PAUSING x A LIFE BASED LOOSELY ON REALITY
Sometimes you need to take a minute.
ON PAUSING
I’m going to be taking two months to pause and think about what I am doing here and why I am doing it. I will be returning - but things will be a little different. I am not sure how different or in what way - but I’ll figure it out.
In the meantime…I’ll leave you with this.
PART 1 - Inside/Outside
I had a therapy session recently where my therapist and I hit on some particularly fruitful revelations. It started because they remarked on how I tend to speak about my PhD, and really all the work that I have done, as if it was nothing at all - just this silly thing - you know, whatever. All of it, whatever. They remarked on the fact that I tend to speak of myself and my experiences like this, because, I am currently working on my confidence. Or as I like to call it, stepping into my power. The implication being that it is difficult for people to understand me and receive me, in my power, when I am unable to take ownership over the experiences that I have worked very hard for.
To make matters worse, what I have done instead, is choose to embrace notions of failure and vulnerability as frameworks for disclosing my rather raw emotions and an occasionally desperate desire to be seen. All to say, I have cloaked myself in literally the opposite form of armor than what our culture demands. Instead of taking every stitch of my experience and spinning it into a cloak of confidence through which I then earn the validation of others, I have somehow managed to take even more of my skin off. Therefore exposing only more uncomfortable and messy becoming.
Anyways, my therapist was like, have you ever tried to not expose such messy things? Perhaps refrain from frameworks of failure and meaninglessness when describing twelve years of work on a doctoral degree? Maybe take pride in the fifteen plus years you have spent working professionally in the film industry? Learn how to talk about your self-expression without coating it in shame and confusion? After all, performing expertise and playing the role is what one must do if they wish to succeed, no matter the field that they are in. Especially if they want to be a filmmaker. To direct is first and foremost a performance of confidence and clarity. Could I not then learn to be a little more strategic in my presentation of self - if only to get what I want?
No. I cannot. Not gonna happen. I have thought long and hard about this and quite frankly that’s not why I’m here. I was not put on this earth to wear THAT cloak. Not just cause though. I have a reason. My thinking is this - in the grand spectrum of things to feel ashamed of and keep hidden within the shadowlands of our culture MY MESS AINT SHIT. That doesn’t mean that to reframe and cover over it wouldn’t benefit me - it certainly would. It will always benefit you to cover over insecurities and lie about who you are, if who you are conflicts at all with social norms/expectations and makes people uncomfortable in any way (ie. exposes anything to other people that they do not wish to see - about you, but especially about themselves). So yeah, I refuse to cover up, is I guess what I am saying.
“Then I guess you will have to accept the difficulties that come with that way of being,” says my therapist. “I guess so,” I reply. Real talk, that’s what I’m paying for.
I just don’t think it benefits the future of our species to keep wasting so much of our energy burying who we are. Hiding behind our armored cloaks. Those fuckin cloaks are actually quite heavy - just imagine if we could increase our clothing options. Something lighter perhaps? Because while there are obvious consequences to not sporting one's social armor there are also consequences to owning a single, heavy, outfit - or, to crush this metaphor even further - to simply blending in.
To be clear, I’m not talking about wanting to “wear different outfits”, as in superficially being or looking different. You can be the most non-normative looking creature and still sport one hell of an armored cloak (in fact that is frequently the safer thing to do if you are different). What I am describing, is a way of being in the world that allows for the exposure of honest and vulnerable internal realities. In other words, I’d like to be able to let a little more of my shadow out - and publicly I guess (ie. not just with my dear therapist).
That does not mean, being more “emotional”, or edgy, or speaking openly about taboo topics (although it can include that). What it is, for me, is the goal of owning, speaking about, and pointing to my human wound(edness), while SIMULTANEOUSLY, being confident in who I am, what I have done, and the work that I am here to do. A Chironic task.
I just figure, there is so much shadow bubbling to the surface nowadays, if I can’t learn to embrace mine (or at least bring some of it to light) then, I mean, what hope can I possibly have for the rest of humanity?
ANYWAYS, my therapist thought that was a pretty cool goal, regardless of the difficulties that have, and will, inevitably come with its execution.
PART 2 - Outside/Inside
Following this revelation, I paused, felt some feelings, and said, “But the thing is, like when we are talking about learning how to speak about my life in a way that allows me to take ownership over what I have done, I - I just don’t know how because, well, none of it feels real. And I don’t mean like, I don’t remember the tasks I accomplished, but I don’t really feel like I have ever done anything. None of it means anything to me - like I don’t know what I actually did. Does that make sense? Like, with my PhD in particular, I worked for twelve years on something that was deeply personal and emotionally and intellectually demanding but I don’t know what I did. I don’t have any language for it. Like - it does not feel like anything at all. It just slips through my fingers when I try to make sense of it.”
Tears.
“And to make matters worse. The creative work that I have done, my films, my performances, they are all about trying to articulate that. Trying to articulate from that very place of not being able to articulate anything at all.”
Tears.
“So it’s like, I experience this way of being, and then I try to make sense of it all by making art about this way of being, but it just feels like this unending and circular search to find the language to help me grab hold of my own existence. Why can’t I feel like I’ve done anything? Why does it all feel like nothing? Like I’ve just been sleepwalking through a dream that was never even mine to begin with. What is wrong with me?”
Tears.
“That’s dissociation, a symptom of Complex PTSD Vanessa, to use the language of trauma here. It’s remarkable that it can take half our lives to integrate and begin to come together. That inner part of you that doesn’t have language, that vulnerable part that is still searching for their footing on this earth (you might call this your “inner child”), that is the part of you that you make art with. And that’s really cool, but also, incredibly difficult because you've been operating in the dark for a long time. Maybe now you are ready to let some more light in.” Paraphrasing my real talkin’ supportive therapist.
Wait a second. Interesting. Interesting. So you’re telling me THERE’S A WORD FOR THIS?!
I’m not sure if this happens to you, but very frequently in life, I learn something I already knew. I don’t know why this happens, that we can know something yet not really know it - but, when it finally sinks in, it can be mind blowing. I already knew I had dissociative tendencies (I mean, I made a freakin’ short film about it) and I have been reading about Complex PTSD for years (obviously) but I had never sat with the full reality that that was something I had been navigating (blindly) for most of my life. “Brilliant news”, I thought to myself. We’ve finally got some language to work with.
I am ecstatic and on the verge of tears once more - because, here’s the most important thing - they said that I was making art WITH that vulnerable and language-less part of me. Trying to develop a mode of expression for them, to speak from their point of view. What that means is, if I am making WITH them then I cannot possibly BE them, at least not in my entirety, just - in part. This is a big deal because, again, I always had a sneaking suspicion that my work came from a secret part of me, that I was not the one guiding the ship. After all, if I was, I never would have dedicated a doctoral degree to exploring my relationship with my mother. That’s the idea of a mad man! Or a child in search of answers? Regardless, the fear has always been that I was that mad man child, or at the very least, that they were in control.
But the truth is, they are not in control.
I am.
We just have to learn to work together. Simple, right?
CONCLUSIONS - Towards A Shared Reality
I suppose, for some, all of this might seem small and insignificant. These internal revelations, silly little inner children. But they aren’t. Gaining language and developing frameworks for grappling with my human experience is how I SLOWLY move from (anxiously) surviving to (confidently) thriving. It’s how I build my own cloak through which to walk through the world and do my work. And most importantly, it shapes how I see YOU. You, the people I interact with from afar, and you, the people who shape me from a very close proximity. The more light that I can let in to help me see me, the more I can reflect back so that I can see you. Such that, in my fantasy world, we become a bunch of broken mirrors reflecting our light all over the place so that we can all see a little more clearly, together. Instead of, you know, blindly sucking each other into our gaping inner voids of doom.
I chose to share these therapeutic revelations with you today because, in many ways, what I have been doing here has been a consequence of my desire to feel at home in, and understand, my own life. A desire to know if my reality has a place here alongside all of yours. A question of belonging. The result has been, that by representing and checking in with realities of others, I have been able to better regulate and perceive my own. In other words, this work has helped me, which has been very cool. I also know, by hearing from many of the people that I have chatted with, that it has been cool for them too (which is good to hear).
But now that this initial foundation has been built and I have a little more language and insight than I did before, I want to take a minute to think and adjust the direction of where I’m going with this venture. Feels like the right time.
So - that’s it for now! Hold tight and see you in a couple of months.
Thank you very much for your time - more soon. :)
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