Being A Drama Queen Was My Safe Zone, But I’m Quitting. Will You Join Me?
I admit I have a flair for the dramatic.
I can quickly go down the rabbit hole into total and utter despair, conjuring up all the absolute worst-case scenarios and how I would manage them. I have an addictive personality that feeds this dramatic tendency or perhaps my dramatic tendencies feed my addiction?
Either way, I do drama, I do catastrophizing, I do case building, I do feed the story and oh my, do I take shit personally – I try not to but I do, I do, I do.
I wonder why, what purpose does my drama creation serve?
Any drama queen (moi) or king can tell you stories, great dramatic stories. One may go like this: their flat tire was the worst flat tire ever. They will regale you with how it was not just rainy that day, it was raining like it has never rained before.
How not only did one car drive right past with nary a look, but hundreds just sped by, leaving them totally helpless. How they were sure they would die out there because no one was ever going to stop to help them.
They can describe every detail in embellished clarity and the story gets more dramatic every time they tell it, that is until another drama comes along which needs undivided attention and nurturing to grow, and so it goes…
For we girls know the obsession of that first love, of writing your name with his last name, of dreaming about the wedding, the house, the children, and the forever romance. We create all this loving drama and live it deep in our hopes, dreams, cells and bones, until one day it comes crashing down, and then it is the end of the world.
You will never love like that again, never, ever, ever. Seriously, never! It does not matter that the object of your intense desire did not know you were alive, it was love.
Once it hurls to the ground, crushing our being, we then create all the unloving drama. I am not good enough, not loveable, ugly, fat, my eyes are too blue, damn God, etc. How many times and in how many ways do we repeat this pattern in our lives? I confess, I have, I do, I feed.
The situations (love, friendship, job, diet, unworthiness, school, divorce, etc.) may come and go, but the drama goes on.
All this drama filters our worlds, all the past drama, all the present drama, all the drama you worry about creating in the future — and don’t think you don’t do that, you do.
Every time you worry, every time you don’t do something because of fear, or hang on with a death grip to a situation or a person who is dragging you down, you create future drama.
We have all known people who suck every last bit of life out of us with their drama, we all know what it is to avoid that person or to try to remove them from your life, but what if that person is you? How do you remove you from you? How do you stop sucking the life out of yourself?
Perhaps I had a propensity for drama because I did grow up in some chaos, was an only child who was abandoned several times, moved a lot, was in a cult-like religion, starting drinking at seven, saw a knife being held to my mother’s throat by my then father, left home at 13, blah, blah, blah.
Perhaps I did feel like life was out to get me, but let’s face it, life is not fair, it’s just life. Sometimes we have control over the situations we are in, and sometimes we do not.
When I wonder about what purpose drama has had, and at times continues to serve, I can clearly see it has stopped me from being present. Granted, at times my present sucked so much that was not a bad thing, it helped me compartmentalize and cope.
However, it has also stopped me from being present when my present did not suck, when in fact, it was pretty fucking awesome. It has stopped me from living fully in this moment, right now. It has stopped me from fully accepting and loving myself. It has kept me sad and fearful.
I understand those feelings are comfortable for me, a safe zone if you will. I know what to do with those feelings; I got that part down pat. What I am learning is how to just be, drama-free be, in-the-present-moment-where-there-is-nothing-wrong be.
I suspect I could have been an amazing actor with my dramatic flair. When I review my life and the drama I have created, note, not the drama of happenstance, but the drama I created, it truly has been much ado about nothing.
When I scan my life, I discover life, with its ups, downs, joys and losses. I discover not one of those experiences was a personal attack on me. I discover my self-worth need not be linked to my drama. I discover that my self-created drama does not make me interesting, it makes me tiring.
Today, life does not feel like a personal attack, it may in the future, but today, I do not believe that there is some credo entitled f.a.w.t.f.o.r. (find a way to fuck over Rhonda) being read while diabolical plans are developed by conspirators around the boardroom of doom.
What is your drama about? Drama colors our view and changes how we see the world and the people in it. Do you like your view? Drama changes our energy at every level of our being. How is your energy?
This is not about comparing drama; we all love to do that, don’t we? We love to give rank to our pain. This is not about comparison or competition, it is not about denying the drama and pain that has been in our lives; instead, it is about pondering whether the drama serves you well or keeps you small.
It is about whether the drama brings people to you or moves them away, it is about the energy that your drama consumes and the energy you emit back out into the world through your drama.
Just as we all know the life-suckers, we also know of or have witnessed courageous people who came back from horrors that I know I would not be able to survive. What is the difference? They do not create or live in drama. The difference I have witnessed can be summed up in two things: acceptance and gratitude.
Acceptance that life is life, that shit happens, that great joy and pain will come.
Gratitude that life is life, that shit happens, that great joy and pain will come.
I have watched these amazing people; they have inspired me to make a bold move: I am quitting drama school.
I have been in for too long, it has been consuming too much of my time, and there is no real future in it. I have decided to change courses, I am signing up for acceptance and gratitude — two places that are totally drama-free!
Will you join me?
*****
Rhonda Cochrane is a Yoga instructor, personal trainer, life coach, Ironman competitor, athletic coach, lover of all things spicy, and an aspiring author. She has a passion for helping others realize their strength and potential through all forms of physical movement.
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