Headless Yes's
Dear Starlight,
I wanted it to feel as good as the idea was–juicy and warm, but instead I was shivering with whipping wind sitting at the river’s edge, alone, biting into a hamburger too committed to pack it up. But still it did feel good, because I revel in the queerness of my own peculiarity. It may not be strange to have a hamburger alone at the river, but I don’t know because it was my first time.
It’s like every now and then I have a blind date with some surprise part of myself. Lately, I’ve been going on a date with her who likes an herb cigarette–think rose petals and lavender, as well as her who likes a red suede fringe jacket. This year there have been many surprise date nights with a wide range of hers–her who wanted to stay up late and paint decorative borders, her who stayed up late listening to classic rock, her who wanted to stay in to read about the science of scent, and other romantic one night stands.
There is pleasure in these headless yes’s–in their utter otherness to what I think of as customary for myself. But I wonder if in some way the randomness is in itself a pattern that needs time and distance to recognize.
Most of my life I’ve thought I didn’t make sense and have been endlessly seeking that right fit–or rather, I’ve been fitting into what hasn’t fit. Like as a teenager determining that I needed smaller feet to fit in and wearing shoes two sizes too tight, gaslighting myself by telling myself my bloody toes were normal. “I just needed to wear in my boots.”
I just needed to think, feel, be, do, differently than I thought, felt, was.
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This week that sense of not making sense has been living in my body. This week has been underwater volcanic eruptions and solar flares– flooded and fried feeling. My chest physically hurt day in and day out.
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The last time I felt this much feeling was grief. Grief struck my heart, stomach, and head so hard when my sister suddenly died that I vibrated with agony in a dark blindness for more than a year. All I wanted was to be out of it–to be on land, to feel my feet, to have an orientation towards something. I felt stuck in a horizonless charcoal gray felt cloud. I felt wrong for feeling no feeling I could explain other than lost with a tight chest. But I could not will it away and so day after day I felt pain until almost as suddenly as it came, I woke up and my chest was out from under the dead weight.
Once the grief left I experienced a surprise. I missed it. I called for it to come back. I miss you heavy feeling! I missed it because once it was gone I realized what I actually was feeling was the weight of the love I carried for my sister. That’s how I learned that grief was love.
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About 9 years ago I found myself sobbing uncontrollably under covers in my bed in the dark while reading an innocent and somewhat boring passage in a novel about a daughter expressing sadness that her father was leaving because she loved him so much. I could not relate.
When I brought this sob story to my therapist she said: “You have never mentioned your father once in the ten years we have worked together. When we don’t talk about a problem it’s usually a deeper wound. But your body is telling you it’s ready. It’s thawing. If you can, try making art to let more out.”
Years later the same therapist suggested I try writing a letter, one I may never send, when I suddenly awoke from a spell of a lifetime and then slept for four days straight because my body was too heavy to lift. I wrote a novel as an exercise in exorcism. But I haven’t been able to read back the first draft.
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Tonight, before biting into that hamburger, I was at the photography exhibition and storytelling event for the young adults at Place Corps. Year after year what emerges is a powerful reclamation of self — young adults ages 18–21 who stand in their bodies and speak out loud their story. It’s not only a threshold for their becoming but it is also awe-inspiring and humbling to witness: a teenager–generally one that would likely be classified a misfit in school–stand and speak honestly about some part of their deepest selves or history that they are proud of but had once been afraid of or ashamed of.
This year, the girl in the red suede fringe jacket who on occasion smokes an herb cigarette listened to their stories and her eyes flooded and her chest hurt.
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All this year, flooded and fried — chest tight and exploding, head light, tears on call. My body has been in revolt. I thought it was all anxiety and PTSD. But I’m beginning to wonder if it might be more—might be my love knocking on the door of my chest. (Like the wood pecker vibrating in my chimney this spring!)
I’m noticing that these crazy one-off’s: the red fringe jacket, the music night, the watercoloring to midnight are increasing in frequency. Almost sidestep dancing with my tight chest daring me to say yes to one more small adventure. My heart is thumping so loud against my middle aged-adolescent chest—yes, yes, more play! And my chest is holding my heart back tightly not wanting it to break, not sure which adventures are safe and which are too far in the deep end.
Good mothering and modulation is also something I’m being asked to learn with the girl who I love. What’s the right amount of feral frolicking—does she need a mosh pit frenzy or a long walk? Or both? Or maybe she needs a nap? WIP.
When the heart lives on the cutting edge, it calls for care and endurance. This is patience. –Barbara Bash
So maybe it’s the same lesson as the grief — that the unbearable feeling of fear and the love are the same thing. Breaking me open, to air the cellar, and help me carefully walk out of a self in shoes that fit.
I imagined “heart opening” work as feeling good — I’ve found it excruciating.
