Dropping the boulder

I’ve been grappling with my writing and this space lately. I feel this pressure to plan what I’m writing and to make it fit neatly into this box. In all reality, I don’t really have any trouble thinking about things to write about. I’ve got plenty of things to say.

The trouble is that I’m trying to reconcile what I write on my own, which is usually what I’m internally grappling with, and what I’ve told myself is ‘okay’ to share in this space. I’ve outsourced the decision from myself. I wonder what you would want to hear, and what I even have the authority to talk about.

The little voice in the back of my head says that you wouldn’t want to hear about my internal experience and writing about it or assuming you would may make me look a certain way I’d rather not look. So I filter some things out, I hold back from the full truth, all in an effort to manage your perception of me and to be polished, ‘good’, and interesting.

But that’s not the point. There is plenty of polished content out there for you to read. I don’t want to create more content and I am not trying to be the next great American writer or critical essayist. We all know that, at 24 years old, I am not an authority or expert or anything. All I have is my own experience.

What I want and crave is true expression- raw, deep, emotional, and messy expression. It is this type of expression that makes me feel connected to someone and a little freer to be myself. That’s why we create art and hang it on our walls. That’s why we read and write. The whole point is to make more sense of this collective human experience and feel a little less alone.

So yesterday morning I sat down to journal like I often do, to make some sense of something, and while I was writing, I knew that what I usually keep private and what I think is messy and unworthy and ‘too much’ is what I really want to share. Maybe it resonates with you, and maybe it doesn’t.

Fairies by the Brook by Max Pirner

So I had my talk with, let’s call her M, the other day. We talked about how I feel like I am at the edge of the woods, standing near a cliff but unable to jump forward. I’m not as far deep in the woods as I used to be, but I am still in this familiar radius that I can’t seem to escape.

This past month or so I keep telling people I feel stuck, and it’s manifested as a very physical reaction in my body. During certain moments where I drop down and pay attention, it feels like someone has got their arms wrapped around my midline, or my womb, and they’re abruptly pulling me back.

The feeling originates in my heart and these hands are merely roots. The branches travel up my heart and into my throat, wrapping themselves around my vocal cords, creating a familiar constriction that pops up when I don’t want it to. It’s a choking feeling, sort of like in those dreams where you’re trying to scream or speak and you can’t no matter how hard you try.

M called me out with a loving honesty I needed, “You have to decide and you have to commit if you want anything to change. Do you want to go back into the woods? Do you want to stay right where you am? Or do you want to jump?”

I said I know with full certainty that I want to jump, but I can’t seem to make myself. I am stuck in a period of inaction. Someone push me please.

Actually no, I have always worked on my own timing and I’ve never let anyone push me.

Sisyphus by Jeffrey Hummel

I continued to explain to her another image I had of myself. This time I’m Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill. The boulder never goes anywhere and I just keep planning a pushing an imaginary weight up, up, and up. It’s extremely frustrating.

“It’s not about pushing the boulder uphill but putting the boulder down,” M Said. The weight, which has gotten very heavy, is the weight I carry in trying to show up a certain way. It is the weight of not living in truth and it’s not something I have to do.

“How do you want to show up? How do you want to be? Who is it that you imagine?” she asked.

Despite having thought of this a lot, and I mean a lot, for I have journals and notes filled with how I want to be and the images that feel correct to me, I really struggled to convey to her in verbal English what it was that I was wanting. I felt like a mute and heard myself talking and knew I wasn’t getting my point across.

So I sat down yesterday morning to journal and thought about it. What feels old and exhausting to me and what do I want to be instead? This is what I wrote…

A big part of the exhaustion is the clenching and anxiety. My body is in a perpetual state of bracing and my hands are always up. I think of the woman I want to be and this woman is embodied and flowing. She’s not rigid and bracing. She’s in her body, she’s intuitive, and fully encompassing the entire experience - head, heart, body, and soul. The four are no longer separate. The woman I imagine is free and expressive and authentic. I see her dancing and creating. She is loving and soft and open.

At the same time, this woman is firm. She shares her opinion and starts conversations with curious, she’s moved with conviction. This woman knows who she is and what she wants and she owns it. She owns herself instead of being dictated by the weight of other people’s perceptions and opinions. She’s not afraid to walk away.

For a long time I thought being like this girl meant I needed to make myself more easygoing, more pacifying, more pleasing. But that has nothing to do with it. That is just another way to put yourself in a box. I’ve been trying so hard to not be like her, to not be rigid and anxious, that I can’t be her.

I keep saying ‘she’ like this is some other person I’m talking about, but it’s not that. I am not trying to be someone else or some other woman, some other idealized version of self, but that’s not it. I’ve been this girl. I’ve touched her before and I know how it feels in those brief moments to be not be bracing, to be natural and relaxed. I’m not trying to be someone else, but to get back to something that already exists but that I can’t seem to access under most circumstances.

Ideal Landscape by Johann Christian

The boulder I seem to be carrying takes me straight out of embodiment. The boulder is control. There is a perpetual energy when I am interacting and reacting that says don’t do the wrong thing, don’t say the wrong thing, don’t upset anyone. It is an energy of bracing, flinching and choking and holding back in an effort to keep the peace. I don’t know, if it’s to keep the peace per se, but to maintain control, to react and prepare beforehand. I need to control and subdue myself or else I will say something. I will be too much, too harsh, too difficult and push people away. People don’t like these parts. They may tolerate them, but for how long? How rare is it that people actually stay when they see the full force of who you are, when you stop pretending and let it all out?

I have convinced myself that it’s not safe to be the full force of what I am, especially when I don’t know yet how to manage her. She’ll be banished from the tribe. So she’s got to be controlled. The way to be safe is to be nice, be sweet, what people want you to be. Give the people what they want. Let them eat cake!

This isn’t just people pleasing. People pleasing is a symptom. But it is an acute awareness of relational security and the dynamics at play when people stay or leave. And all of this essentially guarantees I cannot be that woman that I want to be. The woman I imagine doesn’t show up from a place of fear trying to control relational safety. It’s not say she doesn’t have the power to shape-shift, influence, or socially adapt when she wants something but the motivation isn’t fear.

My the Ten by Xuanwei Su

What’s strange is that I keep having these dreams where I am trapped somewhere, usually some hotel room or imaginary town, and I need to escape. The whole time I’m planning my escape, though, I am worried that the captor, usually some man, is going to catch me and find me and hurt me if I do. So I go try and come up with a plan to leave before he gets back. I’m always rushing to pack my bag with all my things but not everything fits and then the man comes back and catches me in the act of leaving.

The dream always ends before I see what happens next but I wake up sweating and anxious, reminding myself it’s not real.

I’ve been into Jungian psychology recently and think it it’s this dynamic I’ve been talking about at play. Do I make myself small and subdue myself to not upset the captor or risk it all and escape but maybe get hit in the face? I have literally never been hit by anyone and yet there is this fear deep down that if I don’t stay small someone is going to hit me.

I was reading an article yesterday night that spoke directly to these themes and I do think part of it is being a woman and growing up as a little girl. I knew when I was little that my safety depended on other people and other people liked me more when I was sweet and a ‘good little girl’. So submit. It’s best to submit. Give yourself out and keep yourself small. Say you’re sorry.

It is not safe to be in full expression, but at the same time, you are not fully alive when you’re walking around constricted.

So right now I’m working towards little micro moments in attempt to bridge the gap. It’s scary and it’s hard and I wish I could move a little quicker but maybe I can start to inch my way off the cliff.

With love,

Zoe

Venus Rising from the Forth of the Sea by George Cruikshank