#45 - Rabbit Rabbit, Welcome To June!!

Summers have never been easy for me. I have always been extra sweaty (a combo of weight and genetics—I think my dad starts sweating when he looks at something heavy) (also one of the best non-compliments I ever got from a terrible boss after two weeks of knowing me, “oh she gets really sweaty but don’t worry, she doesn’t smell” and like I get that my bar is low but holy shit I have really been comforted by the “don’t worry [you] don’t smell” through every single drop of sweat that has rolled off of my chin and been promptly captured by my boobs) and summers are just not…for me. I burn in the sun, I literally drip sweat from my head, which means my hair is wet, and when I’ve exhausted those sweat glands the ones on the back of my knees decide to have a little fun!!

And I used to get anxious when I got hot. (Because of the whole Fat Girl Being Sweaty In Public complex that I had so thoroughly developed. “Ah shit, they’re seeing me sweat, now they’ll know I’m fat.” Yeah, babe, the body gave it away first!) And the anxiety just made it worse. And also like, New York is a hot sweaty sticky summer city, we have like, a lot of very classic movies to describe just how much the heat affects the entirety of the city in these three months, and it’s uh, across the board, not great!

But BUT but butbutbut it’s a new June, and we’re going with a new narrative this summer! I bought a hand-held rechargeable fan, I have facial mist that helps calm redness, I will be carrying a washcloth/sweat rag with me, and we are going to make it work. I singlehandedly changed out my AC unit last night and managed to get it out of three increasingly difficult to maneuver doors and only caused…mild injury to myself but I didn’t have to awkwardly ask my landlord for help, a true win for us all—especially Soopchan who would have been once again made to stand in my room as I fretted about inconveniencing another human and so profusely thank him to the point that it gets weird for the both of us because I am just SO nervous he’s gonna see my weed stash and evict me on the spot the entire time he’s inside the apartment.

(Wow, anxiety is so fun, makes living everyday life just extra joyous and super cool.)

ANYWAY, the narrative. I have been writing in my journal a lot (what, who, me? no way!) about how to uncouple myself from the stories about myself that I, uh, now understand are fictional and not based in fact but instead based on a series of warped perceptions of myself, the role I play(ed) in people’s lives, and the consequences of my actions—and I purposefully distinguished the actuals from the imagined. See I think that I have accidentally based a massive chunk of my life on the idea that if I can achieve some sort of perfect state of being, I will no longer face hardships. If I can just do everything right, all the time, I won’t be yelled at. I will be cherished and irreplaceable and wanted and needed and all of that will be guaranteed because I will have made myself indispensable (and also like, who wouldn’t want to be around someone who is so awesome and perfect, right??).

But I keep thinking about control, and the amount of it that I want (& honestly, the amount any of us actually have) vs. what giving up that safety mechanism means for my happiness.

I’ve made my life really small recently. On purpose. (And yeah, it’s definitely a reaction to feeling out of control, but it has also allowed me to like…not worry about extemporaneous stresses while I have been trying my best to actually fucking heal myself because I’m just so ready to not live my life in a constant state of aching anymore.)I have spent a lot of my life in-between states of physical upheaval, and it’s taken me a long time to learn to sit. Be still. Slow down. Mean to be where I am. Understand the intentions of my actions (or lack thereof!).

And a lot of the answers to the questions of “why was I doing that” turned out to be: a massive lack of self-worth. And like, this was really frustrating to realize because it has not only been the clear motivation behind some of my more obvious actions (the ones that cry out love me love me love me) but, more insidiously, the quieter things that I have done because I thought I was being kind (such as: the forgiveness I have given too easily).

It’s truly so annoying to look at something that people deem to be a positive personality trait, scratch one layer in, and go “ah fuck, THAT TOO?”

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(This is a good time to mention that I actually think overthinking most if not all of one’s actions is actually an extremely bad thing to do. So just to give an example of what did help me: after realizing just how many things could be traced back to that whole lack of self-worth thing, instead of panicking that my love of giving gifts to my friends was actually a manipulation tactic—because holy shit yikes no it isn’t—I instead chose to purposefully try and build self-worth, mostly through doing things that were just for me. I still went for morning walks and realized that they no longer felt like an escape or the only time I had to myself, they had become the thing that I did for myself in the morning. I love a walk, bopping along to music and syncing up my walking rhythm, adore taking pictures of flowers and cats and cute little houses, obsessed with all the different railing and gate options in Ridgewood, truly a feast for the eyes!! It’s good for me to put on a bra first thing, it’s good for me to have broken down a lot of my insecurities about letting people witness me in undone states, it’s great that I get sunlight and fresh air usually within the first hour of waking and transform the rest of my day because I know I’m a get-it-done kind of girl as proved by my lovely little morning walk! It wasn’t to prove anything to anyone, it was just for me, and that was enough.)

In discovering this narrative that I had created, it suddenly wove the story of my 20s together so wholly it stunned me. It felt like the big revelation of did we accidentally get addicted to reinforcing the worst possible narrative about ourselves mixed with oh babe, we don’t have to live this way anymore!!! I’m choosing to focus solely on the latter.

I knew that I had been living for the approval of others, but I thought I had just been doing it in like an ongoing desperate attempt to seem cool/receive external validation because it felt good and not because I was fundamentally unable to provide the approval for myself and had unknowingly catastrophized my personality and completely forsaken my true desires and wants. And I am so glad that I realized this because now I can let. it. gooooo.

Step one: stop speaking so negatively to/about myself, and that is now, uhh, an incomplete and ongoing journey!

It turns out that stopping myself midsentence to apologize for “feeling annoying” is actually a really good indicator that I was having the continuous thought pattern that my friends all hate spending time with me and I’m just tricking them into being around and the only reason they haven’t left yet is because of pity or some other equally sinister motivation to ascribe the people who love me and whom I love most in the world?!? None of them have ever given me a reason to believe otherwise and trust is actually one of the only things that matters in a friendship SOOO me not trusting them was actually just self-poisoning and that’s a bummer but thankfully the antidote is also self-induced and I had the ingredients in my little satchel all along.

Step two: stop sending text paragraphs when I feel the need to over-explain.

Not in the “ladies are too polite in work emails” way (which, also, use the word ‘just’ however much you want and be as thankful/appreciative of the people who do the tasks as you want to be. Maybe we could use a little more kindness in the world instead of arbitrary emotionless writing for the sake of what, making men feel uncomfortable with displays of emotion? Sounds like they’re the fragile ones to meeee! I’m not nervous when I say “just checking in” I am displaying the casualness I feel about the situation and maybe if we taught people how to write with emotion and not just for school research papers we would have an easier time understanding each other especially when so much of our communication is online in written declarative sentences now, okay, well, anyway) it was more in the “Claire feels the need to explain that she has already every considered every possible angle in case the people whom she is speaking with think of her as someone who has ever underthought a single decision in her life” way.

[hold for knowing laughter].

But I was ultimately just trying to control the situations, allowing for only certain responses that I was prepared for. And that’s not fair to other people!! People are allowed to get mad, be disappointed, or wish that I had done something differently. It doesn’t make them a bad person, just like my actions (if not on purpose/part of a pattern they have already set boundaries around) do not make me a bad person. It just makes us both deeply human. Conflict is natural, and avoiding it creates a false reality in which no one is saying what they really mean. (Immediately damaging the connection and then acting as a constant abrasive until resolved!)

There was a Daily Show opener that stuck with me for years—I know it was when I was in college but I don’t remember what tragedy had happened that caused Jon Stewart to open with, “And we’re not even going to talk about _____, because I have no words for it, and I’m going to shove it deep down and then mysteriously explode later this week when someone knocks over the orange juice.”

Resentment is going to happen in any relationship, it’s up to us to figure out the best ways they dissipate it when it does come up. It’s important to develop a language of disagreement rather than cower in fearful silence.

Because when we don’t express ourselves clearly about the things that do bother us, we will explode over the orange juice being spilled, and then that person has an irrational fear of knocking something over—which might even be out of their control/an honest mistake—and the thing that they did to actually piss us off is still happening, and maybe even at higher rates, and they keep talking about how sorry they are about the orange juice which is like so annoying because it’s not even about the orange juice bro!! (It’s kind of like how getting botox in your armpits just makes you sweat out of your butt. Just get a better deodorant, don’t give yourself swamp ass!!!)

So. Ask yourself questions, and don’t be afraid of the answers. Big changes are actually okay, and good, and part of life. (And if you reflect and fall even deeper in love with who you are right now, I am truly so thrilled and happy and that is so wonderful and you deserve that knowledge too!!)

The truth will set you free and continuing in a lie will just crush your spirit and you deserve to live! It’s okay to take time to heal, it’s okay to make mistakes, and sunk cost fallacy is just that, a fallacy!!!

Figure shit out, congratulate yourself for doing it, and then go forth with the knowledge of knowing yourself, of seeing yourself as the lovable and loving person that you are, and allow that grace for others as well. Let go of the pain that does not serve you, let go of the fears that are holding you back, the regrets, the missed chances, the ideals that no longer make sense to cling to. Like, let go && let’s go! There’s life to be lived, laws to be changed, flowers to smell, bridges to be built!! Spliffs to be smoked, deep conversations to be held, inside jokes to be made! (And then referenced ad nauseam!)

We are not bound to a narrative forever. Anthology, trilogy, standalone, chapter, or paragraph, we don’t have to keep the story going forever just because it’s the story we know how to write. New stories await! Full of characters we haven’t even met yet!!

We have to be alive in the ways we can be alive, be the best possible friend we can be in the moments we are given, and provide the services we uniquely offer to our communities.

(Even if we’re covered in sweat while we do it.)

Happy June y’all!!!

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