16: stuck in the sinking sand ⏳
on being overwhelmed, processing, self-sabotage (july 2021)
Iteration #16 of this monthly letter full of feelings.
This issue's theme is: ✶ stuck in the sinking sand ✶
A Time Traveling Feelings Letter (or something like it)
〰️〰️〰️ originally sent on Nov 4, 2021 〰️〰️〰️
It doesn't feel weird for me to send you this and date it from July because that's where I feel, emotionally. I feel like that spinning rainbow pinwheel when your computer is frozen and you haven't saved the thing you were working on, you know? Just stuck there, waiting, processing. When I try to speak or articulate my thoughts, it feels like they all get stuck to fly tape as they're coming to the front of my brain. Many big things have happened lately. things that require processing. I am trying to be kind to myself. It's hard. I don't know why it is so hard. I'm going to keep thinking about that and get back to you in another letter.
I'm having a hard time keeping up. Not just with this monthly newsletter, but with processing... everything. I know I could abandon the idea of it being monthly & not put pressure on myself, but I do really like the idea of a routine practice where I work through a theme that comes up each month. I like the idea of the practice. Right now I feel so stuck and like my words make no sense, and I know that it's just a muscle I need to exercise.
I know that building self-trust comes from practice.
There are a lot of things I'm figuring out that are all jammed up and I haven't really felt like I could articulate. Months worth of things. I know that articulating these things could be part of the processing, and this newsletter practice is an opportunity to articulate. So, I'm going to keep sending you these letters with the months going in chronological order and somewhere maybe the months on the letter will start matching the month you receive it. You might get a few more letters in the next couple weeks, maybe (but I won't make promises about my productivity).
I am always trying to strike a balance between being patient & gentle with myself and holding myself accountable for my happiness; and I know there are necessary periods of rest, I know. But I also feel so blocked up, like I'm not resting – I'm just putting something off. I feel incapable of processing each event as it happens. I feel incapable of communicating what I'm feeling. I feel detached from myself. I know that communicating is part of what connects me to this experience of life, and maybe I'm purposefully burying myself in a whole as a form of self-sabotage. Or maybe I need time to process. Or something in between. How do you know which is true and when? I can't tell if I'm avoiding processing or giving myself time to process.
ALWAYS ≠ RIGHT NOW
A lot has happened lately, and every single event seems to ripple into some kind of triggering synchronicity. I'm not really sure how to talk about it all yet. I keep trying and I feel so cringey. There's nothing wrong with cringe, who fucking cares. I don't know. The point is: a lot has fucking happened, and my stepdad died. That's the thing I feel like I can say; the thing we were expecting to happen for a year. On top of everything else, my stepdad actually died and we, weirdly, weren't expecting it. I'm allowed to be a mess when someone dies. I'm allowed to be overwhelmed. But it doesn't feel like an exception.
I feel like I'm always like this. I'm trying not to keep saying that. I don't feel like I am "in crisis" right now. There's always "something" with me. I feel like I can't give myself excuses. I feel like I have always been like this. Unreliable, emotional, prickly, unlikeable, unprocessed, too much. I am working on trying to allow myself to be in the present and not go through a shame spiral about not being enough. Always like this. Not stringing together a story about my entire life when I show up late to something or lose my patience or feel like a monster. I am just feeling this right now; this feeling doesn't define my life. But what if it does?
I try not to get overwhelmed by the passing of time, the loss of opportunities, the panic about not being "present enough" in the moment. I'm trying to be present but (surprise) it's hard. So much of this year has been me realizing how much I disassociate but not having any clue why or how to come back to myself. How much do I have to process in order to be present? What's the difference between processing and presence? How do the days just keep passing and I never feel like I've done anything with them? There's that thought again: I never do anything. Maybe it's just today. Maybe it's just tomorrow. Maybe it's not every day. Maybe I'm not always like this. Maybe I won't be tomorrow.
SELF SABOTAGE / SELF BETRAYAL
I mentioned this idea that self-trust comes from practice. This is a lesson that keeps coming to me, over and over again. I feel so much shame every time it comes up, like why haven't I figured this out already? I am caught in a pattern of self-betrayal. I keep telling myself the same stories (I'm always like this) and subconsciously rejecting anything that could pull me out of it. I swear to you – I'm not doing it on purpose. When people say self sabotage, I always thought it sounded like something playful you could see as it was happening. I feel like I'm disassociating when it happens and all of the sudden I'm on the other side of another day beating myself up for not doing the things I said I would do.
I am frustrated with myself for not keeping up with things. For allowing myself to get so built up. I wait until I'm all clogged up and alone and self-loathing and then I explode and it feels like it makes no sense and rhen I start all over again I feel like I can't get above this baseline. My friend Anna said recently: "self esteem is built through successful repeated action" and I cried. I couldn't wrap my head around what successful means. Another friend, Abigail, is teaching a meditation class and she says: "the more you show up, the more you can trust yourself" and I'm flooded with self-hatred. It's the opposite effect of what I'm supposed to feel: empowered, compassionate toward myself. I know I'm rejecting doing the things that help me be myself.
I feel stuck behind a boulder, wanting to turn invisible and process it all in solitude, but knowing solitude only brings me more boulders to push through, and beyond it is the release of all that's pent up and sinking around me. I feel so unlike myself and I know that communicating will bring me closer to the "myself" that I crave to be. When I try to communicate, I can't find the words, or the right words; I'm tired of not having the right words. I feel frustrated with myself that I'm not "better than this," more processed than this, whatever. I want to reject the urge to hate myself for being some self-indulgent navel gazing depressed 30-something with unprocessed trauma trying to share their nonsense with the world. I want to reject the impulse to only present a clean, processed, beautifully articulated body of work or thoughts or personality. I come to this conclusion over and over again: that is not me. I am messy and I feel my best when I allow the mess to spill out a little bit and feel seen in it. What I like to do is unprocessed; it's throwing spaghetti at the wall as I process. It's getting out of my own head and putting something out there to see where it goes once I release it. It's this silly newsletter, and I hide from it when it feels hard (probably when I need the practice most). Do you know how many times I've said "process" so far? 18!
Here are some things I'm working on:
I'm taking a meditation class and trying to put that into practice. I'm working on a collective zine with the folks who took my first creativity workshop which should be pretty beautiful; my sweet new friend Cecilia is helping make the zine a reality. I'm trying to get my ducks in a row to offer another series of pay-what-you-can workshops and potentially a creative project incubator (fill out this form if you're interested & I'll email you). We're making a podcast out of dead parent club. Then there are the big looming projects: all of the photographs I've been taking at home, photographs of my brother, stories about my dad. So many lists of things I want to do and haven't been doing. All of the wants that just keep piling up.
Here are some things that I've done that are now out in the world:
I have a photograph published in this anthology. I'm still co-hosting dead parent club on clubhouse every week. I'm still going to therapy once a week, still trying to keep therapy thursdays in practice when it gets hard. I added more songs to my crying playlist. I'm still here in the world and surviving and that's something too.
Thanks for being here through all my messy mixed metaphors. I am having a hard time sharing lately, and I appreciate you being willing to witness it. Even if it feels like I'm pulling my own teeth to get this out. Hopefully I'm chiseling out a little bit of the blockage. Little by little. xo
⋰ If you'd like to read previous newsletters, they are archived here.
This newsletter was written from the Onundagaonoga (Onondaga) & Haudenosaunee territory.. To learn more about the stolen land you're occupying, visit native-land.ca ⋰
