A few days ago (or maybe more at this point – the days are kinds running together due to the pace at which my life is currently moving) a girlfriend asked me how my book was going. My answer to her was “which one?” She seemed a little shocked at my confusion and said, “well, your novel, of course.”
The truth is my writing is more important to me than I think it has ever been. Mostly because it is less stifled, more accepted by those I care about, and something I am starting to feel less self-conscious about.
But I am still feeling self-conscious. It’s a feeling I am working on. Mostly because I know it is real. Mostly because I know it is ridiculous. Yes, that was two “mostly”s. Yes, I know how math works. No, this isn’t a math problem.
One of the hardest parts of putting nouns and verbs together on the page these days is the feeling of unworthiness. I think I may have mentioned this publicly before and I am currently resisting the urge to stop typing and go search to see. I won’t because the intention of that act is unproductive. If I were going to do it as a point of reference to further the work, that would be one thing. It isn’t that. It is simply a stall tactic. A visit into the past so that I do not have to stay present here, in the now, in the midst of this current work.
And I digress. I digress because I don’t want to address the idea of feeling unworthy. I attempt to skirt it for a few reasons, I think. But the most overwhelming one is, in the words of the wonderfully blunt Simon Cowell, it feels indulgent.
It has the air of wallow and the assumption self-deprecating behavior that begs for those who encounter it to shower me with platitudes of my wonderfulness. It feels like it could be misconstrued as the worst type of fishing expedition.
I have analyzed that idea for longer than maybe I should have. But that’s just my way. There’s probably a whole conversation I could have about that (and perhaps will), however for now, I will just leave it right there and you will just have to trust that I know myself pretty well and gave it more than a shallow thought. And after much contemplation, it isn’t indulgent or panderous (which isn’t technically a word but should be).
What it is, is honest. It is the way I feel. It is the accumulation of a lot of years of self-doubt and manipulation. It had it’s culminating moment when I heard someone say to me, “I don’t know why you write the way you do. You look silly. You write like you are somebody and you are just not. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just that I love you and I don’t want you to make a fool of yourself.” That kind of shit, as fucked up and asinine as it is, will stick to a person. It stuck to me. It rooted and cross pollinated and had little demon spawn like a weed infestation all in my brain.
More than once I have crossed paths with folks who look at me like I am crazy. They have disapproved, publicly and privately, about my life choices. For a while I considered giving those opinions some weight – or at least time for consideration. Fairly quickly, I decided that wasn’t how I was moving into the second half of my life.
Keeping with weed analogy, I’ll explain it this way. When I was a kid, my dad would burn our yard every few years in the colder months, right before spring was scheduled to do what she does. It was supposed to get the junk out so the grass could grow back fuller. I later learned that this happens in forests and tree farms on occasion when the undergrowth starts to take over. The unproductive gets burnt away so that the good, the intentional, the real, can flourish.
I participated in a bit of “scorch the earth.” It probably wasn’t my finest hour, but I own it. And, even in hindsight, even when I see all the ways I could have done it different, even when I know I could have been better, I still don’t regret it. It was one of the few times, up to that point in my life, I lived in the present. Because I hadn’t done very much of that, I wasn’t very good at it. I am getting much better.
The scorch took care of a wide range of ills. However, as anyone knows, the process looks ugly, and it takes a while for the new and better to grow back. During that time, you have to be watchful for the weeds that survive, the hearty ones with deeper roots, darker places to hide. They will grow back. They are familiar and comfortable and will take back over if you let them. They will have the help of shit fertilizer more commonly known as the judgement and opinions of others who only see your mess. The crazy thing is, part of you will want to let them grow. You will look at the shit and put stock in the idea that maybe the others are right. There is the comfort of the things you know – good for you or not, and the exhaustion from doing the work otherwise.
I lived that part too. I weeded and I weeded and I weeded my new growth. It was hard and uncomfortable and draining. But the work was good. The tiredness, the soreness, was much like that physical feeling of a job well done. I am also fortunate enough to have a broad-shouldered husband who carries what I cannot. A family who gives me life. Friends who give me respite. I have moments when I feel weathered and acutely sense unfairness. It is in these times I look around and see how amazingly blessed I am. Those blessings are my strength.
I sit here tonight, over a week after I first started putting these thoughts to ink, and I can’t really remember all the places I intended to go when I first started. My husband and I exchange more words with each other during a day than I think most people do with every single person they come into contact with. There have been two recent conversations that give my initial sit down with myself a completely different perspective.
The first addresses ridiculous feelings and that I have come to terms with the fact that I have them. One of the greatest gifts of being overly self-aware is that I understand that just because I feel something doesn’t mean that I am, or anything else is, that something. It simply means I have a feel. My feelings are not a representation of fact – they are a suggestion of opinion and an indicator of external factors. Therefore, just because I feel unworthy doesn’t mean that I am unworthy. It simply means that there is a feel, a fear, that I need to root out and dispatch properly. It probably means I am giving the opinions of others more weight than they merit.
The other was a little more ego boost with a touch of tough love. Truth is, we have had this conversation before…more than once. Sometimes it takes more than we would like to make sure the message takes hold. Honestly, I am mostly okay with that. I am 42 years old. I spent a long time dealing in unhealthy habits attempting to function in disfunction and presenting to the world an “everything is wonderful” face. If that takes me a bit to work all that out, so be it.
My husband adores me. He makes it a point to make sure that I know that there is nothing I could do to change that. He makes it a point to be clear that he loves me just the way I am. In fact, in the very beginning of our reconnection, when I knew that he loved me, when I knew he wanted to be with me, when we knew how many challenges that created, he offered to let me go. He made the offer with the assurance that he would love me anyway, as he had always loved me. He had loved me a long time without having any hope that I would love him back. He didn’t see how that would change. He didn’t ask me to do or be anything for him. He asked me to be and do for me. That’s how he loves me. And if that meant him, great. And if it didn’t, well, he was okay with that too.
He reminded me again the other day his love was unconditional. I could function inside myself without fear. That if we agreed or didn’t wouldn’t change the fact that I was his girl and he had me. I could step into whatever it was I stepping into and know, with certainty, that he was there. And, because that is true, if I choose to keep holding myself back, freaking myself out, getting twisted in my own head, well, that was on me. I can’t blame that one anyone else.
In the words of Mike Trepagnier, “Choices. We all have them. I can only control mine.”