This Spin

The nights have been getting so cold for a while now. I have been absent from my writing, and instead of forcing myself to write a poem or a weird essay or some shit, I thought maybe I’ll just sit and write. Conversationally. I’ll just…write. Let my agenda fuck off and the words just come. That’s like giving your inner critic a Tom Collins. Several of them.

I’ve been busy painting my new home into a modern minimalist artsy but thrifty home I want to feel like I am myself in. Tall ceilings, gray walls, white trim and windows, no curtains this time, keep it clean and light, black metal and soft wood lighting, Picasso’s framed poster “Blue Nude,” simple frames sparingly up with my daughter in black and white, the white warm linen shade propped up by couch on angular wood legs, hardwood flooring, no rugs. There’s a writing desk where our family photos cluster nicely together all cozy. But I want room. Room to breathe and think and be myself and I’ve always wanted to do this but for some reason never thought it was “me.” But I’ve always loved the way atmosphere in a room (I’m a lighting fanatic, even particular bulbs) can settle over you like a calming smell or certain albums. Certain feels that settle and relax your skin.

So I have been, in my painstakingly slow paint sessions, cleaning, short work shifts, three a.m. walks under the street lamps in my silent neighborhood, I have been using all of this time to settle in, yet further into myself, and out of myself, with forward momentum.  I thought maybe I had been escaping into things for months and months, maybe even in a certain someone,

…but the truth is I was looking at myself in the mirror the whole time and just waiting for my image to come into focus. And it isn’t really a mirror but a black frame propped up against the plaster wall of this old house. I am not hyper-focused, I am just….there…wondering what it is that seems to turning over and over in me, trying to tell me something.

And there were evident facts, like the person I told everything–everything to–told me I was “incredibly scarred.”

and

“Well, look at your life, your past, your scars, all affect now-look at your job, at what your write.”

And that bothered me, because it hurt, because it’s true. And I handle it. But that’s not what was turning and pushing its way.

I have a date next month with an old friend. He’s coming to town for the holidays. we’ve been talking. But no, it’s not that. There’s no pervasive anxiety with that other than wtf am I going to wear.

New flashbacks came up–a memory lengthened and highlighted and felt. Yes, the awful thing I saw in that flashback is real, because I remember it like I remember sleeping with my stuffed Kermit when I was nine. Every night. But I also know that the more you start to heal, the more you start to live your life, the more new doors open. So I scheduled an appointment with my psychologist and to discuss a few fears I know I can master I just choose not to write about.

PTSD does not go away.

But you manage.

Because the beautiful things in this world are worth the terrible. And I am mastering something ever so slowly but surely–the scary things, the fears, the fears of rejection, abandonement, attachment blah blah blah–all of these things are becoming…okay…because I let them have their room, and feel them when they arrive, but I am now able to recognize when that’s what pops up and affects me. When you feel the shit, set it aside, and put yourself in check–rejection and even abandonment stop hurting–because you take the power away from those that held those in their hands over you, and you stop, and it all comes from within. I am not abandoned because I have MYSELF, I am not going to be hurt by this or that rejection I risk every day with more honest words-I am not going to hurt because I do not reject myself. And I feel like I am in my center again and it spins and pools and it is lovely. This center is becoming so familiar to me, as familiar to me as anxiety, now it is this nest, this pool, this safe place to push for more and more life, more experience, more love, more curiosities….

The thing turning in me is this: I am living. I am challenging the borders I have limited myself by and I am pushing them back kind of easily. And with the choice of deciding to try new things like different approaches, kinder words, more blunt and honest words, standing up for myself, stopping pleasing people-one at a time; knowing the kind of woman I am without needed descriptive labels–I can’t describe who i am, but I like her. And there’s no need to explore any further.