The elusive neutral zone

I’ve often spent time in rooms full of like-minded people who are focused on their spiritual and emotional growth. In one of those rooms recently, someone mentioned a tendency that I am all too familiar with — the extremes of either being obsessed with or indifferent to people, places, things or events. 

I’ve been an extremist in many areas of my life, but particularly in romantic relationships — I think about you every minute of every day, or I completely cut you out of my mind and heart. There is no middle ground.
 
I’ve come to realize that this approach is more than a little nutty and certainly not emotionally healthy. (Perhaps this is why I am blissfully single right now. But I digress.)

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Yep, finding emotional neutrality is a damn lofty goal, and I find it elusive more often than not. Even when my world is calm, peaceful and drama-free; even when I am legitimately content with my surroundings, I am continually amazed at my ability to invent shit to obsess about.
 
Like: “Sure, I have steady income, but that could all dry up tomorrow. I will lose my house, be forced to re-home my dogs and move to a cardboard box behind a liquor store. In no time, I will be eating out of a dumpster and begging for change.”
 
Or: “Sure, my son is adulting really well NOW, but what if he is in the wrong place at the wrong time, or just does something stupid to get arrested? Worse, what if he gets in a car with his drunk buddies, doesn’t wear his seatbelt and ends up thrown from the twisted wreckage by the side of the highway? And then he’s paralyzed, or worse?”
 
Welcome to my crazy brain. Sure, some of this stuff could happen, but it probably won’t. And I have no control over whether it does or not. None whatsoever.
 
I used to believe that worry was preventative, i.e., if I vigilantly fretted over certain outcomes, they wouldn’t happen. And then the minute I stopped agonizing about something, it would drop down on my head like a hydrogen bomb.
 
Of course, that’s all bullshit. I think it was Joyce Meyer who said, “Worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have.”
 
Sometimes, I obsess about smaller stuff, or dumb crap that has already happened. Like why the jackass in the Kroger parking lot cut me off. I have been known to spend HOURS trying to figure out what that idiot could possibly have been thinking, not to mention what I could have done differently to either avoid it or reprimand him. (Why didn’t I lay on the horn??)

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Again, I can’t do a damn thing about any of this. Fortunately, I have an awareness of my tendency to obsess, and I also have the tools today to find a balance between caring too much and not giving a good goddamn at all.
 
One of those tools is learning to detach from a person or situation with love and kindness. Detaching doesn’t have to mean indifference or coldness — I can still be nice to you even if I choose to disentangle myself from your drama.
 
Another tool (perhaps my most essential one) is letting go and trusting that my higher power is going to take care of me, and I don’t have to know what that “care” looks like. Historically, it’s been better than anything I could have ever imagined.
 
My life today is full of acceptance, love and grace. I’ve allowed myself to weep for the life I thought I was supposed to have (and didn’t get) so I could let that shit go and embrace the life that I got. Which is pretty damn great, if I do say so myself.
 
No, I didn’t marry and raise kids in the suburbs with the perfect husband who has the perfect job. I am not the perfect mother. I don’t have the perfect house or the perfect car.
 
Perfect is not only overrated, it’s nonexistent. Even people who appear to have the perfect lives don’t. I’ve accepted that I can achieve good or even great, but I can’t have perfect.
 
That is such an enormous relief, you have no idea.
 
All I really know today is that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, and that the healthiest and most productive thing I can do is to live in the moment and not dwell on all that is past and all that will come.
 
Being still and being grateful is the best cure I know for both obsession and indifference. Sure, my brain could launch me back into either war zone any minute, but for now I’m going to sit quietly on my porch with a cup of coffee and find my neutral zone.
 
Just call me Switzerland.