‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
– maya angelou
I could say this over and over inside…so I will:
Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Just a little realisation I made this evening after a shed load of cartooning and journaling…this old chestnut. I am not them. We are not them.
I AM NOT MY PARENTS.
Go tell that to my inner critic for me, would you? Shut the fuck up, Imaginary Storyline maker.
Every time I realise I’m not them, it goes/hits a little deeper. Like the daily little moments I tell myself I’m not them, in the midst of storylines playing out in my head and them filling me with terror. But then I sometimes get these mammoth waves – a huge fuck off hit of realisation that I’ve spent the last few days or weeks with a theory (one that’s been causing havoc with my inner sense of happiness, stability, and peace about the future) that’s all based on the assumption and core belief that I am them I AM FUCKING NOT.
The end. Period. Full stop.
If only it was that simple…but I’m glad this realising continues to go deeper. It’s like layers are being shed and I’m continuing to find my own skin away from them, away from theirs. These realisations, even though they always sound the same and consist of the same four words, the impact is always really different…or actually maybe the impact just goes deeper. To the next layer. And this thrill of celebration when I come-to, wake up, and find myself beneath the crap that’s been flying around my Inner Room all week or month or day or maybe even year, is the shedding of another layer.
That’s pretty beautiful.
The first of the free writing posts. Lately I’ve been loving free writing, and there’s something super healing about keeping it just for me. But other times, like now, I long to share the waffle with the world, because within the waffle are words that need to be heard. I just don’t go back editing it all, because the art of expression is the art itself. Editing is for some things, and not for others. This is one of the others. Turns out, waffle is healing gold dust.
**
Inside i’m screaming, desperate to get out. Inside I’m screaming, desperate to get out. Inside I’m screaming, like no words will come out. Like noone can listen to what comes out my spout. Like no diamond is gentler than the one I carry on my lips. The diamond of resentment and bitterness and sweet sweet hate. Of all those that left me when I needed it most. Of all those that left me for it, to hold and to cope. All those that never knew what went on beneath the surface. All those that never knew what it was like to be me. All those that never knew what I had to deal with and what I had to endure.
This anger festers and brews, and lands on those that offer assistance now. Projection feels like the theme of my days. Projection feels like the destined process I am in. It feels like the medicine I never was given. It feels like the opportunity to witness what goes on within. It feels like the place I get to see what is really me. It feels like the place I get to visit, the deepest darkest parts of me.
It feels like a place I get to witness, what really goes on beneath the surface of content. Beneath the surface of resentment, bitterness, and sweet sweet. In its place is actual hard hitting evidence that people hate me. That people think I’m disgusting. That people think I’m gross. That people think I’m better off dead and not speaking to them. That people think I’m not worthy of love and belonging. That people think I’m better off dead.
But this is projection. This is the dialogue that goes on in my head, landing on other folks lips. This is the dialogue I get into when I’m left, to battle with my own inner voices and my critic’s chatter in my head. Some day I’ll listen to one voice entirely – the one of the person stood beneath me trying to tell me of my greatness. Trying to welcome me and my shadow. Trying to tell me of unconditional loving, and unconditional support. Trying to tell me that what matters most is my safety and my contentment. Trying to tell me that I deserve all that I can get, and I deserve to have my heart truly sing.
That I deserve the potion of forgiveness – to that of myself, and that of others. But most of all myself. That I deserve to bathe in a tub of forgiveness, and hold a shallow pot of hope between the palm of my hands…keeping it with me when days get rough. Keeping it with me in days I need to remember what’s left, and what is growing. In days like this, I need to remember that I deserve the potion of forgiveness just like everyone else. That no matter how alone and isolated and uniquely in turmoil I feel, I deserve this love and belonging just like everybody else. Just because my heart is bleeding and my mind has escaped to a place of stressful freedom, I deserve to know I belong. I deserve to know I am me. I deserve to have a place I can call my own and hold my own. I deserve to have a place I can call, me.
I deserve to be loved, just like everybody else I know – and don’t know – does. I deserve to remember it’s a human birthright.
Lately I’ve been knowing that all this is different. That all this is shadowed by a need to resolve a wounded hurt. A wounded shadow that buries and bursts deep within. A deep wounding hurt that knows only my name, and is shadowed beneath a darkness that buries within too. That takes me with it, to a place of resentment a place of hurt. Like a kingdom of resentment towards the fuckers who made it so. Towards the fuckers who made this shit happen. To those who didn’t stop it. To those who didn’t make it not happen. To those who didn’t know where to find the off switch, until I tried to myself. To those who wrestled with the knowing that nothing is really different if you can’t see it. To those that knew of nothing but contentment with the life they were truly having. With the life they were born by living, and born by nothing but a cloud of living beneath a sky of good.
Beneath a cloud of living and a wrestling knowledge that nothing bad will happen because of the way they are bred. Because of the way they are lingering with contentment and resented freedom from nothing crazy bad and nothing crazy good. Instead, they potter through a life lived mediocre.Through a life lived sideways and sheltered by highways of forgiveness and forgiven, of highways of sadness that shelters nothing but within, that shelters freedom and a darkness of nothing but within. It cradles resentment and contentment the same. It cradles love and contentment in a way that nothing else can matter, but the lack of it matters in lives not lived this way and lives lived the opposite of sideways. Of lives lived back to front and upside down and rattled from within.
Those are the lives that are led with meaning, and true contentment and true freedom. Those are the lives that, despite the turmoil and the pain, bring a sense that there’s something greater. That there’s something greater that knows my name. That I matter just as much as a shadow or another name. That my presence matters and my presence is justifiably important, and justifiably good. And justifiability beautiful. And that I am all of those things too.
Because I am.
“I can’t stop pointing to the beauty.”
Rumi
Please excuse the French, but it can. Gosh I’ve been missing writing on here. I notice my writing has taken a turn for the Different. I’m doing morning pages and writing and writing when I can muster the energy or the motivation, but there’s a poetic element and a free flowing element that’s come from writing now. It’s lush. But it don’t make any freakin sense. I think that’s why I haven’t been writing on here because what I long to spill out, and what I do spill out in my journal, is a load of words joined together by beauty and pain and confusion and fragility, under the blanket of poetic chaos. And I think it’s bringing a whole lotta healing too. Emotional and mental decluttering, rather than trying to make sense all the time. Instead let the creative juices completely flow.
There’s been something important and sacred about keeping the words for me. About keeping the words next to me, close. In this fragile and tender, and fucking messy, time, it’s like I need all I can get that’s MINE. I need my own independence and my own private something. And part of that has been writing. In whatever shape or form it comes out in. And it’s felt beautiful. It’s felt sad but it’s felt beautiful that I’ve been giving myself the daily gift of writing and keeping the words only for myself. No longer needing affirmations from readers or people I share it with – just my own self is enough. Nature has been the other thing I am just completely craving. Me and noone else, just Nature. Because she belongs to me just as much as I belong to her. At this time in my life it’s the only relationship that feels balanced, and even then not to the extent I would like or needs to be.
At the moment it’s like my need for my bubble of protection is OH SO great. Where I’m living isn’t MINE as I just had to move house to a temporary place. What I’m doing isn’t AT ALL where I want to be. I can’t do hardly anything for myself except basic life needs and actually only just am able to do that. Constantly having to prioritise moment to moment, constantly having to put my basic needs for survival in front of needs to thrive and allow my heart to sing. Because in the moments I fuck off responsibilities and just go use my precious energy to sit in the woods or have a little dance, I come back and haven’t got food cooked so end up in a sugar dip and stressed, haven’t got the energy or the pain-free-ness to run a bath or do my washing or get properly dressed. But, I’ve learnt to prioritise and sometimes just feeling HUMAN and alive and GROUNDED is the most important thing. Sometimes that’s going into the woods and coming back to crackers from bed for dinner. Other times it’s looking at the woods through the window and making myself a big pot of wholesome stew. Both options, at the right time, are like medicine. At the ‘wrong’ time, they bring essences of self destruct.
It FUCKING SUCKS. As you can tell by all the capital letters. No words can quite describe how much. Even typing this I realise how little I’ve actually put my hands up in the air and said how SHIT this is. I’ve rolled with it. I’ve cried, I’ve shared the pain, I’ve moaned a fair bit but I’ve most of the time then softened it, softened it, with positive sounding talk. But I REALLY have not done enough of the complaining and yelling, like I deserve. It’s partly because I just feel too overwhelmed with just how awful it feels. And is. Of course, there’s beauty to be found in it and I always will do that, nature being the main source of that. But I’m giving myself permission to say that this is totally shit.
It’s ironic really that I’ve found myself in a cabin in the woods because I’d gotten to the point that I was and am SO OVER being dependent on other people, my heart was just singing for independence again. Only problem is, I’M NOT FUCKING CAPABLE OF INDEPENDENCE. But, I AM capable of the certain basic levels of independence that I can give myself. And that, is a gift.
This evening I had a wave of my ‘what the fuck am I doing…’ within my tsunami of healing that has been happening the last few days. Don’t even get me started. Now that it’s easing, I think I actually visited hell, made a camp and kipped there. Not that I could sleep. It was too hot and smelly.
Anyways, in this little large dump of self doubt and loathing of the process, I realised it was my inner hipster and my inner teen that had something to say about this. They are wondering what the FUCK I’m doing – where my once cool self went. Why I now just wanna hang out with self absorbed losers, and how I now see them as NOT that and I actually see them as people on a journey. People just like me. People that I once used to run a freakin’ mile from, are now people that I wanna call up at 11pm and say – fuck life is overwhelming. I’m not wanting to call up, hang out, get to know all the people I’ve felt this way about – fuck no. Tie dye hippies, yoghurt weaving spiritual nuts, are still a million miles off my To Befriend list (insert what-a-hippy-childhood-does-to-you here). But I’m talking people in therapy. People on the rollercoaster of self discovery. People delving into themselves and their pain, and getting to know it. Sharing it. Hating it. Freaking out about it. Running a mile from it, only to then turn round and run back and learn to love it.
These people I used to think were self obsessed losers and selfish twats. Come hang out with the cool kids. Stop hanging out with your past and the demons or fuckwits from it. Lets just go surfing, you big therapy loving loser. Let’s look at the bigger problems in the world and stop festering around in your own shit. There are way more important things in life and people, trees, animals, that need your attention – not yourself.
But now, I’m one of them. And despite the pain and the turmoil, I could not imagine life in any other way. It just feels like the logical way of living. Why the hell would you NOT want to do this for yourself? Why the hell would you not want to heal?
Well, my hipster and teen certainly have something to say about ‘why not’. These are the two cartoons I did:
And it reminded me of my favourite old person on TV:
I have this cartoon thing, where I draw out dialogue between my parts, Gestalt style. I haven’t done it in a long while, but I’ve been needing to a right lot recently, I’ve just been resistant. But, this morning I sat down to do it. I spilled out words from my teen part, towards my newly forming parenting part. The only trouble is – I’m still learning how to be a parent. I never had a healthy one, and so this is my time to be one to myself, and to be able to be everything that I never had. That is rad but also scary. I want to do it right. I want to parent myself right. I want to say the right things to myself, be the way that is the healthiest with my inner teen, inner kid, to enable them to heal and have their voices heard.
I sat down and wrote out all the qualities I want my parent – me – to have. I then sat down and wrote out all the qualities my parent/s had…it was hilariously, and heartbreakingly, opposite. (See below.) Literally, the lists could not have been more different. I suddenly have a longing to buy and read parenting books, because I realise I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU DO IT. But I also realised, when I was swimming in the pool of self-doubting and criticising and coming up with conclusions that I am going to do it wrong, that I am going to damage myself further, that I am going to fuck myself up more, that this must be the fear and worry parents hold too – no matter how much experience they have. I realised that I have heard friends voice these worries, that they are constantly effecting their child, that they could be fucking their kid up and not know, that they could be doing it wrong, and that everything they say and do goes in…but also that they just have to keep going, have to keep winging it and learning and hoping that they are doing okay, and most of all know that they are doing their best.
At the ripe age of 26 and without any children – just my inner child and teen – I am experiencing all these worries that I will one day experience with my own child, and eventually teen, when I have her/him. But for now, I am experiencing it with myself. The most important person right now, in my life. That feels quite amazing and quite profound. I want to do it right, I want to nurture myself and allow for my parts to heal and feel supported. I want my parenting self to be perfect. But who’s speaking here? The Perfectionist…yes, that’s who. The desperate need to do it right and the best it can be done, all. the. time. Well, as my parent friends will tell me, that’s fucking impossible.
I have this teen part of me that is RAGING. That lividly hates anyone in the helping, parental, loving, kinda role. So, bang goes easy fucking therapy. And this morning as I wrote her out, as I let her voice be heard on the page, I realised that I really don’t know how you deal with a teen. Do you let them rip you to shreds, voice all their hatred and their loathing of you, but also their desperate need and their desperate loving? Or do you take a bit and then give stop them or give them shit back or stand up for yourself, even if it means their needs not being met. Or, do you simply witness what they are saying and just let it not effect your love for them. So, for me, allow my teen to voice her rage and voice her hatred, but to know that it is not meant for me, and that my parenting self can be guided by my objective witnessing and compassionate self – a different part altogether…I don’t know! But I think it’s the latter. The trick being that the teen can voice what they need and hate what they want but it doesn’t alter my love for her, my love for my wounded and fucking angry teen.
Getting to know and develop and grow a parenting part of me has been my project this year, and this part has continued to evolve and evolve. The last week, I really feel though that this part is becoming an actual parent. She is being shaped to really be there, like a healthy parent is. I get to have this part of me that can say and be all that I never had. It is heartbreaking that I never had it as a child, but the fact I can give it to myself just how I want it is pretty cool. And it means that one day I’ll be able to give it to my own child too.
All I wanna do is hang out with parents, soak up their style, watch what they do, watch the kids as they be who they are and are unconditionally (or sometimes not) loved and held by their parents. I wanna watch how parents deal with tantrums, watch how they deal with the stress of never knowing whether they’re doing it right, watch how they comfort and reassure and softly tell their kid everything is going to be alright, so I know how to do it to myself. But the truth is, somewhere inside I already know. I know what I need and I know what I used to long for, and I know that I can give that to me.
I become the woman in the TV series I watch. I become the woman I go for a walk with. I become the woman I have a coffee with. I become the woman I talk with on the phone. I become the woman I turn to for support. I become the woman I read about in my book. I become the woman whose book I read. I become the woman I hold a photograph of.
But I don’t become the woman in me.
Who am I?
I can’t seem to hold onto, or seemingly find, my unique identity.
I long to just become me. I long to just be the woman in me. I long to spend time with the women in my life and not become them. I long to know my own identity enough to not become someone else’s. I long to own my personality enough to not become someone else’s.
I long not to drift to the shore I’ve always known, and instead to paddle or float or ride on the ocean within me.
Sometimes I catch myself and wonder what on earth happened to the person I knew a year or two, or three, ago. Sometimes I feel a stranger to myself, other times I feel the closest to myself I’ve ever been. And other times I realise, actually I haven’t changed that much: I’m still me.
One thing I know is this change and growth is necessary. It’s painful, it’s confusing, and I miss the person I knew back then, but I certainly don’t miss the isolating shit that came with it.
It’s easy to catch yourself in times of growth and change (or maybe just the WHOLE of your twenties?) and a) only remember the good bits of how you used to be and give yourself a right old hard freakin time about not being that anymore, or b) come up with a bunch of elaborate stories about how you’re falling off the wagon for good, and how your life is screwed, and how you’ve well and truly lost the shining person you used to be.
Well, I’m hoping that’s a load of bollocks. Although I do do a) and b) frequently. I’m also pretty convinced this is something all twenty-something’s do, whether you’re in the midst of healing your whole entire life or whether you’re trying your best to live your life you’ve got, right now. And, I’m pretty convinced that often none of us see ourselves just how shiningly as everyone else does. Maybe we don’t ever end up changing that much? Maybe the feeling that we’ve ‘lost ourselves’ is mostly in our jam-packed worry-filled noggin? And maybe as we do change and grow, the person we’re becoming is even healthier and wholehearted than the person we were before, so maybe it’s not so bad after all?
Maybe maybe maybe. I dunno. I ain’t no genius, I’m just hopin’ all these maybe’s are Word.
My anger has been buried for way too long. This morning I had a burst during an episode of crying and the blinding rage, was something so new. Something cleaner, something real. Something not hazed with a worry of what it means. Something not restrained out of fear of losing things, or people, or me. In place of this worry that’s usually there, was a confidence and a power and an embracement of this part of me. The blinding motherfucking killing part of me. We all have it. And so I wrote it out. I wrote it and I realised how HEALTHY this is to give the blinding hating part of – the part that just wants to kill everyone – a voice and a space to be here. Mindfully and wholeheartedly here. And this is what I wrote (and hell I think it coulda been a whole lot worse!):
I’m so fucking bored of ‘triggers’. I’m so bored that I hate that word and I rarely write it anymore. I’m bored of the wealth of fucking memories that surface and are here. Yes, to heal, but they’re still here. I’m bored of the grip they have. I’m bored of the past having such a presence in the present. I’m bored of my middle name being ‘trauma’ and my surname being ‘fucked up’.
I’m pissed at the amount of rage I have and I’m pissed at how hard it is for me to feel. I’m pissed at how deeply the weight of my past drags behind and beneath and around. I want to tell it to FUCK OFF. I want to yell and rip and shred and rage at the entire history I’ve had, and start a-fresh, start a-new. I want to yell in the face of the fuckers who wriggled their way into my life and landed in a pit of destruction and despair. I want to yell in their faces and tell them “I’m me now.” I want to burn down their houses and bury them deep. I want to destroy them with acid and pour petroleum on their bones. I want to set them on fire and watch them burn. I want them to burn the way that my childhood did. I want to get revenge, I want to do what all the Buddhist text books say you should: I want to take an eye for an eye. I want to do to them, what they did to me. I want to kill them. I want to kill them, I want to kill them, I want to kill them. I want to kill all the motherfuckers. And I want to embrace and allow for this fury, this blinding rage, this bursting hatred that has festered beneath for WAY too long.
Of course I’d never do such a thing. I’d never even do one of those things. But in order to heal, I know I need to allow myself to feel these things. I need to allow myself to have such fantasies. I need to imagine myself and allow myself to metaphorically burn down each and every house, to burn down all the people too, to pour petroleum on the bodies of the beings that did the shit to me in my life and set them on fire…I need to know that my vitality and my life is worth it. I need to know that I am worthy of destruction, metaphorical destruction. Not real destruction – that is not what I’m talking about. I need to know that the fear that holds me so tight, in therapy and in my other bits of life, of really honouring my anger, my rage and performing such visualisations with my therapist is only that: fear. It’s a little gremlin who knows fuck all. It’s time for that gremlin to get a kick in the nuts too. The past has a grip on my anger, making sure I know it’s dangerous and should never be felt. The amount of trauma that comes with anger is overwhelming, but now it’s my turn to get to know the healthy way to be angry and hating.
In order to heal, this rage needs to be welcomed and be here. Mindfully and wholeheartedly. And that, my friends, is beginning to happen. And my energy comes like nothing I have ever felt before, when I do give it space – the rage space. Talk about HEALTH.
A while ago I did this cartoon as a representative of all the adults in my life that needed me when I was just a kid, and now it’s time for me to tell them all to fuck off. To do what I never did when I was young, and to have this time for me.
I have a five hour shift now, at my new job that I started Friday. Fuck knows how I’m going to do that!
metaphorical marathons 