Tattoos and Reminders

Sometimes I have a hard time knowing who I am. This is pretty classic in Borderline Personality Disorder, and in that case it’s called Identity Disturbance. While I don’t have the same kind of flip flopping of actions, values, or thoughts that some people do, I often have a hard time figuring out what I care about, what I want, who I am, whether I’m good enough or not.

And sometimes it feels like I just forget myself, forget who I am or what I want. I flip flop between caring about my own health and wanting to self destruct. I forget my larger goals, or why I want to be healthy. I’ve gotten a little more stable, but there have been points in my life where I can flip from wanting to restrict for a week to feeling committed to putting food in my body in the course of a few hours.

In the movie Memento, the main character has amnesia and reminds himself of important facts about himself by tattooing them on himself. His name, phone numbers, facts about his life. All are branded on his skin as a way for him to learn about himself again each day, each time he comes back to consciousness with a blank slate.

Sometimes I feel like that’s how I remember who I am. My first tattoo was of music, a dotted sixteenth to remind me that I like to be unnecessarily different and a little offbeat. My second was the eating disorder recovery symbol, to remind me as often as possible that I am committed to recovery and that my health is important. My third was a compass to remind me that I can explore, but always find my way home. Each of these are things that I lose when I get too wrapped up in myself or stress or my to do lists. They’re things that I forget, or that I question, despite knowing that they’re important to me.

For people who easily have a strong sense of self it might seem ridiculous to brand your skin with your values or life choices. I know people who ask “but what if you don’t like it anymore in five years?” Well for your information I probably won’t like it in about five days, but that’s the point. The point is that I want to remember what it felt like when I got it, why I chose it, what was important to me in that moment so that I can come back to my values later in life, or later today, or whenever it is that I feel as if my mind has turned into a foreign influence that is pushing me in ways I don’t understand.

Sometimes I don’t know why I ever thought that being healthy was a good thing. I don’t remember that I did. It feels as if that was always some sort of outside influence that didn’t want what was best for me. Until I look at the tattoo of the recovery symbol on my hip. I chose to spend the time, money, and pain to have that inscribed on me. It was no one else’s decision but my own. I wanted to remind myself every day that recovery is one of my values.

It is proof that I thought differently, that I can think differently again. It’s proof that I have good days. It’s proof that I do value things that are not perfection or thinness or rules. The more reminders I have, the more stable I feel. It’s as if I’m building a new body for myself that tells me who I am.

The permanency is the point. It’s the only thing about me that seems to be permanent.

Identity and Anxiety: Struggles of Object Permanence

I had a realization this weekend. While I was prepping for a pub crawl with my boyfriend, I noticed that he kept wandering off to go grab things or do something else, and inevitably I would wander after him like a lost puppy. At some point he mentioned that I didn’t have to come with him everywhere, and jokingly I yelled “I don’t have any object permanence without you!”

Of course as is true with many of my jokes, there is a fair amount of truth hanging out in the middle of that statement. While it’s not true that I become worried about my own existence when I’m in a room alone, I do hang my sense of identity on other people’s validation and understanding of me far more often than is healthy. When I haven’t talked to anyone in too long, I start to wonder who I am and what I’m doing. Do I actually want to write all these things? Am I actually an empathetic person? Am I really intelligent or do I just fool people into thinking that?

My brain functions in comparisons. What does it mean to be smart? It means being able to understand more than other people, reach conclusions faster and better, speak more clearly or convincingly, or know more about more things than others. What if there are no others around? Then I would have no idea if I was smart or not. I assume that my experience of the world is the same as anyone else’s and the only times I know that there’s something good about me is when someone tells me that I’m different than others in some fashion: kinder, more compassionate, smarter. And so I crave those validations more than anything else. Without them I have no idea who or what I am.

One of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder is a lack of self identity, an inability to solidly ground your sense of self without help from others. It can be one of the most difficult elements of the disorder to combat because it requires a fundamental reframing of who you are and how you exist in relation to others. When your identity is a comparison or a response to others, who you are is wholly dependent on them. In some ways, you cease to exist autonomously, because when the people around you stop talking to you or paying attention to you, you stop knowing who you are or what you should do.

In some ways, for me, this difficulty stems from a deep desire for objectivity. I am a perfectionist and I want deeply to be right about everything. That means that if I call myself intelligent, I want some sort of absolutely certain standard to which I can point. Comparisons are the only standard I’ve got. It’s my uneasy truce with the fact that in the grand scheme of the universe, “I am intelligent” is a meaningless statement. It may not be true that others with BPD crave this certainty the way I do, or that they use external validation because they’ve come to the conclusion that all meaning and knowledge is relative and self-made. But there are lots of parallels between my huge, existential temper tantrums and the concrete confusions of those who are struggling to define themselves independently.

So here are some of the conclusions I’ve come to about how to build a sense of self when all you want is for someone else to tell you who and what you are.

1. Stop asking. Seriously. It’s enabling. If you’re starting to feel uncomfortable about something (am I mean? am I stupid? am I annoying?) first try checking in with yourself and looking at some facts instead of getting someone else to give you the answer. Other people aren’t always around and other people can leave and sometimes you have to be ok on your own. So before you ask for reassurance, reassure yourself. Learn how to use facts and experiences to build up a sense of self. Am I annoying? Well, I have a lot of people who seek out my company, so probably not.*

2. Think about your values. Consciously. Constantly. Remind yourself what actually FEELS important to you. A great litmus test on this is to check in with yourself when you start feeling guilty or ashamed about something. Why are you feeling this way? Is it because someone else has told you that your behavior is horribly wrong, or do you think you’ve actually done a bad thing? If option 2, this is pointing towards one of your values that you have violated.

3. Practice uncertainty. Seek out circumstances in which you won’t have a concrete answer or label for something and just be with it. Get used to feeling like you don’t have a clear answer. It may never feel awesome, but you can start to desensitize yourself to it and get through the rough patches by knowing that there will be times that you feel confident and clear about who you are (protip: these are often times when you have just accomplished something, made a big decision, or spent time with people you’re comfortable around).

4. Labels can be really helpful. Sometimes it’s too hard to come up with a complicated self definition when you’re in a moment of uncertainty or fear or need. Having a list of go to’s can be helpful. “I’m a writer” is one that I rely on often, not only because it is so deeply true that I cannot imagine ever being anything else, but also because it gives me a path forward to start to figure out other elements of myself: writing them down. The label gives you something to rely on when you’re struggling. They don’t have to define you forever, but they can be a helpful stepping stone towards identity if you just want something simple.

5. Talk or write about it. It’s easy to get lost in your own head, but if you have to put words to who you think you are, it can clarify what’s actually important to you and how you think of yourself. You can also start to compare versions of yourself if you have a record (whether in writing or through a friend’s memory), and figure out either how those versions fit together or whether there’s one that doesn’t fit as well as the other. It can help you prioritize the elements of yourself and keep them in balance. That might sound super woo woo but all I really mean is “how much time and energy do I want to put into this interest/value, and how much weight do I want to give those concerns?”

6. Start building identities instead of identity. When there’s only one way you define yourself, it’s easy for it to be fragile. That identity has to hold all of you, be flexible enough to explain you in different contexts, and be 100% right all the time. Multiple identities lets you account for the fact that we’re different in different circumstances and no one identity is objectively you all the time. It gives you more flexibility and space to be and do different things.

These won’t solve any serious identity crises (for which I would suggest some therapy), but they are good ways to keep up a practice of strong self-identity if you struggle with your sense of self.

*of course sometimes it’s to the benefit of a relationship to check in and make sure the other person isn’t actually trying to send you signals that mean you’re horrible and they hate you, just for clarity’s sake

The Body As Evidence

I’ve written before about the frustrations of having a mental illness that leaves visual signs on my body, and that it can often feel as if my body is betraying me with its scars or its size. I’ve recently noticed what appears to be a corollary to this and it’s something that gets under my skin (pun intended). For those of us who have mental disorders that result in a physical change, our bodies are used far more often than our own words or mental state to gauge whether we’re ok or not.

This is something that has been criticized for some time now. We’ve heard that “you can’t see whether someone has an eating disorder by their size”. Many people are still convinced that size and weight loss are the indicators of eating disorders. Others are certain that depressed people probably look like vagabonds and don’t wash or take care of themselves. I would hope that we all have enough evidence by now that people of every shape and size can have a mental illness and most of the time it’s utterly invisible.

But there’s another layer of looking at bodies as evidence for mental illness, and this one is more subtle and more insidious. This is the one that comes when someone knows that you have a mental illness and really wants to know how you’re doing. So they pick apart your physical appearance for signs: are there dark circles under your eyes? Have you lost weight? Gained weight? Is there a scar or a cut that indicates symptom usage?

Now of course if you’re nervous or worried for someone it makes sense to try to find evidence of how they’re doing. Where this turns into a problem is when bodies are used as evidence against the person whose body it is. Often, when someone with a mental illness says that they’re doing ok, their body is scrutinized to see if they’re right or not. The individual can’t be trusted to know their own mental state or to truthfully express it to others.

In many ways, I think this plays into the idea that people with mental illness are manipulative or disconnected from reality. For most people, if they said that they were feeling ok, or doing better, or their mood was up, they would be trusted unless there was some glaring evidence to the contrary (muttering, monosyllables, glowering face). Particularly with physical illness, if someone has an injury but says that they feel fine, most people take them at their word. We’ve all experienced having a particularly nasty looking scratch that doesn’t actually hurt and reassuring others that we’re fine. For the most part, they trust us to know whether we’re in pain or not. Even with illness, if someone has some symptoms but reassure us that they’re feeling much better, we smile and tell them we’re happy for that.

Obviously all of us use our common sense to determine whether we think someone is lying to us about their internal conditions, but for some reason those with mental illness are held to a far higher bar than others. Any evidence of symptoms is often construed as evidence that our  mood cannot and is not ok, or that things are going downwards. Particularly for things like purging or self-harm, there is a guttural response of disgust and fear to the symptoms that means outsiders are often convinced that it’s impossible for an individual to be doing ok and still engaging in those behaviors (never ever nuh uh). That means any evidence of symptom use is held up as evidence that things are not ok and if the individual says they are it is a lie.

Maree Burns in Eating Like An Ox says “In cultures where identities are read off the surface of the body, one’s physical state is understood to represent both moral and mental health”. There are intersections here with numerous other oppressions: fatphobia, racism, sexism, slut-shaming, ableism (as well as many others I’m sure I’m forgetting at this moment). The problem with assuming that a body is an identity is that no one can ever convince you you are wrong because they must be lying. There is an odd tension in American culture in which we partially dismiss the importance of bodies (we assert that focusing on looks is shallow, we eat horribly and don’t take care of ourselves, we shame people for having sex, and we typically subscribe to a Cartesian dualism that suggests our mind is our self while our body is just a nice carrying case), but at the same time we are convinced that we can read identity and selfhood off of bodies. Fat people can’t control themselves, people with disabilities are lazy, people of color are Other (scary or dangerous).

We don’t see bodies as selves, but we see them as books on which selves are written, clearly and unequivocally. The tension between the fact that we don’t see our bodies as our selves and the fact that we think our selves are clearly reflected in our bodies can make self-identity a serious challenge, but it also serves to undermine the self that an individual might seek to portray or express to others through means that are not the body. And this of course always impacts those who are already oppressed because we are more easily assumed liars.

My body cannot tell you things about my self, my well-being, or my identity. I may have scars, but I am ok. Someday I will openly wear my scars and smile and laugh and be a walking advertisement for the fact that mental health is not visible. Until then, I will just repeat over and over: I’m ok.

Stronger Than The Pills: Dependence and Identity

I was talking the other day with a friend about how people can act completely differently around their significant others. Some people are super bothered by that. “They’re not being themselves!” these hypothetical people whine. “They’re changing!” There are a lot of people who argue that you shouldn’t allow other people to change who you are, that you should “be yourself”.

My friend and I went back and forth for a while about what this meant for your “real” self, but by the end of the conversation we had mostly agreed that everything we do and everyone we interact with affects our brain. Brains are malleable things, and there’s evidence that (especially when we’re young) even single interactions can have impacts for years to come. Relatedly, we all adjust our behavior and self based on context. We change our clothes when we go to work, our language changes based on who we’re around. When there are different inputs and contexts, our “self” has to adapt. This is part of being a successful and functional human being.

Brains tend less to be like a static identity and more like a processor: we have ways that our brains like to interpret things or respond to things, but there is always something there to interpret, there’s always stimuli coming in that will make slight adjustments to our processors. So it doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal if you choose to be around someone who affects your processor.

What does this have to do with pills you might ask?

Well some of those things that people say about relationships that affect your personality are things that people say about pills. I’ve been listening almost nonstop to Neon Trees for a few weeks and one of their lyrics says “I’m stronger than the pills”. I’m so done with phrases like this. They imply that anything that affects your brain chemistry is a crutch, a cheat, a way out of being you.

The biggest problem with this is that just like a relationship that affects the way you act, there is no integral self to interrupt. “Self” is choosing which inputs you would like. There’s really no way we can figure out what we’re like without the influence of our environment and the food we eat and the sleep we get and the people we talk to and the job we have (see: Judith Butler). We’ve got influences from the moment we’re conceived. This is not to say that there aren’t some elements of personality and self that stay consistent across time, just that it’s silly to imagine that you can have a pristine, untouched self that would be horribly tainted forever by the introduction of meds.

Strength is knowing what allows you to behave positively and functionally and choosing to put yourself under that influence: because you will never be without influence. “Being true to yourself” is about what you choose to surround yourself with. Changing our inputs is part of how we remain independent. Unless you cannot choose to change your inputs, you are always stronger than they are.

Another issue some people have with meds or serious relationships is dependence. They don’t want to have to rely on something external to themselves. I hate to break it to you all but we’re all dependent on things that are external to us. we’re dependent on food and on sleep for god’s sake, and those things affect our brain chemistry and biology. There are things we need each and every day, whether that is a medication or 20 minutes of alone time or running or food or a book or your Facebook. We’re dependent on the world around us. And all of these things affect your brain in ways similar to your relationship or your drugs.

It doesn’t feel nice to realize how dependent you are on external things, how fragile you are. And when you’re dependent on things that others aren’t dependent on (like pills), it’s a reminder over and over that we have to choose our inputs but that we don’t get to choose whether or not there are inputs. That can be scary. It can feel like you have no control over your Self. But you do. You get to choose (to some extent) what things affect your Self. You get to choose whether to sleep enough or work a shitty, stressful job, or eat healthy, or be around validating people, or whatever it might be that turns you into a processing machine or a bumbling Windows ’95.

That’s all the power you get. So yes, your identity will be dependent on your pills. It might change who you are a bit. But that’s ok. Because everything and everyone you encounter does. If you don’t like how you change then you get a choice: you can continue to depend on it or you can move away from it. But if you want to stop being influenced, if you want your identity to be pure and unadulterated you, then you’re pretty much just going to have to die because that’s the only way you stop being influenced.

Making choices to change yourself so you don’t act like a dick is not selling out: it’s being an adult.

 

Selfish Altruism

I have recently become quite enamored with the idea of being selfish. No, I haven’t just lost my moral compass and decided that Imma do what I want. Quite to the contrary, I have come to the conclusion that if I want to be a good person to the people around me that I care about, the first step is to be a little bit selfish.

I spent a lot of time trying to erase myself as an entity. This leads to a lot of obsessing over one’s actions, but also to just being an ass because you refuse to speak up about what you like or dislike, put forth your opinions, or be present. I tried to be a good friend and to do nice things for people, but at the same time I refused to see myself as a real human being, which meant I didn’t give myself the ability to actually act effectively in the world. Mostly I just spent a lot of time trying to get out of other people’s way. This isn’t a particularly good way to be good to others.

Even for those who don’t go as far as I did, when you spend all your time sacrificing for others you’re likely to be a fairly unhappy individual. When you’re unhappy you’re less effective, less energetic, less kind, and less creative. Being a little bit selfish negates a lot of these problems. It’s as simple as organizing your life in such a way that you spend a fair amount of your time doing things that you enjoy or find fulfilling. They don’t have to be harmful to anyone, but it does mean accepting that you’re worth your own time and effort: thinking about yourself. Being selfish.

When you spend more time thinking about yourself and how to keep your own emotions well adjusted, you become a far more stable and content person. This gives you a stronger base to actually do things for others as opposed to running on fumes just to always say yes to others (but never actually accomplishing much). It also means that you’re less likely to react poorly when others do things you don’t like. This to me is the best thing you can do for the people around you: take care of yourself well enough that you can handle their daily ups and downs. It’s amazing how much that helps everyone.

Part of this is that when you do things for yourself you have more to give. You get rejuvenated by the things you care about, and so even if you’re spending time on yourself you still probably have more time to give to your family and friends because you’re not exhausted, miserable, or angry all the time. Let’s say you’re someone who loves dancing. It makes you feel passionate and joyful and full of life and energy. But you have a family to support and so you don’t do it and instead get a job as an accountant and hate it all the time to pay the bills for your family. Do you really think this is the better choice for your family? Do you honestly think that having more money makes up for being pissy and cranky and miserable all the time?

People who love you do actually want the things that you bring to the table. They want the joy you bring to the table when you’re dancing. You’re likely to be far better at the things you enjoy and thus will end up doing more for others with them. There’s always a balance. Having a day job might be the right choice, but incorporating the things you love into your life will make you more giving when you do have time for your family.

A final thing to consider is that when you’re being altruistic, it’s important to people that you mean it, not that you’re simply doing it out of some misguided sense of duty or martyrdom. When you have a strong sense of self identity made up of some strategic moments of selfishness, your family and friends know that when you are with them or do something for them, you truly mean it and probably enjoy it. That will likely mean more to people than just having someone they can walk all over.

Sacrifice can be highly altruistic, but not when it’s all you do. If that’s the case, then you don’t even have a self to sacrifice, it doesn’t mean the same thing, and it’s just not helpful because you have no pool of resources to give from. It seems counterintuitive, but the best ways we can contribute to community is by doing things that are actually good for us, whether that be helping others by using talents we enjoy or by taking the time for ourselves to refresh so we can behave like a decent human being.

Yeah I’m selfish. Because I have a self and that self deserves caretaking. It makes me a better person.

Revitalization: Shifting Perspectives in Dance

It has been a fabulous weekend. I don’t often say that, but I really do feel as if this is how life should be. It was Midwest Lindyfest, a weekend of dancing. I’ve had bad experiences with too much dancing and lessons and stress and emotions in the past, so this year I chose not to buy a full pass and just went to a couple of the evening dances.

Having the pressure off utterly revitalized my dancing, and I feel like I’ve been completely reminded why I dance at all, and in particular I can see why I want to put more energy, time, and dedication into dancing in the future. This switch in perspective has been a long time coming: I’ve struggled with feeling good about dancing and with incorporating it into my life in the past. But as I’ve gotten further in my treatment for depression and my eating disorder, I’ve started to feel things change. There are some essentials about the way that I approach dancing that have shifted.

Part of this is obvious and easy: I have more energy, I have more coordination, I have more focus, I have more confidence. All of these things will make dancing easier and different. Just like any major change in diet and mood, getting treatment for my mental health and making adjustments in my life has impact most areas of my life. But some of the dances that I had this weekend really helped me finalize a different kind of shift, one that gets more to the core of how I approach dancing rather than simply my abilities.

For quite some time, dancing was an escape for me. Following was a very easy way for me to let someone else take control of my body, to not truly inhabit it, to let that space between self and physicality grow. I suspect that there are many people out there (particularly women) who look for ways to distance themselves from their bodies. One of the major things that has shifted in my self perception has been my ability and desire to be present in my own body. The impact on my dancing is amazing.

I feel like a person again instead of a body that’s being manipulated from afar. Now that my mind and body have connected again, my dancing is utterly different. I believe it’s better, because I think that the best thing about dancing is being really present with another person and with yourself. This ability to be present and mindful has helped me in ways I didn’t even think it would, one of which is to seriously improve my basics.

It’s easy to interpret “being present” as something abstract and spiritual and utterly unhelpful. But there is a hugely physical component to it: feeling where your weight is, holding yourself steady and balanced, being settled in your body without unnecessary tension, understanding how you fit into space. These things are the building blocks of dancing. If you don’t take the time to know your own body, how on earth can you move it effectively? Another part of this is the ability to trust my body. I have had a…stormy relationship with my body for quite some time. There were a few dances this weekend that were so fun that I just let myself go a bit and stopped trying to control everything. I found that most of the time my feet ended up under me and sometimes my “I almost fell down” turned into “wow that actually looked and felt cool”. It’s an amazing realization that my body may actually know what it’s doing.

There is something of a contradiction in this realization though, because in large part it has involved paying less attention to my body. For much of my dance career I spent a lot of time wondering and worrying about how I looked and what my body was doing and whether it felt right for the other person. This was unhelpful. I second guessed everything, I was self-conscious, I was always trying to catch glimpses of myself in the mirror to ensure that I didn’t like stupid (and usually felt that I did anyway). Those dances recently that have helped me to stop paying attention to how I look and start paying attention to what I feel have left me thoroughly convinced that thinking about my body too much is a sure way to guarantee that I will look worse and not connect as well to my body (and if I can’t connect with my own body how on earth am I supposed to connect with someone else?).

Another piece of this realization were the moments that leads really gave me space to express myself. Now normally this freaks me out and I freeze up. I compare myself to how others insert themselves into the dance, I compare myself to the abilities of others. I do this all the time really. When I’m not dancing, I’m watching others and finding myself wanting. But during a few of these moments of time for myself in dance, I found that thinking not about comparison or myself means that I get to think about my way of doing things. It probably doesn’t look quite like anyone else’s, it might even look weird. But if I explore all the ways that my body moves, I will find a whole variety of fun things I can do in my dancing.

I still have a lot of jealousy. That probably won’t ever go away. I still feel sad that I will never reach the level of many of my friends and fellow dancers. But it isn’t consuming anymore because I have had those few dances where I brought something to the table and so I know that by being myself I can contribute something unlike anyone else. This is true for everyone who dances: none of us dances the same, none of us moves the same, each of us will bring something to the dance floor. The recognition that I am utterly unique in my dancing is quite a good reminder that I don’t need to live up to other people, just myself.

Another kind of amazing thing that I did this weekend was remember names. Usually I’m shit at names. There’s at least one person that I’ve danced with for at least a year whose name I only now can remember (I swear I tried). But this is indicative of a bigger shift: a shift from self focus to other focus. Depression is self-centered, just like unhappiness and eating disorders and negativity. It’s easy for people to slip into thinking about themselves and their own needs and feelings. But I was legitimately interested in other people this week. So I remembered them. I talked more. I smiled more. I laughed more. This often leads to more goofy/fun moves because it means you can amplify what your lead is doing in fun ways. It is a complete change in perspective that utterly revitalizes my dancing. It makes me excited to ask someone to dance rather than nervous and uncertain. It’s like every person out there is an entire world unto themselves and when I dance with them I get to experience a little piece of it. Yum.

Dancing feels good again. I can feel confident. I can feel like it doesn’t matter who I walk up to and dance, I’m in control of whether I have an enjoyable dance or not (with the exception of leads who yank and hurt and creep). It isn’t exactly about choosing your attitude, but it’s about choosing your actions and choosing your reactions to things. It’s the ability to see other people again, which is joyful, especially in the context of dance.

And the best thing about this is that it’s partially the result of some really damned hard work on my part, but partially simply a result of dancing with people who are giving. It’s the moments where something goes wrong and one person goes with it and it turns into the best moment of the dance. It’s the sproingy feeling at the end of a swingout. It’s a really juicy hip swivel. It’s finding yourself at the end of a swingout hitting a pose right with your partner (not quite knowing how you got there but knowing it’s right). I may be an introvert, but these moments of communication and togetherness and energy and joy are what I want in my socializing. They’re what I want in my life.

It feels really good to be reminded why you love something, and to figure out that it will just keep getting better.

Preemptive Nostalgia

I am leaving the country in about three and a half months. I’ll be gone for a year. I really don’t know if I’ll live in the same state again when I come back, or whether I’ll come back after my master’s program is done. I’ve never lived outside of the state of my birth. The longest I’ve ever been gone for is a month. I’ve lived in the same city for all of that time except the three years I spent at college (only 45 minutes away).

What I’m saying is that it finally feels like I’m leaving home for the first time.

What’s odd is that it has become highly apparent to me that we only begin to value things when we’re about to lose them (ok not always but oftentimes). Part of this is that we don’t always take advantage of opportunities right in front of us until we’re about to lose those opportunities. I’ve been noticing that I’ve started to feel a tenderness towards places that seemed mundane and boring for most of my life, and even more than that I’ve felt a deep desire to explore the city I’ve lived in for 23 years. I suddenly feel as if I’ve been missing out on all the amazing things that are right in front of me (and that I knew were there), but really just didn’t feel motivated to get up and do.

It feels like a kind of preemptive nostalgia. I know that I will miss all of this when I’m gone. I know that there are so many things of comfort to me here, places I’ve known my whole life. I know that there’s a level of “home”ness to this city that I doubt I will ever find elsewhere: I have memories from my every year of my life here, I know the city itself extremely well, I know nearly every free activity that is available, I know the theaters and the bars and the restaurants and the music venues. While I may come to know another city quite well, it’s doubtful that I’ll ever have the same innate knowledge of another place again, the knowledge that comes from living here, having a mother that lived here, and grandparents that lived here, and learning the stories that they tell of the city and its history.

There are few situations where I will ever be able to take advantage of a feeling like this. I’ve very intentionally been looking for ways to get out and engage with the things that make my home what it is. I’m going to plays, festivals, parades. I’m looking for new ways to see the city by biking around lakes (once it warms up I hope), leaving the apartment, getting outside. Because I know ahead of time that I will leave and I am starting to feel the fear of change, I get to savor the time that I have left here. I get to make the effort to see things positively before I go.

I wonder if there is ever a way to have this kind of preemptive nostalgia in other situations? When we’re feeling frustrated with a partner or a friend, what would it be like to imagine not having them around anymore? When we’re frustrated with school or a job, what would happen if we think of it ending? Especially when relationships are going sour, we rarely see the end of it as a time to reflect on the things we loved about it. But what if we did? It’s hard to break up with someone, and we often agonize over it because we don’t want to hurt the other person, there are things we still love. But what if we could look at the relationship with the kind of nostalgia we have when high school ends or when we leave a place we love? Perhaps it would hurt less, and remind us more of what was good.

Or maybe this is just a way of letting myself be sad for longer, of not really existing in the moment and enjoying what I’m doing. Maybe it’s a way of only appreciating things once I don’t have to experience them anymore. For now I will simply see it as an opportunity to appreciate in the moment.

Clean House Clean Mind

This weekend I’ve been helping my boyfriend deep clean his bedroom, send a lot of things off to the Goodwill and a lot off to the dump, and generally try to start with a fresh slate in terms of stuff. It’s interesting because it’s been a fairly emotional process for both of us. I’m not entirely sure why we as human beings feel such an attachment to possessions, but one thing that is certain is that a large part of cleaning house involves looking at who you have been and where you have gone, and making decisions about where you want to go in  he form of asking “Will I ever use this again?” or “Is this important to me?”

As we answer these questions, we decide which futures still seem possible to us. Each time you look at an object and decide whether you will need it, you’re deciding whether it’s part of the future you want, and with it, all the possibilities that it represents. When you throw away the sushi kit you never used, you have to abandon the small part of you that still dreams of being a sushi chef. And while you do it, you also have to recognize the things you’ve failed to do, the things you’ve failed to accomplish: you never used it. You never pursued that dream. Things didn’t work out the way you intended when you purchased it and imagined rolling out your homemade sushi.

None of us like to cut off futures. None of us like to close doors. Unfortunately, when we’re  cleaning, we don’t get to see the new doors that we’ve made space to open. Each of those things that you’re holding on to is taking some amount of your attention, some amount of your energy, and when you consciously choose to move on from it, you’re freeing up mind space and physical space that can be used for something new, something that you’re passionate about now, something you will actually love and move forward with. The difficult part of cleaning house is that you don’t get to see that particular pay off. All you see is your past walking out the door.

Because of the link between objects, emotions, and futures, cleaning house can be a practice in cleaning your mind. You remove the rubble, the things that you were holding on to and thinking of and worrying over, and try to let them go.

An important element of this is the reminders. Objects are firm reminders of the past. You see pieces of who you used to be, dreams and identities you used to have, past relationships, past careers. All of these are difficult to be reminded of, and can trigger you to reprocess the memories and the events. The objects you chose to keep can symbolize a lot about how you felt towards a particular event or person. Choosing to remove those reminders can feel like giving up on the past or losing your connection to your past, and even more potent, looking at your past laid out in front of you can be a really difficult moment of self-evaluation. All of us have disappointments, whether it be looking at the guitar we gave up playing, or finding a letter from the lover we thought we’d marry, and when you see the objects from past years strewn out in front of you it’s incredibly difficult to not feel like you haven’t done enough or you haven’t done well enough, like you’ve stagnated, like you’ve disappointed others and yourself.

In reality, these physical reminders are often just reminders of the bad things. We don’t notice the diploma we already have hanging up, or the books we’ve read and replaced on the bookshelf, or the career that we now have. And while we might feel bad about removing the reminders of the bad things, we can’t escape the past no matter how hard we try. It shapes who we are. When we choose to remove reminders, we free up mental and emotional space that can be used for the here and now. It can literally give your brain the space to begin rewiring for new identities, thoughts, priorities, and actions. And it gives you the literal, physical space to grow again: you can begin new projects, you can feel comfortable enough to start something in your apartment, or to dance, or to work out. Giving yourself literal space to move around in can absolutely make you feel mentally more comfortable.

Choosing to make changes like removing detritus or purging your things is always difficult. It means accepting that certain things in your life are over, letting go of who you were, accepting that your life has changed. It can also mean accepting lost opportunities. But on the plus side, accepting all of these things is the first step towards changing and growing. It’s an odd paradox, but the first step towards change is radical acceptance of what is, because you have to accurately see the current situation before you can change it.

I think perhaps the best part of practicing cleanliness and simplicity in your home and your things is that it can help you to live in the present. When you are living in the present, the only pain you feel is the pain of the moment. You’re not thinking of the futures that could be, and you’re not thinking of the past and what hurt you then. The future and the past contain a great deal more pain than this moment right now, and when you recognize that and only reside in the present, you liberate yourself of a great deal of pain.

I have always believed in the importance of limiting how much STUFF I hold on to. I think that having enough things to tie you down and make you feel solid, as if you have a real identity and have chosen which memories to keep, can be extremely beneficial to feeling certain of who you are. But like any practice of emotional balancing, it’s important to consistently clear out the remnants that you don’t want, so that you can feel solid without being weighed down.

Things are often more metaphorical than we realize. It can be good to think of what they’re representing for us.

Real Woman: The Bane of My Existence

How much do I hate the phrase “real women”? Ugh. UGH. Real women have curves? Ohrly? So I am not a real woman? Am I a man then? No? SO WHAT AM I? FUCK YOUR GENDER ESSENTIALISM, IT MAKES NO LOGICAL SENSE, BECAUSE YOU DENY ANYTHING EXISTS OTHER THAN MALE AND FEMALE. Ok. Sorry. Had to get that particular piece of anger out of the way before I started for real, because there is some self-defeating logic in the gender essentialism of “real woman”.

Warning: if the first paragraph didn’t give it away, this post was written in a haze of post-Nyquil delirium. Is it coherent? No one knows.

So. The concept of a real woman. First of all, I don’t like it when we create false dichotomies. We have enough dichotomies that just naturally crop up in the world and it’s hard enough to keep our lives integrated and whole, so the idea that we need to introduce categories like real and fake just rubs me the wrong way. Very rarely is anything actually fake. More often than not, it’s not trying to be whatever you want it to be. This is particularly true when you’re talking about a construct that you’ve made up out of thin air (I might be willing to concede for example that there’s such a thing as fake meat because we all know what meat is and we all know that veggie alternatives are trying and failing to be meat).

 

So first and foremost the concept of a real woman is horrifically offensive because it tries to assert that someone else can tell you who and what you are, and that if your experiences don’t match their rules, you are not who or what you think you are and you can’t be part of the woman party. That’s bullshit. No one can tell you what your experience should be. If you identify as a woman then you are a real woman. You don’t need to pass any tests. You don’t need to follow any rules. You just need to exist. If someone else could come up to me and tell me that I’m not a real woman, they erase me and they erase my experiences. No one else knows me better than myself. No one can tell me who or what I am better than I can (unless we’re talking like a very specialized field and an expert…like an awesome baseball player could probably tell you better than I could how good I am at baseball. Answer: very bad). But woman is a very loosely defined concept.

 

No one agrees on what a woman is. Some people say it’s a vagina having person. Well that’s stupid because trans people and I don’t want to be reduced to my anatomy. Some people say it’s everyone who conforms to a certain set of standards, but those standards are usually arbitrary and different people have conflicting sets of standards. Uh oh. So there really is no objective measure of womanhood. None. Nada. Zippo. So how can anyone else tell me if I’m living up to the grand standard of womanhood? They cannot. If nobody can agree on what a woman is, then why is anyone more of an authority on womanhood than anyone else? Answer: they’re not. Because woman is an identity. We get to build it by being woman rather than trying to live up to some mythic archetype of woman.

 

If there is no objective, naturally occurring standard of womanhood, then the only reason certain people get to define it in certain ways is because they have power, either social or financial or political. That’s not a very good reason for some people to get the ability to deny your existence and your experiences. And defining certain things as “real” womanhood is extremely damaging to feminism and the idea that we should listen to women and their experiences. It denies us the ability to have choices, to be able to express ourselves in different ways, to have people accept us on our own terms or to hear what we have done and seen. It is gender essentialism at its worst, because not only does it tell you what you should be, it tells you that you are false or fake if you don’t do that: it tries to strip you of reality and existence if you don’t follow what it says. All in all, real women are people who say they are women.

Dichotomies: How to Brag and How to Sad Brag

I was reading a post earlier about labels, and how we often feel ok with labeling ourselves descriptively (atheist, female, etc) but not in a complimentary manner (hero, humanitarian, etc). While I feel like this is true, I wonder why. What is so wrong with noticing when we’ve done good things and labeling it ourselves? I feel that one of the problems that many people have is that they feel they can’t own the good things they do: they feel they have to wait for outside recognition because it’s considered bragging to talk about it and label it themselves. Well I’m going to be honest: I think we could all use a little more self-validation. While sometimes bragging can lead to comparisons and competition, I think if we stopped waiting so long to see when OTHER people notice that we’ve done good things and just said “I did a good thing” to ourselves, we might actually see a reduction in how competitive we are. We don’t need to one-up people in order to be noticed: we can notice ourselves.

So I’m going to take this moment to pat myself on the back for things that have been going really well for me lately, not because I want you all to feel jealous or compare yourselves to me, but because I’m genuinely excited and happy, would like to share, and want to be able to say that I feel GOOD about myself in a few areas. I have two job interviews in the next two days and one of them is for a job that I’m actually really interested in. I’m actually making enough money right now that I can put things away for retirement. It has been over a week since I self-harmed and I am going to continue that streak for AT LEAST three more weeks because I want to be cut free when I go to California. I have been in a bad job situation for 3 months now, and I have not crashed and burned. I have managed to deal with it, to brainstorm solutions, to find ways to tolerate the distress. There have been slipups certainly, but I am doing better than I have in YEARS. HOLY SHIT I AM AWESOME. When things go like this for me, I often look like the featured pic.

However despite being able to say all of this, and despite the fact that I can recognize that I have done some things quite well in recent history, I think the ability to speak our successes always needs to be a dialectic. I am always a proponent of being OPEN, and I think that this is no exception: if we’re going to be able to recognize our own successes, we also have to be able to recognize our own struggles. And we can recognize that these things may be one and the same. We have to be able to hold “I did some amazing things” at the same time as we hold “I am struggling so hard right now” and recognize that both can be true. Now first of all this is incredibly difficult. At the same time as I recognize that I have some wonderful opportunities right now and that I’ve done some things very right, I can also recognize that I’ve done some things very wrong. I’ve been struggling in my relationships lately, especially with the amount of effort I’ve been putting in to just feel sane with myself. I HAVE slipped up while trying to deal with this job, and I’ve let my mindset fall backwards in many ways. It has been a very hard couple of months for me trying to navigate the waters of semi-adulthood, paying for my own apartment, figuring out how to feed myself, working a full time job.

This is more what I look like when I think about those things. But I have STILL done awesome things. I have started a personal blog, started blogging for CFI On Campus, started planning a (very tentative) conference with some friends…

So I would like to propose that we as human beings become more comfortable saying out loud our strengths and weaknesses. Not the namby pampy job interview version of this, but actually going to twitter and saying “I did something awesome. I’m proud of me”, and not feeling guilty about it. And then going to twitter five minutes later and saying “I’m still struggling. And I’m not guilty about that either”. Human beings are remarkably capable of being contradictory things at the same time. We are filled with dichotomies. It’s something I’ve been spending a lot of time with in my DBT therapy, and I think it’s something that all of us need to learn to be more comfortable with.

 

Written by Olivia