On my laptop is a detailed image of a pale blue-green moth superimposed over a black background and the quote:
“Let everything happen to you -- beauty and terror.
No feeling is final. Just keep going.” --Rilke
I am grappling with beauty, and also the terror is creeping in. Eclipse season has come with equal parts clarity and questions. The same questions I have been asking myself since the beginning of this year; who am I when I’m not seeing what other people want or need and showing up in that aspect? Do I even know? Am I capable of this? Do I want to be? How will the people I care about react? (That includes you, Poesie Pod.)
Who I am. Libra stellium, eldest daughter from a conservative religious background, AudHD, and really good at pattern recognition. That and so much more.
Who could I be. Charles Bukowski said “find what you love and let it kill you.” At my last job, which was absolutely, most definitely, killing me (but for such a good cause!), a fellow staff member gave me a print of this Bukowski quote. I loved it. I later put it on a shelf at the Poesie studio. One of my favorite people found the quote disturbing and gave me a replacement image emblazoned with a few lines about withstanding the storm and being the storm. She slid it into the frame over the offending image. It stayed on the shelf because it made her happy.
But here’s the thing, I neither want to be killed Bukowski-style, nor do I resonate with the pink positivity of the latter print. Years of masking have blurred the line between who I want to be and who I think other people want me to be. Undoing the habits of a lifetime is an emotional rollercoaster that moves at an erratic speed. There are familiar landscapes that loop and twist until they become unrecognizable. To be honest, I’ve never liked roller coasters. I prefer to be driving the train, which should come at no surprise if you’ve been paying attention. But this rollercoaster ride with its occasional flashes of joy (and a fair amount of terror) didn’t seem optional. The alternative was a pipeline (or perhaps a train driven by yours truly) directly to burnout. So, buckle up.
Only when I sink my chattering mind into the soft animal of my body and let it love what it loves does the mask begin to soften. (thanks for that lovely line, life-changing poet Mary Oliver.) Usually this happens when I’m alone for stretches at a time, disconnected from the constant stream of energies flowing from others in person or online. My life is littered with ear plugs, sunglasses, and fidget toys. I allow myself to feel the sensory overload that had previously been ‘ignored’ (i.e. pushed into aching muscles). Spending nights disassociating while bingeing on junk food and junk tv, waking up hating myself and repeating the process. I poured myself into my work. It made me feel in control (choo choo); like if I had good ideas and worked hard enough, I would be worthy of love and respect. (Newsflash - whoever you are, you are right now in this very moment worthy of love and respect. Seriously. You are.) Impostor syndrome crept in. Anxiety rushed in with its attendant gang to ruin the party. Overthinking and Irritability, hello.👋
The tools that had (supposedly) worked all these years were actively blocking me from what I wanted. Freedom, creativity, an authentic connection with the people around me and those who had given me a chance at this life by buying my perfume, liking it, and wanting more. I had an online reputation for being nice and sweet. That should have made me happy, right? But instead it made me feel like more of an impostor, like people weren’t seeing the real me, but the beautiful, easy-to-get-along-with mask I had crafted to protect the real me who had meltdowns over printers and cried over lunch because she overextended herself all the time.
The beauty of the online relationship is that it exists as a realm of the mind, free from the relentlessly embodied humanness of irl. It has taken me decades to break the cycle of hyperfixating on work, forgetting to eat, being hangry, and spiraling into a meltdown on the regular. I’m realizing it’s easier to express myself when I am writing in the dim quiet of the upstairs studio or curled into my couch and array of pillows like a twisted gargoyle fetus on a velvet throne. In real life, I have been called a space cadet, annoying, and casually asked if I was bipolar. My jokes often got blank stares or nervous smiles from the population at large.
Now I am surrounded by a group of supportive, authentic women. I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself for the past year. I exercise regularly because it makes me feel better. I write in my shadow journal. I’m doing real self-care, not a sheet mask on a Friday night and internal agony for the rest of the week.
I’ve heard that if you let yourself be authentic, you will draw to you the people who are in alignment, while repulsing those who aren’t. The second part feels inevitable and predictable. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time putting energy into being likable, it’s hard to accept that being authentic means disappointing some people because you cannot be or do the things they would have you be or do. But, luckily that’s only part of the authenticity equation. It’s the first part that is giving me hope/courage/strength. To be fully myself among others being themselves and feel the grace and belonging of that kind of energy. And I hope you’re one of them.
While I’d love to make everyone happy, it appears that isn’t possible, and (drum roll) leads to at least one person not being happy (moi). So here’s to fewer belly aches and to more belly laughs. It’s time.