You know, if I could
type with my thoughts, I would be posting multiple times per day.
When I am in the
shower, cooking, on a walk with the dog, driving, sitting in a meeting, or
generally doing anything during which it is simply not possible for me to
write, I have lots of ideas. Clear thoughts and beautiful poetic phrases
dance through my mind as I am unable to write, until they finally die and rot
in the cemetery of Thoughts That Never Got Written. When I finally sit down to write, those
thoughts are gone, and I'm just left with a lot of anxiety instead. My inner critic (aka "The Bitch") has
been giving me a hard time lately, and has made it hard to get anything on
paper.
My inner critic has
been showing up in pretty much every area of my life -- particularly the past
two
weeks. "You're not good enough," she whines. "Not smart enough, not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not kind enough or compassionate enough." "You're not a good enough friend, or listener, or sister or daughter or supervisor or therapist," she chants. She continues, sometimes louder and sometimes more quietly, "...and your house is dirty, and you didn't do laundry, and you have dishes in your sink. You have paperwork that you didn't finish, and you wasted time watching Netflix and knitting when you should have been productive. I don't care that you didn't get home until 10PM...you spent two hours watching Netflix and knitting. Shame. On. You." I had several mini-meltdowns this week about things like: feeling like a bad dog mom because I left my buddy alone so much. And: feeling like a failure because I didn't do the thing that nobody told me was a thing that had to be done. And: feeling like a failure because of things that happened years ago. And: feeling like a failure because I was so exhausted from all the crises and stress this week and I didn't take the introvert time I needed, so my nervous system felt like I could feel every nerve ending in my head and my fingers and my spine.
There have to be better
ways of working this shit out.
My body is ruthless in
reminding me that I'm doing a crap job.
All those articles you see written by wheatgrass-drinking yoginis telling
you that, if you listen to your body, it will tell you what you need? They aren't lying. Given, my body does not tell me whether to
drink the spinach smoothie or the kombucha...but it does hit me over the head with migraines or complete nervous system
overload, which almost requires the same level of listening............right?
So in the midst of all
of this, I've been thinking about my word of the year, and about what I'm going
to do with this word. Powerful. What does this word even mean?
Honestly? I don't
know. I know that this word feels
right, and I know that this word has chosen me for the year...but I don't know
what I want to do with it yet. And that
makes my manic Inner Critic unhappy.
In my good moments, I
hear this quiet voice somewhere deep inside of me that gives me this calm, easy
answer (probably the same voice that should be able to distinguish if I need
the smoothie or the kombucha, come to think of it). If I listen really hard, I hear her telling
me that I have the power to choose my
thoughts. I have the power to choose to allow the voice of love that must
exist somewhere in me, to be louder. I have the power to say yes to taking
care of me.
And that's hard.
That's harder than anything brave that I did last year. That doesn't require just pushing myself
through a little fear to do something.
That requires a complete system overhaul. Like, if I were to really internalize and
live that, I would be Autodidactpoet 2.0.
These patterns are very - very -
engrained. It's almost like I wouldn't
know myself without my Inner Critic bitching loudly about something, you
know? She's awful, with a big nose and
ugly teeth, and a voice that sounds like nails on a chalkboard...but we've
spent a long time together. She's one of
my most reliable pals.
In talking with my
friend Examorata today, in a slightly different context, I mentioned the idea
that "you can't hate your way into loving yourself." I said it casually, like I believed it, or
lived it, even. But it's hard, you
know? And it feels radical. It feels like a powerful choice -- to reject
the messages around us and the ones we have internalized. To tell your inner critic to shut the hell
up, and to allow yourself to feel what loving yourself...or even liking yourself might feel like. To allow that to be what is real and in the
forefront, because it's true, isn't it?
You can't hate your way into
love. Not for others, and not for
yourself.
Giving voice to my
inner critic here makes me feel vulnerable.
We've all got that voice, to varying degrees, but we don't name it, do
we? Perfection -- or near perfection --
is just supposed to come easily. But I
know for a fact that there is power in naming the ugly voices inside our
heads. There is power in externalizing
them. They fester and breed in the dark,
shame-filled places they reside, so there is power in shining the light on them
and exposing them in an act of vulnerability.
So perhaps this is
where I start with this word. Perhaps
here, in this place of overwhelm, and guilt, and shame, and feeling-too-much,
perhaps this is where I start. Perhaps
this is where I make that powerful choice to move towards loving myself,
without needing to hate myself first.
And maybe, when I wake
up tomorrow, I'll make that choice again.
And then when I see the dirty dishes in my sink, I'll make the choice
again, and again when I struggle with what to wear to work, and again when I
see all the paperwork that needs to be done, and again when I come home and
watch Netflix and knit after a long day.
I will get the opportunity to make the powerful choice of love on a moment-by-moment
basis. My guess? I'll choose love sometimes. And sometimes I'll forget. And sometimes I'll choose love, but feel
shame, or guilt, or anger, or dislike, or even hatred instead...but the power
of the choice is always there. Always.
What will you choose for
your powerful self in this moment?
And in this one?
And the next?
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