HONEST, NOT HONEST

I’m a little obsessed with my rollercoaster analogy right now.

My life started in an amusement park, and everywhere I looked there were people waiting in line for super cool rollercoasters. The rides looked fast and exciting. People were screaming. The thrill was palpable.

Part of me—specifically my body—was totally against riding them, but the other part of me, that cute little brain I’ve got, was 100% interested. All my friends were doing it. All the cool kids were doing it. All the rich people were telling me to do it. All the advertising was yelling that this was the best idea ever.

DON’T MISS OUT ON THE ROLLERCOASTER!

So I started standing in line.

Every once in a while, I’d chicken out and step away, only to find myself right back in it. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. For what felt like an eternity.

While I stood there, I imagined the ride. Deep down, it made me want to vomit, and yet it called to me. It captured my attention. I wanted the wind in my hair. I wanted the laughter beside my friends. I wanted the thrill.

Even if there was puke in my hair (and not just mine).

Surely that exchange was worth a little nausea, right? Plus, why was I being such a scared little wuss?

The only people standing on the ground were the weirdos with shiny, happy faces twirling hula hoops while everyone else laughed at them.

Eww. Being an outcast felt like a fate worse than death…

But I couldn’t abandon all of my individuality either, so I donned my sarcastic, zero-fucks attitude and bitched the entire time I stood in line. Which created its own problem. Because if I hated standing in line so much, shouldn’t I just…not stand in line? This level of misery couldn’t possibly be healthy. I was only mildly convinced I even wanted to be there, and at the same time I couldn’t stop wondering whether the hippies on the grass were secretly having way more fun.

With a ton of force and absolutely no confidence, I tucked all of that away and put on my best mask.

Yes, I wanted to stand in line.
Heck yeah, I couldn’t wait to ride this thing.
Nope, I wasn’t scared at all.
Totally, fuck those people over there.
Also, fuck all these people in line.

Somewhere inside me, I believed I had it all figured out. That this walking contradiction was simply the way of the world, and if I let anyone know I suspected something was wrong, I’d be destroyed. No one else was saying those horrid thoughts out loud, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the first.

And eventually, of course, I got on the rollercoaster. Because that’s apparently what you do when you’re a sheep. I was wearing wool, bleeping, and eating shrubs, so yeah—I was a sheep. And as sheep, we wait in line long enough, convince ourselves hard enough, watch enough people disappear over the first giant hill and come screaming back into the station with wild hair and adrenaline-filled eyes, and eventually the little gate swings open for us, too.

So I climbed in. Click.
Lap bar down. Click.
Another restraint across my chest. Click.

I was convinced there was no turning back now, even though every step had ultimately been my choice.

I hated the ride at first, but I also loved it. I upchucked AND laughed. At the end of my first ride, I was scared shitless, nauseous, and completely overwhelmed. And I stayed on. We all stayed on. Anyone who got off was a pussy. Even when I was so sick I could barely see straight, gripping the safety bar tighter somehow felt like a better strategy than admitting I wanted off.

Insert the moment when I realize what my parents were trying to tell me with the whole “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” thing. I spent my childhood confidently answering, “No.” And, to be fair, I avoided a lot of bridges. But this bridge? The rollercoaster bridge? Apparently I was willing to ignore every useful signal coming from my body, climb aboard with everyone else, strap myself in, and scream, “FUCK YEAH!” as a teenager, young adult, and full blown adult. Also, technically, it’s not a bridge. It’s a rollercoaster. But you get the point.

The strangest part is that time worked its magic. I got really fucking good at riding rollercoasters. I learned how to brace for the drops. I learned how to lean into the turns. I figured out exactly when to grip the bar and when to throw my hands into the air so everyone around me would know I was having the BEST TIME EVER. I rode faster rollercoasters. Taller rollercoasters. More impressive rollercoasters. I figured out which seat was best. I learned all the tricks. I learned how to hide the nausea. I learned how to smile through the fear. I learned how to make something that once terrified me look effortless.

Eventually, I became the person other people looked at and thought, “Wow, she really knows how to ride a rollercoaster!”

This is where the whole metaphor gets really confusing, and yet I think you’ll understand exactly what I mean…

Once you’re good at something, people tend to assume you like it. Hell, you tend to assume you like it. Plus, there was “evidence” everywhere.

I was successful.
I was accomplishing things.
I was being praised.
People trusted me.
People respected me.
People wanted my advice.

I could seemingly handle more than most people around me, so naturally, I kept handling more. The rollercoaster got bigger. Faster. More impressive. Somehow, all of those external metrics became proof that I belonged on it.

Look how high I can go.
Look how fast I can move.
Look how much I can carry without throwing up.

Well… without letting anyone see me throw up.

I would hop off the ride every now and then to “use the bathroom”. Perfect cover, really. It’s one of those things everyone does, so no one asks questions, and it’s also something we conveniently do behind closed doors. People would see me walk into the bathroom smiling, then they’d see me walk back out smiling ready for another ride. But what was actually happening in there? I was falling apart. Crying. Barfing my guts out. Trying to pull myself together enough to walk back outside, smile, climb into the little car, pull the restraint back over my chest, and keep riding.

What I wish I’d known then was that I probably wasn’t the only one.

I wish I had know there were people standing in that same bathroom, behind other closed doors, holding their breath and waiting for someone–maybe someone riding the biggest, fastest, bestest rollercoasters, someone who looked like she had completely mastered the whole fucking amusement park–to come busting out crying hysterically and say: “I HATE THIS. I feel sick. I will not get back on that ride. Don’t you hate it? Don’t you feel sick, too? You don’t have to get back on that ride either!”

Because that’s what was really happening. I was under some spell where I believed I couldn’t say any of that out loud.

This whole ride wasn’t all terrible though. There were parts of it I genuinely loved. This isn’t a story where I look backward and decide everything was secretly awful. It was exhilarating. It was full of adventure. There was achievement and pride. I learned so much from the experience. There were unbelievable views from the top. I met new people on that rollercoaster who are sacred loved ones in my life now. And there were moments when the car tipped over the edge and my stomach flew into my throat and I thought, “THIS. THIS IS FUCKING LIVING.”

But as life promises to do, the experience changed.

I kept teetering between insane highs and the lows of headaches, bruises, and desperation without action. Eventually, I wasn’t standing in line anymore deciding whether I wanted to join in on the fun. I lived on the rollercoaster. That was just life. Up, down, problem, solution, achievement, crash, recover, build, fix, prove, survive, celebrate.

Asking myself, “What’s next?”

And before I even had time to answer, the car was already climbing another hill. The rollercoaster didn’t come to a stop anymore. I stopped getting off to pee. I didn’t need to. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself. By then, I had forgotten about most of the things my body needed anyway. Rest, food, quiet, space, stillness… a fucking bathroom break… forgetaboutit. If I’m honest, I probably just started peeing myself in the seat. Ahhhh, the glamorous life of an infinity rider.

The fucked up part is that none of this felt dramatic anymore. It all felt flat and normalized. The highs weren’t highs. The lows weren’t lows. They were just Tuesday. My nervous system had gotten so used to the speed that anytime I wasn’t riding the scariest rollercoaster, I thought life was pointless. I was bored and unfulfilled. Slower speeds felt foreign. Quieter rides felt suspicious. Resting my arms felt lazy. Doing less felt like losing. If there wasn’t a problem to solve, I went looking for one–usually inside my marriage at the top of my lungs. If there wasn’t a hill to climb, I started wondering whether I had somehow gotten on the wrong ride.

I had become incredibly adapted to a life I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted, and because I was adapted to it, I mistook that adaptation for alignment.

Yup. I missed a critical distinction: Being good at something doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Being capable of carrying something doesn’t mean you should keep carrying it. Being able to survive a rollercoaster forever does not mean you were born to live on one.

But my journey meant that I wasn’t supposed to know that part yet. At this point, I was only supposed to learn how to function, push through, perform, keep going despite the exhaustion, and ignore all the little signals. Headache? No big deal. Tight chest? Ignore it. Clenched jaw? See a doctor. Stomach knots? Probably your period. Random tears? Knock it off. Irritability? Is anyone really happy?

Meanwhile, my whole body was whispering, “Please stop,” while my brain was already screaming, “WHAT’S NEXT, DIPSHIT?!”

Every time I ignored the whisper, the whisper got quieter, or maybe I got better at not listening. I called this strength. Overriding myself was tough. Resilience meant being able to tolerate more. Discipline meant doing the thing even when every part of you wanted to crawl into the grass and lie there face-down for six months.

Turns out, there is another version of strength. It just looks a lot less “impressive” from the rollercoasters.

Round of applause for the grassy-knoll weirdos circling their hips and having a blast, beaming ear to ear with smiles so bright they’re hard to ignore and irritating beyond hell to witness.

For reasons unknown to me, my curiosity asked me to watch them. My eyes would sneak over to them while everyone else’s on the ride were closed.

During a very rare bathroom break–which, by then, was practically scandalous enough to become amusement-park gossip–I snuck away, hid behind a tree, and watched with envy as bare feet danced on soft green blades of grass.

I didn’t stay long the first time, but I kept sneaking away from the ride to watch them. They’d stare at the clouds, and I’d find myself getting lost in them, too. As I began to routinely using the restroom, I was criticized harshly–not entirely from external forces; a lot of it was coming from inside my own head. The friends I had formed weren’t comfortable with this new arrangement of exploration either. It threatened the security of our daily agenda: ride until we pass out on the ride, then let the ride keep on keeping on.

Their voices filled me with shame, guilt, frustration, despair, and an entire list of emotions Freud would probably attribute to something involving my parents and suppressed sexual tension.

I don’t know what allowed me to keep sneaking away despite all the people–and all the voices–talking shit about me, but I did, and slowly, all those little observations of circles, hugs, bare feet, clouds, and absolutely nothing that appeared remotely important accumulated into something more concrete: doing nothing did not look boring. It looked freeing.

This was deeply inconvenience.

I had spent years building not one, but multiple, identities around being exceptional. I was competent, successful, useful, respected, needed… I knew how to win in this amusement park. So the idea of stepping off wasn’t just about changing my schedule or reducing my responsibilities. It meant risking the possibility that everything I had learned to measure myself by might not matter nearly as much on the ground. Nobody sitting on the grass was getting trophies. Nobody was applauding them for napping. There is no leaderboard for listening to their bodies. No one was giving them a promotion because they spent the afternoon singing to trees.

This unfamiliar lifestyle didn’t have metrics like the rollercoaster did. It terrified me. I was filled with so much dread about losing everything I could barely contain it, but I couldn’t stop staring. Eventually, I declared I was done riding the rollercoaster and ran away…

Not to the grass, that would have been too easy. I ran into a dark corner.

This is important because when I got bored with the dark corner, I went back to the rollercoaster.

Sad, I know, but it’s true. And I did this whole thing over again. All of it. The line, the ride, the highs, the lows, the bathroom breaks, the pretending, the exhaustion, the sneaking around, and yes, another prison break.

The only thing that had changed was that I never stopped peeking at the dancers. Even while I was strapped back into the ride, part of me kept looking toward the grass. Watching them, wanting what they had, wondering what it would feel like to stop hiding behind the tree and finally walk over and say, “Hi. Can I play?”

The less sad part about this story is that when I eventually found my self hiding in another dark corner, I didn’t return to the rollercoaster. I was too tired for that. I didn’t join the wild friends either, though. I simply sat in the dark corner and tried to pretend I wasn’t alone.

Initially, it felt like failure. I wasn’t riding anymore, but I wasn’t dancing either. I wasn’t accomplishing anything, I wasn’t becoming anyone new, I wasn’t proving anything, I wasn’t even having fun. I was just… there. And without all the noise of the rollercoaster, I could finally hear how fucking loud my own head was. It wanted a plan, a purpose, a new identity, a roadmap. A fucking twelve-step program for becoming the person who dances barefoot in the grass. Anything that could turn all this nothingness into something measurable.

But nothing came.

So I sat there, and sat there, and sat there. Long enough for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Long enough to notice there were no restraints holding me there. No lap bar, no track, no little gate, no line of people telling me where to go next. I could leave whenever I wanted, I just didn’t know where to go.

This seemed like a foundation piece of the puzzle. I had spent so much of my life moving along tracks that I didn’t know how to exist without one underneath me. The rollercoaster always told me what came next. It dictated the climbs, drops, turns, screams. Recover and repeat. Even escaping the rollercoaster had given me a direction. GET OFF.

But once I was actually off? Nothing. No giant flashing sign saying: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE ESCAPED THE ROLLERCOASTER! PLEASE PROCEED TO YOUR NEXT MEANINGFUL LIFE PURPOSE!

Rude.

I had spent my whole life trying to get somewhere, and suddenly there wasn’t anywhere I particularly needed to go. I’m fortunate, I wandered my way out of the dark. It was slow. I was filled with constant suspicion. I definitely wasn’t dancing. I was embodying more of that feral raccoon approaching a campsite vibe. A few steps towards the grass then back to the tree. Another few steps, back to the tree. After what felt like an eternity of ping ponging myself, I started spending more time out there than I did hiding. There was no single transformational moment to mark the occasion. I sure wish there was because this metaphor would be a lot more interesting if there was, but alas, no dice.

It was just the simple notion that I wasn’t on the rollercoaster anymore. Like… actually off. And there was no pull to return. None.

Somehow, I had done it. I was standing on the ground with a life that felt steady. I was stopping to pick wildflowers and listening to music like nothing was more important than that song. I had found space to love my body as it twirled in a rain storm.

The newest iteration of my life in this amusement park finally felt peaceful.

Now there is very little that needs fixing. I have dramatically less work to do. There is no great crisis unfolding. Nothing is asking me to fight for my survival, prove my worth, reinvent my life, or figure everything out. There are entire days where very little is demanded of me. I have space, quiet, choice. I can walk around naked if I want to.

This is, in so many ways, the life I wanted decades ago.

Shouldn’t that be the end of the story? Hand me a hula hoop, cue the shiny happy face, roll the credits motherfucker, we’ve made it!

Except my brain keeps looking over at the rollercoaster like: “Are we sure we don’t want to get back on?” EXCUSE ME?! Do you know how fucking hard we worked to get off that thing?

This is a confusing conundrum. I don’t want the anxiety back or the overwhelm. I don’t want to spend my life drowning in responsibility again. I don’t want another crisis. I don’t want to wake up every morning already ten steps behind. I don’t want to grip the safety bar until my knuckles turn white.

If I don’t want any of that, why does this quiet occasionally still feel like absence? Like nothing is happening. Like everyone else is still out there living and somehow I have accidentally wandered into the parking lot after park closure.

I can hear the screams from the rollercoaster in the distance and think: “That sounds kind of fun.” Again: EXCUSE ME?!

Enter my therapist. I told him that I feel like I finally got off the rollercoaster I’ve been trying to escape my entire life, and now my brain has FOMO. It feels like a cruel joke.

He shared a paper with me about active inference and it gave me an entirely different way to understand what might be happening to me now that I’m bored, filled with regret, but also in total awe of the life I’ve built.

Full disclousure: I am not a neuroscientist. I’m a lady with internet access and apparently an endless desire to understand why I am the way I am. With those highly prestigious credentials established, here’s what I took from it:

Our brains don’t simply experience reality as it arrives.

Our brains predict it.

Our brains are, to my great disappointment, computers. Not all knowing dieties.

Every experience we live gives the brain information about what the world is like, who we are inside of it, and what is probably going to happen next.

Over time, those predictions become models.

The paper calls some of these expectations “priors.” Basically, if something happens enough times, our brains get really cocky and become convinced that it’s going to happen again.

This makes sense because prediction is useful.

If the bushes rustle and a lion has jumped out of those bushes the last ten times, standing there with an open heart and curious mind waiting to discover whether this particular rustling is merely a gentle breeze is perhaps not your best evolutionary strategy.

Your limited, but useful brain says: LION! RUN.

Good brain.

The interesting part is that the brain can learn something so well that eventually its existing predictions starts carrying more weight than the new information coming in. The world can change before the brain’s model does.

Shit.

The rollercoaster looks totally different now. I have decades of evidence for a particular version of life. There is something to solve, build, anticipate. Something needs something. There is a problem coming, an opportunity coming. There is somewhere to go. There is a next version of me I need to become.

Movement means life.
Intensity means something is happening.
Responsibility means I matter.

And whatever else might be true about that life, I know how to live it. I am extremely good on the rollercoaster. We’ve established this, but my ego likes to hear repetitive compliments.

The rollercoaster exhausted me, yes, but it also oriented me, and now the information coming into my brain is completely different. Nothing is wrong, there is nowhere particularly urgent to go. I wake up and there isn’t a mountain of responsibility waiting beside the bed.

My body says: “We’re okay.”
My environment says: “We’re okay.”
My life says: “There is finally space to breath.”
My brain says: “That can’t possibly be the whole story.”

Maybe boredom is not a lack of stimulation. Maybe it’s a prediction error? My brain keeps predicting the rollercoaster and keeps receiving the ground. Again, and again, and again. It predicted urgency and encountered spaciousness. It predicted a problem and encountered an ordinary afternoon. It predicted that something would need to be figured out and discovered that nothing particularly did. It predicted becoming and encountered being.

This mismatch feels strange enough that I think (if I read this paper right) my mind immediately starts trying to resolve it.

What should I do?
What am I supposed to be doing with my life?
What am I missing?
What’s next?
Should I start something?
Should I create something?
Should I change something?
Is this really it?

As I stop being the questioner and continue being the observer watching a piece of my self ask the questions, I find that listening to those questions has immense value. The questions themselves aren’t that profound, but underneath the questions, I can see the answer. My mind isn’t receiving an urgent message that my life is empty. It’s looking for the reality is already knows how to predict.

That distinction feels enormous.

The questioner may need to ask a question and find the answer, but the observer doesn’t have to answer every question generated. It can hear: “What are we supposed to be doing?!” and respond with: “Ohhhh. You’re looking for the rollercoaster… Silly, Rocky.”

I’ve spent forty years learning the rollercoaster. I’ve spent significantly less time learning the ground. This is going to be a process and patience is my best friend.

To take this a layer deeper, apparently we don’t only form predictions about what is going to happen. We form predictions about who we are. Our brains like continuity. Yesterday’s version of me provides information about today’s version of me, and today’s version helps predict who I’ll probably be tomorrow.

So who am I on the ground?

I know who I am when something needs me. I know who I am when I’m building, leading, solving, creating, surviving, transforming, seeking, healing, figuring it all out. I have mountains of evidence of those versions of myself. They all have LinkedIn bullet points!

But who am I when none of those things are required? Who am I sitting outside with my dogs? Who am I walking through the woods without requiring the walk to become a revelation? Who am I when nobody needs my answer? Who am I when there isn’t anything to fix? Who am I if I am not moving toward a more evolved version of myself?

Apparently, I am me. Still me.

This is an embarrassingly obvious intellectual idea, but clearly I have to keep asking it while time passes and I settle into this new information.

I exist when I’m useful AND I exist when I’m not.
I belong when I’m achieving AND I belong when I’m sitting in the grass.
I am alive when my heart is pounding AND I am alive when absolutely nothing is happening.

This framework helped me to see that the goal isn’t to convince myself that I love the ground now. Ha! That would be such a rollercoaster-person thing to do… I can already see myself turning this phase into another achievement. MASTER STILLNESS IN SIX EASY STEPS. I will become the most grounded person. I can measure my heart rate and track my barefoot hours and win at hula hooping. I will optimize healing like I’m a first-rate shaman.

No.

What I’m seeing is flexibility for myself. I can let my brain slowly learn that life can feel like this, too. Nothing happening does not mean something is wrong. Quiet does not mean I have lost the thread. Rest does not mean I am irrelevant. Boredom does not mean I chose incorrectly. A lack of urgency does not mean a lack of aliveness. I do not have to manufacture a problem simply because I know how to solve one. I don’t need another transformation in order to remain myself.

There is something incredibly funny about realizing I may have spent my entire life trying to get here, only to arrive and discover that arriving requires its own kind of adjustment. I thought getting off the rollercoaster would feel like relief.

Sometimes it does and sometimes it’s boring as hell.

I don’t need to get back on though. I do not need another ride. I do not even need to know what happens next. I am learning to stay here long enough for my whole self to discover what my life already knows.

The ground isn’t where I wait for life to happen.

The ground IS my life.

So…

Hi. Can I play?