#63 - It’s October Again

Oooh baby welcome to October! Happy Leaf Peeping season to all my Vermont friends, it’s actually kind of adorable that people take buses simply to look at nature, humans are so fun that way and regularly do adorable things. I found out recently that in Japan they have a microseasons calendar that’s based on nature, and it breaks the year into sections of four to five days to note what the earth is doing. Cherry blossoms bloom. Plums turn yellow. I think it’s really important that we measure the passing of time in more ways than a clerical sense.

A lot of this year for me has been trying to find spaces in my days that give me satisfaction that is not reliant on others granting it to me. Part of that is that this has been the first year of my life I have ever lived alone and I’m no longer performing for an audience 100% of my waking hours. (And no matter how close of a performance it was of my actual self, I was still “on” and overthinking and unsure of my root motivations. Doubting myself all the time was exhausting.) It’s been a time for me to try and figure out how I think of an accomplishment, learn to actually slow down and celebrate reaching my personal goals—it turns out I was overly dismissive of my own accolades because I often feel like if I can do something, anyone can. (And when everyone is super, no one is.)

But that was a comparison, it was all comparison. And nothing kills a sense of self like comparing it to others. I don’t actually need to be faster than the person next to me to be proud of myself for moving that day. My house doesn’t need to look as manicured as an AD house tour—it never will!! They hire people to come in and set dec— like, THOSE houses don’t even look like that! But watching those is fun for me because I get ideas and a sense of what I like and what makes me tick when it comes to interior design. It doesn’t matter what my apartment looks like to anyone but me. And stripping away the comparison, the urge to live my life in ways that were only so I could turn around and point and say “look how cool/interesting/well-decorated my life is” was uhhh, incredibly freeing.

For all that I thought I knew myself (and I like, really thought I knew myself) it wasn’t until I was alone, completely alone with myself that I was able to actually discover the things that make my brain go whiiiirrr.

It turns out I actually do like having a clean house. It genuinely bums me out when there’s cardboard boxes laying around. Not because anyone is going to yell at me or think my house is messy, but just because I, me, Claire, doesn’t like having clutter. I hate anything that if it falls over would create a cacophony of sounds. I like taking my time to get ready—especially if I’m going out. I put on a record, one that I want to listen to and not one that I think is attuned to anyone else’s taste, and I walk around in my bra and underwear and I take bong breaks and try on nineteen different combinations of things and pile all the rejects on the bed while the cats stare at me from their spot behind the growing mountain of textiles. And when I get that weird pre-sweaty feeling from trying on clothes, I sit in front of a fan (because I now have several tiny fans in my home!!) and wait for that to pass. My anxiety has plummeted. The ladies at the bakery know how I take my coffee and that I never want a loaf with seeds. I don’t throw up bile in the morning anymore when I get stressed about something that’s coming up ahead. I don’t panic over what to make for dinner because I’m the only one who has to eat it.

It turns out I had a lot of skill in taking care of other people, but struggled to ever prioritize myself in any real way. The problem with that is the low-level simmer of resentment that I had come to ignore, or more accurately, I was aware of it and felt guilty for having any negative feelings. Ever. But bad feelings, particularly when it comes to other people’s behavior don’t just go away—those judgements just come out elsewhere. And then no one is really saying what they mean and now we’ve got a miscommunication to resolve uh-ohhh!

It’s not selfish to set boundaries. It’s actually not even selfish to prioritize how you’re feeling about something over the projection of how you think it will make them feel.

Almost every massive “tough” conversation I’ve had in my adult life has always ended with both of us expressing some level of surprise at how well it went. I think a lot of that just has to do with the relief that only the truth can provide. More than anything what I’ve come to realize is just how much time we often spend obfuscating the truth in hopes it will make the problems we’re having disappear before we need to address them—but the shitty reality is that it actually just compounds the problems, adds new ones.

I always lol’ed in Love Actually when the signs are being held up for Kiera Knightley and one of them says (and at Christmas you tell the truth).

Is that a thing? Do we have a truth-telling season? I mean, to be fair, one New Years I got real drunk and made everyone tell each other secrets, but that was actually just a bad idea!

The end of the year always brings a mix of feelings with it. And we’re not really at the end but…we’re closing in. It’s Q4. It’s week 40/52. And, idk, if you haven’t been honest with yourself in a while, might be worth asking the extremely scary questions of what’s making you happy (truly happy) and how to do more of it. (Or if that’s not possible, how can we spend less time on the things that make us miserable?)

I don’t think thought exercises where you don’t bring in real-world obligations are super helpful. Mostly I just end up with a reinforced bitterness towards everything that capitalism robs us of. But I do think that one of the loveliest things about journaling has been an unflinching look at my wants, reactions, and subconscious structures that lead me away from doing the things that bring me the most joy. My brain learned when it was still developing that I don’t deserve nice things, and I still struggle with a perfectionist streak that is partly because of my star chart but mostly because, well, fat phobia was so rampant when I was growing up that in order to be seen as even good at something I had to be demonstrably better than everyone else. My presence was not enough, it was demanded that I sing—and sing well—for my supper. But uh, adults are more mature and don’t really have those hangups? It is actually enough for most people that I’m kinda funny and generally kind. We aren’t all still locked into the weird competition that kids are brought into of whose dad is taller. (Like, when I saw that the little Prince in England had been a right cunt about his dad being King it’s like…yeah, as expected. “My dad’s cooler than your dad” is absolutely one of the first languages of competition drilled into children, and that kid has an ace in the hole. (A jewel in the crown?)) Anyway, we (mostly, hopefully) all grow out of it when we realize that most other people are just that, other people, trying to get through their day.

The online screaming matches over things that do not have an impact outside of the internet are a drag, but they’re not representative of real life and how we all interact with each other in person. People are very very brave with their keyboards and screens in ways they are not in the world. It’s why mobile orders for Starbucks are always 10x worse. They have no sense of shame telling a computer the 900 adjustments to make to their adult cup of warm milk, but they sure as shit wouldn’t stand in line and make a human type in all of those. The shame would be too much! (Also, shoutout to the Myrtle-Wyckoff Starbucks for having some of the hottest regulars in Brooklyn. Stunnin’. Love it. Thank you for opening so early!)

So, anyway, living alone has been really good for me. Being alone and learning to prioritize myself and learn how to set aside time for things that actually allow my brain to decompress (I can’t relax fully in a messy room, which means that it’s an act of ~self love and kindness~ to clean the room first, fine fine fine whatever, It doesn’t mean I have to like cleaning it just means I understand the benefits of it for my mental well-being or whatever) has been a game changer for my levels of peace. I think I finally have enough in my well to offer water to others while keeping myself fully hydrated.

Being honest with myself isn’t always easy, but being able to trace my emotions back to the beginning, to find those chestnuts of trauma and crack them open and roast them over an open fire so the richness of their aroma can stink up the place and I can finally understand how it seeped into everything. Like, yeah it’s cliche, but it did actually affect me to not make the dance team in high school. That definitely pushed some weird buttons in my brain because I was a great dancer, and that was undeniable, but the lady who ran the dance team thought I wouldn’t look good in the unitard uniform, so I didn’t get to do it. And that had nothing to do with merit or skill, just my body. And when I wasn’t seen as desirable to date (or, when those desires were expressed, they were mocked and then so was I) that uh, yeah that fucked me up. And denying those situations, writing off my feelings around them, didn’t help them to heal. I had to bring them out and take them seriously and look at how many ripples they had made and how many decisions they had influenced. Whether pebbles or boulders, nothing happens in isolation. I’m glad that I stopped declaring the things that wounded me as lame. Like, that wasn’t helping me heal either! It was just setting off shame spirals that would result in more armor, more things I could emphatically think were cool about me. The worst measurement of all!!!

So I’m dancing again. For me. Because I love it and my denial of that truth was just a way to comfort myself like 15 years ago and it’s time to get rid of that shitty blanket and invest in a new one! And I’m trying to make dating something I’m excited about rather than this thing that just represents dread. It turns out, listening to other fat people talk about dating as a fat person is really healing! I’m not alone in my thoughts or struggles!! Solidarity with other people can, in fact, be the best form of support!

It’s October again. It’s been a big year spent alone. I’m really glad it turned out morning walks are something I genuinely enjoy doing outside of being an escape hatch so I could spend two hours alone. It’s really nice to know that my actions are coming from an actual place of my own desire rather than just my desire to be liked and approved of. There was a dearth of approval (and care) in my life, but it turns out, I am the only committee opinion that really matters when it comes to my happiness. You know, like the big six in the UN. Outsized impact.

(I’ve realized while writing this that the “it’s October again” refrain comes from a fake song on One Tree Hill that regularly gets stuck in my head. I don’t think it was ever even really released on their soundtracks, it was just a song they made Hailey play in the club after Chris Kelly won’t go on and she needs to save Peyton’s reputation otherwise she, Peyton, the seventeen year old high school student, won’t get to run the club anymore? One Tree Hill is a very very dumb show, but I can’t say it’s not iconic. After Hailey plays the song she leaves her husband—who she got married to because she wanted to have sex but didn’t want to do that before getting married, and yes, they are all juniors in high school while this is happening—to go on tour and be a famous musician. Her husband then destroys her keyboard in a fit of rage. Ah, young love!)

My moka pot stopped working so I got a pour over setup and my first two cups have been absolutely fantastic. It’s a rainy day and the cats are curled up v v cutely on the duvet. I’m going to send this and then make a big batch of onion jam with the 6lbs of onions I bought yesterday and listen to my Saturday podcasts (Lovett or Leave It, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me) and probably pause those halfway through to put on Beyoncé’s album and dance around to the best quad progression of songs put on an album in recent memory. (Alien Superstar → Cuff It → Energy → Break My Soul >>>>)

I’m no longer afraid of pauses, of silence in my life. I like the full routine of things, I like my systems, and I like that I know when they have to change. I like that I can hold myself accountable, but I also really enjoy the newfound self-respect that comes along with actually telling people in my life how I feel rather than constantly roleplaying as a diplomat in order to never have an opinion that pisses someone off (about what they’ve told me/their actions, clearly I have never had any trouble expressing opinions about political takes or pop culture!). Self-respect is just actually honoring my own needs but not for the sake of being an asshole. I’m kind because I can’t live peacefully when I am not. I get no satisfaction out of cruelty. Honestly, I get a little out of being petty but it doesn’t last in any real way. I get immense joy out of making people laugh. Not because my humor declares my worth, but because laughter is good and healing and wonderful. I think it’s so fucking cool that we have an involuntary response and a signature noise that erupts from us when we find something funny. Humans are fucking adorable. We clap in delight. We laugh when things are funny (or sad, or surprising). We make an awed sound when we witness magic. What a wonderful little world.

Now, please watch this video of a bunch of people with unique laughs sit next to each other at a French panel show && have yourself a lovely start to spooky season!!