Expectancy versus Expectation

I have a touch of a cold. Nothing major. Just enough to contribute to my psychological and emotional malaise of the last couple of weeks. Nothing feels simple right now and many things feel heartbreaking. I am finding the things I am dealing with go to the bottom of my soul, into anterooms of shame. It's like everything that has happened to me in the last decade is conspiring to open up those rooms and reveal what is in them. What is in them are feelings of smallness, insignificance. I can't tell you how ugly and stupid I feel right now. I'm hoping that some sort of healing is going on. Cause you never can quite tell at the time.

I am reminded of the difference between living with expectancy and living with expectations. My expectations at the moment are that I will be able to continue on my creative path - whose wheels have kinda fallen off a bit lately. It's all I can do to get my morning pages done, and do some of The Artist's Way, and at least aim to get some artist dates under my belt but pitifully failing most weeks. My expectations are that I will continue on my healing path and get out of this extended season of self-absorption. I want to find some community. I want to find new people to share my life with. I want to be able to be vulnerable enough to open myself up to new friendships and relationships without feeling like my guts are spilling out the sides. Some days I think I'm almost there. Other days I feel like this whole little trip to fix some of Susie's more sordid interior bits will never. ever. end.

Now, none of these expectations are bad in themselves. But when they're not happening in the way I want, then the secondary things that follow from that cut in and try to cut me off at my knees, make me feel a million times worse, if I let them. The difference between expectations and expectancy is that one is centred on myself, and basically ends up being all about how I am failing to do whatever it is I've set for myself. The other is centred on the moment, on God, on all the good parts of life, and does whatever is there in front of me to do. It's a place that I long to return to. It's a place that has been elusive these past few weeks. My meditation has gone out the window and that single thing alone is enough to send me reeling from living in expectancy into thrashing myself with the whip of expectation.

Sigh. Why does it have to be all so godamn difficult?