It’s not often that I revisit “ancient” history. Not because I don’t care – quite the contrary, I care so so much – but because I’m already right here. There’s nothing hiding in my past that I can’t access or inventory in my very real, very present now.
The sad truth of people, or at least me, is that whatever progress and changes I manage to successfully make, well.. they’re just scaffolding. My engine is my engine. My nerves are my nerves. The ingredients I’m working with are, for the most part, the same – no matter how inventive I get with the recipe.
Enh, this metaphor breaks down some. The thrust of it is that if you take a cross-section of me today, I believe it’s not that dissimilar from a cross-section of me ten years ago, or twenty.
To some, this would be a terrifying notion. As a matter of fact, some of my personal pathologies and anxieties wither at the thought. But that scaffolding isn’t nothing. The recipe does matter. And I’m as much my reaction to myself as I am the self I’m reacting to. (See also: Who you choose to be counts for something too.)
There are people from my past who wouldn’t recognize me at all today. Who’ve built up a notion in their heads of the person I was when they knew me, and who I likely still am, when honestly, they wouldn’t even recognize who I actually was back in the first place. We pile so much narrative and expectation on top of the people around us, and if their presence continues to linger in memory – long after they’ve left our lives – then those narratives and expectations diverge even further from “the truth”.
Sometimes I think of those people. Project and worry about some idea of what they think of me. Who they are and how they’ve developed. Hoping the best. Fearing the worst. So much of who I am is just so damn desperate to be known and shared. Love and connection as a kind of existential accountability. Owning all my sins and virtues, but please. Please. No more and no less, I beg you.
It’s my responsibility to “shut down” those worried thoughts. To remind myself that I know my own truths and experiences, and that holding myself accountable isn’t the same as imagining hypothetical recriminations and judgments. Which I totally have a tendency to do. It’s really all I can manage not to just entrench myself in and pathologize this heroically-accountable-stroke-abundantly-self-punishing behaviour, like, all the damn time. This weird virtuous optimization that, truly, has only ever served to compromise me and make me feel lesser. Emotionally, spiritually, defensively. I have historically been at my absolute worst when I feel like I’m lesser. Lesser than good. Lesser than a person.
It’s when I get defensive and feel cornered that I lash out. Hurt myself and others.
The answer? Like many other aspects of myself, the answer is mindfulness. Openness. A kind of zen. To center myself in reality as it is. Or in my truths, instead of answering to every other possible truth. To accept myself, with or without apology. The more comfortable and confident I am in my own skin and reasoning, the less I’m in crisis. The better able I am to recognize red flags, my own or others’. The better able I am to bring myself to engage with appropriate conflict, or de-escalation, or simply exiting.
Exiting. Exiting is so damn hard for me. The optimist in me. The creative in me. I struggle with accepting that a situation can’t, quite simply, be better. If only I and they both try “x”. If only, if only, if only. Not-trying always feels (in real time) like one of the absolute worst possible sins – yet I can look at my life and see far more real, far more material ones.
So I try to avoid this trap. This pathology. Irony of ironies: Wanting to be accountable, wanting to own up, wanting to genuinely do restorative work – and the actual answer is to divorce myself from that narrative, and actually just try to be where I am and move forward with grace and intent. To be the best version of myself for someone, well, it sometimes means to be absolutely nothing at all to them. And pretty much always means continuing to try to be the best possible version of myself, for me.
Circling back, this all came by way of actually thinking about history tonight. Remembering loves lost. Even now I can’t help but think that some of them might say there was never any love at all. And in thinking that, wanting to answer that. And in answering that, mentally arguing with ghosts. Getting defensive with ghosts. Suddenly compromised by my imaginings.
So, you know. Let’s disembark that train, eh?
Back to just remembering them then. Thinking on their beauty. Their intelligence. Their compulsive concern and all-too-real humanity. How, despite my track record of really, REALLY dropping the fucking ball in some relationships – somehow I’ve managed to attract some of the most beautiful got-damn souls. And truly I don’t get it. Not that I have to get it, you know? In the past few years, I’ve gotten so much better at just hearing that how someone feels is how they feel. It’s not mine to agree. You see something in me? Well fuck yeah, let’s roll with that. Thanks for liking my butt or whatever.
