Too Much

"You do too much."

I heard this a lot when I was 25, from the very best mirrors in the entire world: incarcerated youth.

They said it quietly, and with such disdain.

It was exactly the lesson I needed at the time.

I learned to do too much.

I was doing too much all the time.

I look back and think, "for what? For WHAT?"

When I first looked at my codependency, I saw myself deep in the business of literal strangers, projecting out several steps to where they *might* need my assistance.

Like... for WHAT though?

For what was I doing so much??

One answer was "to keep prisoners." In my case, this was literal. I had to do too much paying attention to every little thing, because I was keeping kids in jail.

The more control I enact over a sovereign being, the more I am a slave to maintaining that control. Keeping watch over a prisoner is its own type of cell. Being in that cell, literally spending nights sleeping in a prison, it was too obvious to ignore, and it freed me from all my other control patterns, in the end.

Another answer was "to make money." I did too much to make money. As soon as I got my head above water to a white collar profession, I saw the way less effort made more money. Those making more money were doing it with less effort. The more that worked, the less effort they applied.

The final answer, the final boss of self-fulfilling prophecies, was "to earn love." Adults in my childhood were unstable, unpredictable, lying through their teeth. They often gave me beautiful love, and other times showed me I wasn't worthy of it. I learned I had to do things, unknown mysterious things, I had to guess things to do to earn love. Whatever love came, I credited to my love-earning practice, so it was clear I had to keep up all the effort.

Far edgier for me than "doing the hard work" has been doing less and less. Doing it easier and easier. Taking things lighter, choosing silly over serious, allowing space for so much nothingness as to achieve boredom.

Those kids were right. I was doing too much.

Life doesn't require all that. It's as easy as right now.

Right fucking now.