Dependent

So much has changed. I’m not sure where to begin. I’ve been through a lot of feeling. I’ve been sitting with feelings that I’ve pushed down. I’ve lost a lot of desire for feeling correct. I think my defense mechanisms that have “kept me independent” have done more to hurt me than to help me. I felt some strange relief to the be in the company of people who I’ve experienced hardship with and lost, and felt a comfort in weathering hardship with people who I love. It feels silly to wish for foresight and retroactive change, but I do. It provides relief to imagine that everyone experiences that desire to look back and fix.

I brought myself near to tears in therapy. I have yet to cry there. After a year of crying fairly willingly, I’m sensing it close back up. I’m realizing there’s a lot of work to do in making sure that valve stays open. But tears come from a true place, a place of reveal that displays our collective humanity without the veil of ego. I long to weep openly, but harder done than uttered. Reconciling with my childhood has not been simple.

I do not have many early memories of Saskatchewan. Breaking my nose comes to mind. A birthday party where my father joked about throwing my photo that he kept in his wallet. I think in retrospect that my father was not capable of closeness in any capacity. I think he taught me how to keep people at an arm’s length. That’s where we’re safest, when we’re unknown. But it’s an obtuse method to try feeling safe, because you aren’t safe at all. We’re safe in the arms of others and with dependence. With support, safe to explore ourselves. No manufacturing or performance, being as you are and accepted.

But my father never shared anything about his life in the first place, so how could I trace my ideas, lineage, feelings, and learning as a child? Only on this recent trip home did I learn my mother was married for nearly a decade before meeting my father. They simply did not talk about anything. There’s a quiet that sits over the entirety of my life before touring. Where I found family for the first time. But that doesn’t create healing by virtue of itself. I remain damaged to this day. I still perform, I still keep humans at arm’s length. I listen to my body but then refuse to act on its desires. It’s no wonder I’ve swallowed panic for decades, I don’t give it anywhere to go.