Despite my hopes for instant and wild fame as a result of blogging, it's always been something of a personal journal. A journal is a place where you don't have to have all the answers, you won't be graded on how well you argued your point, and it's okay to not have a point at all. I don't have bullet points today, and if I don't feel hopeful at the end of writing it, then I just won't end on a hopeful note.
I do love it when people give glowing reviews of whatever I have to say or I get praise for being "so honest". But it's not an achievement for me. There's always another layer I haven't reached or shared yet, not because it's too dark or too personal, but just because I'm a work in progress. In my mind - most days - I Have Arrived. The way I am is the culmination of everything I've said and felt and been and done up until now and I can't be any more than that. But I forget that tomorrow will add to that and I never really Arrive at the final version of myself. I've had everything worked out since I was 5, and it's a continuous irritation that I'm just not developing according to my master plan.
Rather than having arrived at Butterflyness, I think I'm more like something freaky emerging from a chrysalis. And my hips are stuck. I went in fuzzy and I'm coming out... still fuzzy. I'm beginning to realize that my butt just might not look at all like what I'd imagined. Figuratively speaking.
I'm sad. And I know it. And I don't know how to go through it instead of around it. Even if I knew how, I don't want to. Most of the time I'm not sad, but sometimes things happen that I can't prevent and that makes me recognize that little by little, I've made choices to insulate myself from feeling sadness. When that insulation gets chipped or threatened, I get a little twitchy. A lot twitchy. So twitchy that I've started to recognize that even though I don't know what it is that I'm suppressing or why it's there, it's something that I'm afraid of letting it out because I certainly recognize its magnitude.
In my waning ability to control this thing, I've noticed that I'm manifesting some neurosis, and that startled me. The most notable thing is that it's become increasingly difficult for me to drive. I've never been in a real accident, but my inability to control other drivers while I'm driving or the idea that anything unexpected could happen at any moment makes me extremely jumpy when driving, and I get sweaty and feel tingly. When I reach my destination I feel an inflated sense of relief. I've even begun to avoid some travel because I'm too stressed by the journey to get there. I think I will actually just get a little too sad right now if I explore how my must-control-my-environment coping mechanisms affects how I relate to my children. Sometimes I don't let them talk in the car.
Unresolved sadness upon unresolved sadness has built up into something that feels insurmountable. My family often asks me why I "bottle up my feelings" and I always deny that I do, because I certainly don't do it consciously. I have a lot of feelings and I express plenty of them. I recognize that "bottling" is not a good thing to do, and therefore I would never willfully ignore something that needed to be dealt with. But I guess that's the whole point - somehow I fake myself out of thinking the hardest things are worth dealing with, and that is by nature burying it.
If you're wondering why I'm sad or how I got to be cripplingly sad, I couldn't really tell you. I loved my childhood, but it was a never ending cycle of ended relationships and I was not in control of when I got to say goodbye. Or if I wanted to say goodbye. It's no ones fault, but it was sad then and it's sad now. There wasn't any use in fighting it and no one who deserved my wrath, so I never fought it and I didn't take it out on anyone. But fighting is part of grief, and since I never grieved, I guess I just skipped all the emotional work that's necessary when you experience something sad. Now, when I experience something sad, I don't know how to accept the sadness and it leaks out of me in other ways, like my control issues. And there's so much pent up sadness that is pushing against the back of my eyeballs whenever something even a little bit sad happens that it would be a disaster to let it all out over something that isn't worth a tsunami of feelings over. Sometimes, I've wished someone (no one in particular, calm yourself) would die so that I had an appropriate occasion to really lose my shit all at once.
I never really understand that whole "Instagram looks so perfect, but don't believe that perfect life" refrain. I'm not covering up a dark secret with images of my beautiful life. My life is actually beautiful a lot of the time and I'm not trying to pretend that I don't have problems. But then when I get to a place where I can even consider that I might be detached from part of my own being... well, how does one casually bring that up on Instagram or otherwise. Flower photo, vintage outfit photo, cooking tip, my kids looking cute, more flowers, oh by the way my mind and body are conspiring against my commands as a result of Unresolved Grief. Do you like my dress? I do.
In acknowledging that I have some emotional trauma buried that I need to process, I've had several people recommend that I develop a compassionate inner voice. I'm trying not to blow that off as the bougiest thing I've ever heard because the whole point is to acknowledge that maybe I am repressing something and I'm aware that I'm not currently equipped to handle the exorcism. Therefore, logic would dictate that I might need some new tools to help me. I have a few, but I'm not ready to use them yet.
Am I mean to myself? I mean, not that I know of... but on the other hand, would a she-devil that's always been a she-devil know that there was any option out there but attack with fangs? As ironic as this is, I don't really want to bad-mouth my inner voice because she is... me. My inner voice chamber is where I don't have to filter the way I encounter the world in order to be polite. Yeah, inner voice can be sassy and ruthless, but so is reality.
I want to tell Inner Voice not to tell me to be nicer, because when I'm in pain, I don't want to be nice. And I don't want to feel guilty about having that space where I get to lash out without verbalizing my most wretched desires and dreads. I like a place to contemplate crimes without having to commit any. I also don't want Inner Voice to give me any bullshit about how the blackness of my heart will eventually come out of my mouth because that's what the Bible says will happen. Inner Voice right now to hypothetical Inner Voice telling me stuff I don't want to hear: "I know, dumbass, I can read." She's rude and mean. So am I. But she's also as honest as she knows how to be and recognizes when things suck and it sucks to feel them. And I don't want to nicen that up. I rely on cynical, angry voice to help me process things that I don't like. I guess I just don't know how to tone it down when I get past the angry phase.
I also don't want the internet to think that I don't have "real friends" with whom I can discuss these more troubling things with. I do have wonderful in-person friends. But sometimes I don't talk too good out loud and I have to wait for someone else to respond and Inner Voice has to be tamed for the sake of human relationships.
When I think about the idea that internal stress that I don't acknowledge affects me physically and in some really strange ways, I just want to watch myself as a bystander. I mean, how WEIRD is that driving thing?! If it was someone else telling me that, I'd think they were making it up or making a rather far-fetched connection, though it must be said I'm notoriously bad at connecting causes and affects related to my body. I just don't have the time to figure out if cheese makes my stomach uncomfortable. Even if it did, I'd still eat it. Things that don't fit in to my personal logic structure just get relegated to "must not be real".
I only experience one reality, personally, but I'm much more open to the idea that there is no such thing as one static "reality" than I used to be. I have my own reality, but the more I think about it, the less it worries me if someone else who is "crazy" believes they're communing with aliens and stuff. I mean, who am I to say they aren't? It's real to them. And I really can't prove that it's not real. Imagine how frustrating it would be if you really were an alien and no one believed you. Anyway, that's tangential, but being that this is my journal and all, I can acknowledge any number of realities that I want to. Who knows what other weird stuff I might do in the future as a result of... I don't know...anything?! The more I recognize my own illogical, inexplicable self, the fewer assumptions I make about other people's "crazy" behavior. I'm not sure why I even value "having it together".
Relying on an environment I can completely control is I think partly why I've stopped writing very much. It's too draining for me to process other people's responses or to second guess my own thoughts and feelings about things. I don't want to explain myself any better than I already have. I don't know if it makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense to someone I don't want to work harder to explain myself. I am releasing myself from explaining why I have the urge to share everything on the internet too (thanks, Sweet, Sadistic, Inner Voice). It's because I'm a really gifted, brilliant, funny, mostly always genius and right writer, okay. And the world deserves to have my sparkle rub off on all its peasants.
It seems to me that most men have a sense of self assurance. The other day, I heard a man praised as "someone who never second guesses himself". I was starting to envy that belief that one is always right, until I remembered that it takes a lot more courage and work to consider that you might be wrong. Someone who never second guesses themselves can never listen to criticism. But I listen to all criticism because I believe other people's words (usually) have value. I think that's mostly a good trait, but it becomes deafening sometimes.
I've been reading Pearl S. Buck's autobiography (My Several Worlds) for a long time now, and this passage really stuck out to me:
"[I was sent several pages of blistering rebuke over The Good Earth because] I had been so frank about human life... The worlds in which I have lived and grown have made me what must be called a controversial figure, as I have been told often enough, and this is because inescapably, by experience and nature, I see the other side of every human being. If he be good, then there is that other side, and if he be evil, there is again another side, and if the ability to comprehend the reasonableness of both seems confounding to those who are content with one dimension, to others as to me, it is an endless source of interest and amusement and opportunity for love and life. We have no enemies, we for whom the globe is home, for we hate no one, and where there is no hate, it is not possible to escape love."
This perhaps proves that my Inner Voice needs a makeover, but the only person I can't argue both sides for is myself, to myself. My own dualities can be so destabilizing that I end up feeling confused and even angry with my inability to figure myself out. I can't help but encompass everything all at the same time. I don't view myself as controversial, I'm just a giant umbrella that is inexplicably compelled to present you with every option you haven't thought of every time you open your mouth. I'm not mentally unstable (well, not very), I'm just too small a vessel to carry all the things that I've absorbed and if you don't understand that innately, it makes me overheat in an effort to HELP YOU SEE BEHIND THE CURTAIN. I'm a sad, confused droid that wants to help people but only knows how to communicate in droid-speak. So kind of like a not-very-helpful thing that wants to be helpful.
I don't like this. I am a strong, grown-ass woman who is usually proud of herself and is good at things and I'm not happy that part of my own team is sabotaging me with it's crazy psycho drama that is part of me but also not listening to me and YOU WICKED DEMON SADNESS MONSTER JUST STAY IN YOUR BOX. I've been doing quite well telling my feelings when and where to feel, and I have no intention of letting them run the show. This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship. My subjects are getting cocky with their insubordination and their feeling coup d'états.
Are there rehab facilities for sad people? Where you can go and kill stuff, followed by a quiet soak in a scalding bath in a pitch black room? With dessert afterward? Maybe a Japanese mafia spa.
Inner Voice says I am not brave enough to get my weird fuzzy butt out of this chrysalis.
{images: Picasso, Priscila Furtado, unknown}
I do love it when people give glowing reviews of whatever I have to say or I get praise for being "so honest". But it's not an achievement for me. There's always another layer I haven't reached or shared yet, not because it's too dark or too personal, but just because I'm a work in progress. In my mind - most days - I Have Arrived. The way I am is the culmination of everything I've said and felt and been and done up until now and I can't be any more than that. But I forget that tomorrow will add to that and I never really Arrive at the final version of myself. I've had everything worked out since I was 5, and it's a continuous irritation that I'm just not developing according to my master plan.
Rather than having arrived at Butterflyness, I think I'm more like something freaky emerging from a chrysalis. And my hips are stuck. I went in fuzzy and I'm coming out... still fuzzy. I'm beginning to realize that my butt just might not look at all like what I'd imagined. Figuratively speaking.
I'm sad. And I know it. And I don't know how to go through it instead of around it. Even if I knew how, I don't want to. Most of the time I'm not sad, but sometimes things happen that I can't prevent and that makes me recognize that little by little, I've made choices to insulate myself from feeling sadness. When that insulation gets chipped or threatened, I get a little twitchy. A lot twitchy. So twitchy that I've started to recognize that even though I don't know what it is that I'm suppressing or why it's there, it's something that I'm afraid of letting it out because I certainly recognize its magnitude.
In my waning ability to control this thing, I've noticed that I'm manifesting some neurosis, and that startled me. The most notable thing is that it's become increasingly difficult for me to drive. I've never been in a real accident, but my inability to control other drivers while I'm driving or the idea that anything unexpected could happen at any moment makes me extremely jumpy when driving, and I get sweaty and feel tingly. When I reach my destination I feel an inflated sense of relief. I've even begun to avoid some travel because I'm too stressed by the journey to get there. I think I will actually just get a little too sad right now if I explore how my must-control-my-environment coping mechanisms affects how I relate to my children. Sometimes I don't let them talk in the car.
Unresolved sadness upon unresolved sadness has built up into something that feels insurmountable. My family often asks me why I "bottle up my feelings" and I always deny that I do, because I certainly don't do it consciously. I have a lot of feelings and I express plenty of them. I recognize that "bottling" is not a good thing to do, and therefore I would never willfully ignore something that needed to be dealt with. But I guess that's the whole point - somehow I fake myself out of thinking the hardest things are worth dealing with, and that is by nature burying it.
If you're wondering why I'm sad or how I got to be cripplingly sad, I couldn't really tell you. I loved my childhood, but it was a never ending cycle of ended relationships and I was not in control of when I got to say goodbye. Or if I wanted to say goodbye. It's no ones fault, but it was sad then and it's sad now. There wasn't any use in fighting it and no one who deserved my wrath, so I never fought it and I didn't take it out on anyone. But fighting is part of grief, and since I never grieved, I guess I just skipped all the emotional work that's necessary when you experience something sad. Now, when I experience something sad, I don't know how to accept the sadness and it leaks out of me in other ways, like my control issues. And there's so much pent up sadness that is pushing against the back of my eyeballs whenever something even a little bit sad happens that it would be a disaster to let it all out over something that isn't worth a tsunami of feelings over. Sometimes, I've wished someone (no one in particular, calm yourself) would die so that I had an appropriate occasion to really lose my shit all at once.
I never really understand that whole "Instagram looks so perfect, but don't believe that perfect life" refrain. I'm not covering up a dark secret with images of my beautiful life. My life is actually beautiful a lot of the time and I'm not trying to pretend that I don't have problems. But then when I get to a place where I can even consider that I might be detached from part of my own being... well, how does one casually bring that up on Instagram or otherwise. Flower photo, vintage outfit photo, cooking tip, my kids looking cute, more flowers, oh by the way my mind and body are conspiring against my commands as a result of Unresolved Grief. Do you like my dress? I do.
In acknowledging that I have some emotional trauma buried that I need to process, I've had several people recommend that I develop a compassionate inner voice. I'm trying not to blow that off as the bougiest thing I've ever heard because the whole point is to acknowledge that maybe I am repressing something and I'm aware that I'm not currently equipped to handle the exorcism. Therefore, logic would dictate that I might need some new tools to help me. I have a few, but I'm not ready to use them yet. Am I mean to myself? I mean, not that I know of... but on the other hand, would a she-devil that's always been a she-devil know that there was any option out there but attack with fangs? As ironic as this is, I don't really want to bad-mouth my inner voice because she is... me. My inner voice chamber is where I don't have to filter the way I encounter the world in order to be polite. Yeah, inner voice can be sassy and ruthless, but so is reality.
I want to tell Inner Voice not to tell me to be nicer, because when I'm in pain, I don't want to be nice. And I don't want to feel guilty about having that space where I get to lash out without verbalizing my most wretched desires and dreads. I like a place to contemplate crimes without having to commit any. I also don't want Inner Voice to give me any bullshit about how the blackness of my heart will eventually come out of my mouth because that's what the Bible says will happen. Inner Voice right now to hypothetical Inner Voice telling me stuff I don't want to hear: "I know, dumbass, I can read." She's rude and mean. So am I. But she's also as honest as she knows how to be and recognizes when things suck and it sucks to feel them. And I don't want to nicen that up. I rely on cynical, angry voice to help me process things that I don't like. I guess I just don't know how to tone it down when I get past the angry phase.
I also don't want the internet to think that I don't have "real friends" with whom I can discuss these more troubling things with. I do have wonderful in-person friends. But sometimes I don't talk too good out loud and I have to wait for someone else to respond and Inner Voice has to be tamed for the sake of human relationships.
When I think about the idea that internal stress that I don't acknowledge affects me physically and in some really strange ways, I just want to watch myself as a bystander. I mean, how WEIRD is that driving thing?! If it was someone else telling me that, I'd think they were making it up or making a rather far-fetched connection, though it must be said I'm notoriously bad at connecting causes and affects related to my body. I just don't have the time to figure out if cheese makes my stomach uncomfortable. Even if it did, I'd still eat it. Things that don't fit in to my personal logic structure just get relegated to "must not be real".
I only experience one reality, personally, but I'm much more open to the idea that there is no such thing as one static "reality" than I used to be. I have my own reality, but the more I think about it, the less it worries me if someone else who is "crazy" believes they're communing with aliens and stuff. I mean, who am I to say they aren't? It's real to them. And I really can't prove that it's not real. Imagine how frustrating it would be if you really were an alien and no one believed you. Anyway, that's tangential, but being that this is my journal and all, I can acknowledge any number of realities that I want to. Who knows what other weird stuff I might do in the future as a result of... I don't know...anything?! The more I recognize my own illogical, inexplicable self, the fewer assumptions I make about other people's "crazy" behavior. I'm not sure why I even value "having it together".
Relying on an environment I can completely control is I think partly why I've stopped writing very much. It's too draining for me to process other people's responses or to second guess my own thoughts and feelings about things. I don't want to explain myself any better than I already have. I don't know if it makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense to someone I don't want to work harder to explain myself. I am releasing myself from explaining why I have the urge to share everything on the internet too (thanks, Sweet, Sadistic, Inner Voice). It's because I'm a really gifted, brilliant, funny, mostly always genius and right writer, okay. And the world deserves to have my sparkle rub off on all its peasants.
I've been reading Pearl S. Buck's autobiography (My Several Worlds) for a long time now, and this passage really stuck out to me:
"[I was sent several pages of blistering rebuke over The Good Earth because] I had been so frank about human life... The worlds in which I have lived and grown have made me what must be called a controversial figure, as I have been told often enough, and this is because inescapably, by experience and nature, I see the other side of every human being. If he be good, then there is that other side, and if he be evil, there is again another side, and if the ability to comprehend the reasonableness of both seems confounding to those who are content with one dimension, to others as to me, it is an endless source of interest and amusement and opportunity for love and life. We have no enemies, we for whom the globe is home, for we hate no one, and where there is no hate, it is not possible to escape love."
This perhaps proves that my Inner Voice needs a makeover, but the only person I can't argue both sides for is myself, to myself. My own dualities can be so destabilizing that I end up feeling confused and even angry with my inability to figure myself out. I can't help but encompass everything all at the same time. I don't view myself as controversial, I'm just a giant umbrella that is inexplicably compelled to present you with every option you haven't thought of every time you open your mouth. I'm not mentally unstable (well, not very), I'm just too small a vessel to carry all the things that I've absorbed and if you don't understand that innately, it makes me overheat in an effort to HELP YOU SEE BEHIND THE CURTAIN. I'm a sad, confused droid that wants to help people but only knows how to communicate in droid-speak. So kind of like a not-very-helpful thing that wants to be helpful.
I don't like this. I am a strong, grown-ass woman who is usually proud of herself and is good at things and I'm not happy that part of my own team is sabotaging me with it's crazy psycho drama that is part of me but also not listening to me and YOU WICKED DEMON SADNESS MONSTER JUST STAY IN YOUR BOX. I've been doing quite well telling my feelings when and where to feel, and I have no intention of letting them run the show. This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship. My subjects are getting cocky with their insubordination and their feeling coup d'états.
Are there rehab facilities for sad people? Where you can go and kill stuff, followed by a quiet soak in a scalding bath in a pitch black room? With dessert afterward? Maybe a Japanese mafia spa.
Inner Voice says I am not brave enough to get my weird fuzzy butt out of this chrysalis.
{images: Picasso, Priscila Furtado, unknown}
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