10: on coming back to yourself 🌸

am I always working through the same things? (january 2021)

Jan 31, 2021

Iteration #10 of this monthly letter full of feelings.
This issue's theme is: ✿ always coming back to yourself ✿

It has taken me awhile to get this out. I get tired, lost, distracted. I write "send out January newsletter" on every to do list on my desk (I have many). January is hard, then February is harder. March is when it gets easier for some, but I can't relate. These newsletters are a fun practice because it forces a habit of processing themes I would normally just circle around in my head and never get out; it's powerful to be able to string some sort of narrative together (especially as someone that's felt embarrassed of my own voice).

If you read my last letter, you know that I talked about releasing my desire to be "flexible" this year, which means listening to and trusting myself, and not letting the part of my brain that says "you're too much" win. To not overcompensate with flexibility to prove that I'm like-able or valuable. There's no such thing as too much (and if you're like me and have this deep gnawing rotten feeling on the inside that you're too much and everybody in your life is reluctantly loving you, stop letting whoever made you feel that way hold the power). You are allowed to be however much you are in any moment you're in. Not being able to meet you where you're at is a flaw of the person asking you to shrink, not you. What if we all stopped turning ourselves inside out over and over again to prove we're not who someone says we are?

ALWAYS WORKING THROUGH THE SAME THINGS

I took these photographs of Kelsey & Emily in their NYU dorm room sometime at the end of our first year away at college in NYC. I hadn't done much with these images before, and I wish I had. I recently added them to my website and spent some time thinking about what they meant to me at the time. Dancing around naked making light drawings in the dark felt like some kind of magical truth. I felt like myself. I wasn’t used to being seen and I don’t think I believed I deserved to be, but I did when I was with them. I hid from Emily & Kelsey most of the time, because they reminded me of who I wanted to be, who I didn't think I deserved to be.

It takes years to untangle the webs that gaslighting can weave into our brains. Back then, fresh out of an abusive relationship, I kept myself away from moments that made me feel like the person I am. They scared me, because they made me feel like maybe I could trust myself. But then I'd hear that voice in the back of my head: "I'm the only one who really knows you, and I know how you really are. You need me." Who am I to trust myself?

When I look at these photographs now, I'm reminded of the work I've been trying to make within the last few years (and probably forever, subconsciously), attempting to create safe spaces to be ourselves and trying to understand what it means to allow ourselves to be seen. These themes always find their way back to us. Perhaps we are always working through the same things, over and over again, until we're ready to listen.

I posted a few of these images to instagram, asking "Do you ever think about who you’d be if nobody ever made you feel small? If when all of the times someone made you feel stupid, you didn’t believe them?" I've spent a lot of time feeling resentful towards myself for not being able to just BE the person I want to be, to not have people make me feel so panicked and confused and afraid of rejection that I'd willingly sit in their web, feeling myself falling into something that'll only get harder to wiggle out of. To not have sat there through it and kept going back when all of those horrible things were said. To have been able to just get the fuck out of bed and go make shit happen for myself. I try to have patience. How was I supposed to push through when I had no reason to believe that I could? I try not to feel resentful of the person I could have been. I’m trying to become her in my own time.

It’s okay if we couldn’t hear what our bodies/hearts were telling us because they were overwhelmed by other people’s stories about who we were supposed to be. Its okay if we believed them. It's okay if you still hear them sometimes, if the echos still feel louder than your own voice sometimes. It’s okay if you’re just being able to hear yourself now.

WHAT STORIES ARE YOU TELLING YOURSELF?

A few weeks ago I was on my old tumblr looking for the original post of this, which I've had the screenshot of saved on my desktop for years, and shared in my October letter. I didn't find it, but I did find a bunch of mean anonymous messages I received throughout college. I shared one of them that said I'll never get forward & everyone who really knows me knows how negative + deceptive I really am. Those have become my greatest insecurities, even before the anonymous internet bully latched onto them.

On the left, an instagram story reads "I should have made some kind of art project with all of the mean things that anonymous person (or people) said to me via tumblr's anonymous ask box (why was that a thing?) but honestly I was really overwhelmed and kind of embarrassed by it (both the fact that people hated me and that I allowed them to have access to me). Instead of making something I just kept all these insults inside my body, tucked away in little corners of my brain slowly eating at my self esteem forever. Below this text, a question box reads "What is the insult that still takes up space in the corners of ur mind?" Let's all collectively try to release them together. Leave one here & I'll post it anonymously alongside something nice that I truly honestly think about you. — An ask box on the left asks “what’s the insult that still takes up space in the corners of ur mind” On the right, a response to the ask box reads “You play the victim well. (After being out of an abusive relationship of 9 years).” Bridget’s response reads: This one hurts me so much and I wish I could erase this memory for you. It is so terrible how the people around us we need so desperately to support us will sometimes push us right back into the cycles of self doubt. I’ve been there. So afraid to share what it really feels like because someone will use it against you. I see you. I know you were never playing the victim. They were trying to keep you small. They were keeping you in the cycle of abuse because you’re no threat to them when you can’t trust yourself. YOUR TRUTH IS POWERFUL. Don’t let anybody take that away from you. You are magic. Your words have power and that’s why they’re scared. You speaking up for yourself blows up their idea of normal. Your strength leads the way for so many others. Somebody somewhere will see us fight and scratch and crawl and sometimes barely get out of these abusive relationships and they’ll know that they don’t have to put up with it anymore. You have always been special. I’ve always thought you were beautiful in a way that felt whole and beyond your physical form. There is something so warm and inspiring about you; it floats off you like sunshine. It’s too bright for people who don’t appreciate the flow and they try to smother your light. It won’t be smothered; you’re pure sun.

So I asked people to share about the insult that takes up space in the corners of your brain, the one that nags at you when you're feeling the most insecure. The one you're most fearful of being true. I got A LOT of responses & I've shared a lot of them in the "feelings" highlight in my stories. I still have a lot more to share & will probably try to do so after I send out this letter. It's been really interesting to be allowed into the corners of people's minds and see the insults that have stuck to their insides.

What insults have stuck to your insides?

RECENT WORK, ETC:

words by cleo wade • words by mimi zhu • prickly illustration by yallaroza • words by zenat begum

So, will I always be working through the same things? I think yes, and I think that feels okay to me. What are the themes you'll always be working through?

This newsletter was written from the Onundagaonoga (Onondaga) & Haudenosaunee territory To learn more about the stolen land you're occupying, visit native-land.ca ⋰