Memory

Today I had a memory that created unease. I walked with Alannah down the street, and we encountered a small dog. I brought up my adoptive mother’s dog Choco. I relayed that Donna more than once told me that she loved the dog more than she loved me, her son. It was her way of communicating disdain for a mentally ill and combative child. Not what she envisioned when adopting me.

I hadn’t considered the immensity of that sentiment. I hadn’t let myself feel hurt by it, at least consciously. I have built a shield that I imagined was impenetrable. How can I live with enthusiasm if I don’t let love in? How can I operate with clarity through the blur of shields.

Over the years, I started to feel I could let love in. At least in smaller ways. I learned communication, experiencing unease, and supporting yourself and others within the kinship of a band. People who travel and need to rely on each other to work towards a purpose they believe in. In that realm, I was safe. At least to the degree that I knew what safety was or could feel like.

How safe could I really be in trying to project an image of security and knowing? I’m unsure of my ability to self-reflect, especially in notions of responsibility and love. Am I seeing nuance, or am I scared of being on the wrong side of a fence? What do I owe people who don’t always treat others kindly? Do I give the compassion I expect?

I am loved less than a dog, I am standing in my living room. I am being yelled at, I can’t remember why. When your entire memory of a decade is being admonished and yelled at by your guardians, it’s hard to parse how you could be so evil. I can now see complete codependency and mental illness permeating every nook of my guardians lives. Everything was also exacerbated by my own burgeoning mental health crisis.

I don’t remember the last time I yelled with anything other than joy in my heart. I love celebratory feelings. I love camaraderie. But I also have immense discomfort with anger, and am not compassionate towards it as a valid emotion. Is it an overcorrection from a childhood that steeped itself in anger almost exclusively? Sometimes I feel lucky I made it out alive.

Pedestal

The realization of choice. I have choice. Every day, I make choices. Reaction, decision, desired outcomes, wants, needs. To take care of myself, to not take care of myself. What do I spend my energy focusing on? What am I trying to control?

I am sitting upstairs in my office. I am writing down my thoughts as they come to me. I am attempting some form of clairvoyance with myself that takes me out of pattern. Why am I always worried? What is the obsession with perception? I have no control over perception. I can only try to be honest with myself and the world. But do I succeed in that? Lately, it feels like it's rare.

I don’t want to be in my head. I want to be in the world and in communication. I watch things vapidly. I occupy time and don’t take in media meaningfully. I am craving a feeling of connection and push. I am not tapped into the excited child that I was.

I remember being made fun of often. And sometimes brutally. For my affections and loves of trivial things. I can remember a point in my life when I felt completely alive while taking in art and media. I can remember watching others get made fun of for being excited and wanting interesting things to happen for themselves and their friends and their community. Coolness was the killer.

What has the desire for cool or niche culture done for me, when pitted against the larger cultural institutions? There’s good natured conversation to be had about engaging with art and culture that touch corporate entities, and feed into the hand of awful human decisions. But on an artistic level, I’m remiss that I’ve tried to couch my love for things that I worry might be too mainstream, or misunderstood. Because I’ve watched people be made fun of for their loves.

Why am I feeding into the hand of wanting to be accepted by people who do not accept others? Or elevate their taste as a form of superiority? The pedestal is the killer, always. I can only hope to get back in touch with the excited child. The idea that Michael Gira does not laugh at a fart once every so often is absurd. I feel we’ve created super villains out of our heroes when I watch young artists conduct themselves. Including myself. Can I free myself from the reigning oppression of coolness?

The Self

“For not all frankness is created equal. "Brutal honesty" is honesty that either aims to hurt someone or doesn't care if it does. ("No one wants to be friends with you," "You smell bad," "You've always been less attractive than your sister," "I never loved you.") While the two words often arrive sutured together, I think it worthwhile to breathe some space between them, so that one might see "brutal honesty" not as a more forceful version of honesty itself, but as one possible use of honesty. One that doesn't necessarily lay truth barer by dint of force, but that actually overlays something on top of it— something that can get in its way. That something is cruelty.” - Like Love, Maggie Nelson

I’m curious if I’m at the lowest emotional valley I’ve ever experienced. The months of this year have been tribulations like no other. Therapy, self-reflection, reading, and new experiences romantically and platonically. I find myself questioning my place within existence writ large. What is the purpose or meaning of being part of a community? Especially when people are inevitably convoluted, messy, and imperfect.

What are my internal reflections? And what are the realities that exist? Insofar as unchangeable and impenetrable realities even can exist. Not something I’m sure I believe, because we are all so capable of constructing our meaning and world to our liking, regardless of the outside. Where does my perception of my value, purpose, and existence fall in between those two worlds? My best guess is that I’m overly critical of myself these days. But not without evidence or merit of my shortcomings. How do I dig myself out of that poor self-perception while acknowledging the hurt that exists because of me and around me?

The quote above is from “Like Love” by Maggie Nelson. I initially read it and felt so seen regarding my own experiences with “brutal honesty”. People can couch a lot of disdain and hurt of their own in the idea that they’re being brutally honest. But I realize I have used it too. I don’t like myself for it. I am struggling to forgive myself more than ever. It’s possible that deep down I don’t believe I’m owed any forgiveness. 

I used to believe there were inherent harsh realities of living. I’m not sure that paradigm exists in any form now. If it does, it feels self-imposed and wholly unforgiving of the messiness that humans contain, endure, enact, and internalize. How can I better look people in the eyes and meet them with honest compassion towards commonality? Why do I struggle so much with pure honesty? Do I really believe people are incapable of hearing truths if vocalized compassionately, or am I protecting myself from having to confront myself? Do I even know how to provide pure honesty? I lived a life of protecting myself from immense rage until I was well into my late twenties. From people who were ostensibly my caregivers. I want to deconstruct how that built me into who I am.

I believed there was a time in my life when I spoke honestly. Upon reflection, I think I only spoke honestly for myself without regard for the larger contexts. I spent my childhood hurt and neglected. I don’t think I could entertain that I was a piece of something larger and complicated, rather than being above it or outside of it, without exposing that I was deeply hurt myself. I thought I had control. Today, I am certain I don’t. But in my past, I did not either. My hurt has control of me, and still does. I told myself that being touched did not matter. I told myself that nothing could hurt me because of my experiences growing up. I was a shell. I had built a shield. How can I look inwards and grow if I don’t know how to perceive myself with care and compassion? Neglect was ingrained in my bones. It is normalized and expected.

I have an immense cruelty towards myself that is masqueraded as toughness. I was on tour the first time I heard the lyrics “Everyone says to me, Missy, you’re so strong. Well, what if I don’t want to be?” and I held back tears. I no longer believe that shield I built was invisible. I would guess it’s clear from the outside looking in that I’m a mess.

Holding Another

I’m unsure how many times I’ve been able to leave myself and hold another completely. I only know the feeling when it’s present. The intangible link created between me and another. Without worry of our wounds or embarrassment. I speak to my insecurities openly, but it doesn’t reconcile anything in an actualized way. It’s a step on the path that I’ve stopped walking because I’ve made it further than others. And I let that be enough.

When I hear someone’s words with my ego out of the way. That is affirming. That is life. That is love in the way that I’ve grown to understand it. Why has that act grown so difficult? Possibly because I feel so wholly misunderstood that it becomes hard to understand others. How can you grasp someone else’s pain when you’re unwilling to grasp your own? I think of my first therapy session. Where I said I didn’t need to talk about family. What farce was I perpetuating and to what end?

Neglect was large. Maybe the largest part of my emotional framework while growing up. My birth parents were far too young to be a reliable and stable place. Through no fault of their own, they were teenagers. And then my adoptive parents. Possibly trying to use a child to fix their own problems that were growing slowly, and then retreating into themselves when it didn’t work. I hold them to no fault now. They’re human, like everyone else, and we don’t always get what is owed to us as children in the form of support, love, care, and stability. 

It’s pesky that the largest and most foundational emotional problems I experience grow quietly and slowly. It’s easy to know what’s needed in a moment of crisis or panic. I am hurt. I am alone. I am scared. Soothe me, hold me. But the existential thought and repetitions that are rehearsed almost subconsciously over time are what come to kill me. I have terrible self-narratives that are rarely verbalized to others. Maybe a glimpse, or a half joke. But what it would mean to sit down with someone and say “I am broken, please listen”.

Where do I fit? Am I liked enough to be included? Am I part of something? Do I need to be part of something? How has my time in the music industry enforced a tragic desire to be loved, admired, or approved of in all the wrong ways? How have I bestowed my own feelings of superiority into the world and what harm has it caused potential relationships? The pedestal is the enemy, whether looking up or down.

Loneliness

Is it self-imposed? I’m not sure where the line of responsibility lies between myself and others. I feel loneliness in a new way this year. Or I might be cognizant of it for the first time. I recently asked myself if I had a lonely childhood. I realized I don’t remember the majority of my childhood.

Recognizing the part I play in my loneliness has been difficult. Wondering if I speak truly, speak clearly. Do I leave space for the other? Can I create an environment of understanding and ease? Shyness and my desire for social ease dominate moments when I should speak more. Moments when I speak more, I could remember to dial back a bit. My barometer for successful interrogation and understanding seems calibrated poorly in both directions.

This has been a beyond difficult year for a myriad of reasons. Possibly the worst year of my life emotionally. The complexity of my upbringing, the ramifications of adoption on parent and child, separation romantically and platonically. A text from a friend said that they believed “love did not disappear”. The physical separation has no relief from love’s immensity. It’s placed in a new paradigm internally but it carries the same profound effect.

I am the loneliest I’ve ever been. I hold out hope for that to change. Because I also feel I’m finally looking at my loneliness in the face, and not as a spectre behind me with a hand on my shoulder. Can I acknowledge its presence and learn to live with it? Right now, I persist despite it.