THE CAGE IS OPEN
For the last few days I have felt the deepest urge to express but I haven't known what, when or how to. The opposite of depression is expression. And when I noticed myself spiralling into the dark corners of my mind last weekend, I realised that the one thing I had stopped doing in my everyday life is the reason I landed there.
I stopped connecting with myself in the morning through my self-return pages. My self-return pages are at minimum, three pages in my journal of my stream of consciousness when I immediately wake up. This is my window with myself. At 4am every morning, I silently peel myself out of my warm bed and drink my vanilla latte while I put my pen to paper. I write to clear my mind. Get the chaos in order somehow - even when it doesn’t make sense some times.
When people in my daily life learn that I journal every day, I'm often met with, "I want to write, but I just don't know how to." This baffles me because writing to me is like finally breathing out. For me at least, writing is exactly what my self-return pages are. My live stream of conscious thought. If you have read any of my older open journal entries, you'd know this about me; but I never, ever, ever have a plan of what to write. I don't have drafts or titles or voice memos in my phone even though I see a lot of fellow writers share they do that. For me, it's whatever comes through me while I'm here in front of the keyboard. Sometimes a childhood memory will surface, other times a wound, and sometimes a beautiful metaphor emerges by coincidence. And I just let it. So what will it be?
In my day to day life, I have a very demanding life. I am a single mother of a five year old little girl. I work a full time role throughout the week too. My job isn't one where I can go in the office, put my head down quietly and be in solitude to do the work either. My role is what I sometimes describe as being 'on show'. I am a corporate educator (I keep my work life private fyi) so that means, every four weeks, I have a group of adult strangers come into my classroom that I get to teach for a month everything about their new roles.
Sometimes it's a group of 10 people, other times (lately) it's up to 50 people. Yep. I public speak, control large rooms, create psychological safety for them by getting their brain waves into alpha and beta so they retain the new information. I am a major introvert (funny that), but daily, regardless my internal world, I have to 'turn on' my work alter ego and become extroverted, bubbly, positive and engaging. Meaning I mask a lot. And I make a thousand decisions all day long trying to control time, schedules, and people. So by the time it reaches 5pm, I am fatigued even by thoughts alone.
Decision fatigue and I go way back.
On top of managing motherhood, my relationship with my partner, my full time role, my apartment, the inventory of household needs, school holiday schedules, appointments and family court proceedings with my high conflict ex-husband; I am also trying to just be me too.
As you get older, your responsibilities add, you begin to realise time passes for all of us, that it really is up to you to do what needs to be done to make sure you don't implode your life. Sometimes the daily doing feels like it weighs a tonne. Other days (and while nothing may have changed materially) it feels lighter. The only thing that ever really changes is my mind and how well I am staying consciously connected to myself. Not letting my patterns of old thoughts hijack my attention and take me to those terrible depressive places.
Sometimes it's hard. And I've been told by many psychologists that due to my CPTSD, (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) I intellectualise my emotions rather than feel them. Also another thing I'm trying to work through in between the dailies. What does that even fucking mean? I used to say back. "Well, Chenise, when you feel your anger and rage, where in your body do you feel it?" Blank. I couldn't even answer it.
Last week, for the first time in god knows how long, I actually expressed my rage and anger safely.
After work last Friday, (after having one of the shittest work weeks of my life mind you), I locked myself in my car, in an underground car park, inhaled a deep breath and let out a scream so deafening my voice box cracked and strained. I shook my body and then exhaled. I felt like a crazy, wild animal who was going to be sent to a psyche ward for that outburst. Yet, about 30 minutes after that release, I could feel my body enter a calming state.
I hear all the time, "If you don't express or feel your emotions, it stores in your body. You can get sick. You can get auto immune diseases." etc, etc, etc. Well, obviously I don't want any of that to happen to me but my issue has always been that I don’t know how to express/feel them.
When I was a little girl, any large emotion that would surface, tears, rage, anger, frustration, I was sent to my room alone until I could calm down and be 'better behaved'. No wonder I push people away when I feel these same emotions now in my adult life. We assume that as we age, we just automatically get these downloads of information on how to handle these parts of the human experience. When the truth is, we fucking don’t. Sure, if you had care givers or parents that were emotionally mature and intelligent, then maybe your experience here is different. Some people were lucky enough to have those safe adults around them to teach them.
I didn't.
But I know I want my daughter to.
Which is why I try my hardest to be the best woman I can be with what I know. It's why I do spend my free time in between life's demands to educate myself in areas I know I'm not fluent in. My commute to and from work is spent listening to audiobooks about things like this.
I know there will be mistakes I make as a mother, and a woman, sister, daughter, partner, friend, etc. All of us will fall short in some areas regardless what we do.
There is no 'How To Life' book. Nor is there a 'How To Parent' book really. Nor is there a 'How To Be A Real Human Being While Not Fucking Up Everything Around You' book.
After last week, and getting so paralysed in my negative emotions, I came across a video of a woman online which I want to quote here:
"The thing I hear over and over from women by the time they find their way to me is: they are fucking exhausted from all the love and light healing spaces. Because even in the most beautiful love and light spaces, there is an exception that whatever hurts, rages, hungers, envies, or griefs live inside you… they will eventually be alchemised into something softer, wiser, more evolved. So that even when you are dying to just be furious, devastated, jealous, greedy, vengeful, heartbroken, unhinged and utterly human… there is a quiet voice in the back of your head urging you to start cleaning it up. It's the subtle demand to make your darkness more palatable. Taking every part inside of you that makes people uncomfortable, and teaching it better manners before you'll let it sit at your table. This is how you can spend years believing you're integrating your shadow when you're actually rehabilitating it. Rehabilitation says: 'You can come home once you've learned to behave.' Integration says: 'You were never required to behave to belong to me.' It's why over and over again, I watch women visibly exhale when I tell them: 'You know you don't have to keep trying to get out of the dark, right? You don't have to clean everything up. You don't have to drag every part of yourself toward the light. Some things get to stay dark. There are parts of you that are hungry, selfish, excessive and furious. They have fangs, and claws, and the urge to tear and rip and howl at the world around them. They want to much. They are too wild. And there is something deliciously relieving about finally letting them remain that way.' To let your grief exist without digging around inside of it for wisdom. To be selfish without softening it into self care. To feel the full, indecent size of your ambition without immediately finding something useful to do with it. To let the woman with teeth keep them without making her promise never to bite."
@alchemist_erica
This was the first piece of content I have read in a while that spoke directly to the parts of my womanhood I have kept trying to tame. Express less of. Calm her down more. Stop feeling the fire. Blah, blah, blah. I felt so seen.
Why do we need to wait for permission from others before we just be who we are without trying to polish the taboo sides of the human experience?
Why do we get so caught up in finding the 'reason' behind creating something? I don't want everything I do and share to be this big philosophical life lesson. Sometimes I just want to be a girl, feeling real things, and putting it somewhere and that just be it.
And that just be it.
Most ardently,
Chenise.
