones they picked for the investors.

With all of this being said, I’m trying to find my comfort zone again. I’m scouring every part of my brain and heart to feel something familiar, but when I look around everything is new. My apartment, my body, my thoughts, my boundaries, and my relationships. There isn’t anything around me that reminds me of a ‘comfortable’ place.

Some would say that, that is a good thing. That I am on the precipice of growth and establishing a new, hopefully better sense of ‘self’. When things get hard though; like when your parents don’t talk to you anymore because you set a boundary, like when your apartment catches fire and you are forced to grieve your old life, you’re navigating a new relational lifestyle where jealousy is something you’re actively fighting, AND you’re trying to find your new self underneath all the discomfort?

Where’s my blankey? My nightlight? My stuffy or my cuddles? They’ve been tossed due to the smoke and simply, no one is here but me.

That in itself is another major discomfort after living with someone for the past 4 years or so up until January. The cherry on top is she has already found another girlfriend and is bringing her to mutual friend events. Today I left my friend’s house before they could show up for the fourth of July festivities because I didn’t want to watch the live action of her moving on. Even if I was the one to break it off in the first place, I didn’t want any more discomfort than I already have.

I think the point of all of this is that in times like these, how do people build new comfort zones from unchartered territory?

Do we force it with hook-ups and sex? What about food, drinking, weed? Perhaps comfort in taking care of ourselves and movement. Comfort in going into the deeper past and memories; going through old photo albums and journals.

Regardless, when I’m sitting in bed at 11:45 P.M on a Friday night watching Sex And The City on mute, I look around my apartment thinking, “this is so very different.” When I’m sitting alone on my balcony drinking my morning coffee and letting the thoughts free flow through my brain I think to myself once more, “this is so very different.”

I’m not the same person I used to be a little over six months ago. If I went back, I wouldn’t recognize her. She was comfortable.

Comfortably oblivious to how lacking her life truly was.

Maybe sorting through my mind, heart and soul for a new comfort that isn’t so familiar right now isn’t a bad thing at all.

What if comfort will now feel like:

— Trusting myself more; that I can get through what comes next with how far I’ve come already.

— Psychological safety from the people who were never there for me the way I asked them to be via boundaries.

— Looking at myself in the mirror to find someone who cares about her body now.

— The calm of walking into my empty apartment knowing its safe. It’s my home and my home only; a place to feel how I need to feel whenever I feel it.

— Letting my body marinate in the discomfort and getting used to it so that I’m stronger going forward and don’t need to rely on temporary fixes like sex, alcohol, shopping, and food.

Comfort will come in the way that I need it to. It will look and feel different but then become familiar once more. It will mold and shape with wherever my life takes me. I still have a long way to go before I reach it fully, but that is okay, and I will be okay.

Who will I be in the next six months? I will look back at this post and this all will look completely different. It could be stretched, absent, abudant, confusing, chaotic, or carefree.

Either way I got me and that’s comfort in itself.