Evolutionary Musings (Lessons From Growing Up)

I have not met many people like me; and there is a special thing about this, because it has required that I become comfortable in my body and in my spirit. I spent too damn long looking critically inwards, inspecting the tender parts of me and criticizing them for being too much of myself.

When I was thirteen, I used to march myself so close to the mirror in my bedroom that I could see every pore, freckle, and scar, smudging the glass with my breath. Close enough to myself to get sick off of my imperfections. I picked at my skin until I bled and crossed my eyes until my body slid out of focus – the only way I knew how to look at myself. I am glad to say that I have unlearned this forced perspective.

I was born sweet and kind, the very stuff of life that I love the most. These things made me soft in the best way: prone to tears, absorbent, impressionable, generous, sensitive, with an ambiguous disregard for things that do not serve me. My softness often made me feel so fragile (like I was about to fly apart) so I became the best, strongest version of these things, because I would not survive otherwise. As my idea of me became clearer and stronger, I became less delicate and more sure-footed, though I am still prone to feeling deeply misunderstood. 

I know now that loving the best and most tender parts of me is not up for concession. There is no relationship important enough or special enough where I will kill this part of me in exchange for love or sex or friendship. The people who love me must understand this, or I will slip away quietly, and it will be a melancholy end to a dissatisfying story. Qualified love is uninteresting to me.  

I used to revel in this kind of contractual love. It is clear, understandable, comforting. You know exactly where you stand. You always have people to sit with or call on the phone when you drive. But I know the twisted, cold feeling of a soul-break, where you are moving against the grain of your purpose, and you know it, and they know it. You both are silent and sick with the shared understanding that you will not (cannot) say anything about this wrong, broken moment. Eventually, there are so many of these moments that you cannot ignore the pattern that is unfolding in front of you and the cold never really goes away anymore. And this happens with one person and another and another until you finally learn your lesson; that your soul cannot be in relationship like this, and you stumble purposefully into a profound era of loneliness and deep sadness. 

This quote by writer and comedian Jenny Slate stands out to me: 

“It occurs to me that if anyone ever bullies me again I will warn them one time but probably start to stop loving them, and that if they do it again I will have my final answer, that a person who does that to me does not love me. And then I will explain that their behavior has made it clear to me that I want to leave, and although I will have been clear, I will have been respectful, I will leave without participating in condemnation. I will go without digging deeper into the dark.” 

So, there is that. 

I think the deep, satisfying self-respect that only comes when you are moving in the direction of your purpose is a sign that I am on the right pathway here. Of course, maybe every confident or self-assured feeling I have ever felt is some inflated ego-story that I have constructed to protect myself from feeling abandoned or alone (but I really don’t think so). This year has been a year of destruction and rebuilding, and I have been experiencing all of this with a calm resolve where I am reminded that faith and patience will bring things together in ways that I cannot.

Forcing people to love you or forgive you does not generate a precious, divine feeling of co-existence. I look at the cards in my hand and remember that I do not need to bet on myself against the other people playing. I can, in fact, liberate myself from the game entirely. The game will go on without me. And me, without it. 

I am learning that being good and whole and tender is a hallmark of people who know who they are, who do not snip their own blooms, who do not kill parts of themselves to look pretty or perfect or polished. I am in a quiet state of observation, spending time with those who bloom unabashedly, while I listen in reverence. I started this year by moving into a house full of people like this.

I look over the horizon of my life right now and feel clean and damp, that if nothing else, I am living by the words I speak. It makes me cry often, this whole blooming and leaving and accepting bullshit that I must do in order to be who I am. 

 I want people who experience me to feel that they have experienced a good and whole and tender thing. And I want to welcome all the people who I experience and who experience me to join me in this spirit-party where we are dedicated to what is true, loving, and kind. Because I have co-created this space! I’d like to share it! There is ample room in here for those with jagged bits and pieces, as long as they are open to tumbling, extraordinary river currents turning them over and spitting them out as sea glass. We all deserve to be held softly in a smooth, worn palm. This is the call: be sea glass with me.

It is a vulnerable practice to be held gently with care. I revel in how much trust we place in the hands of our lovers and friends to be held like this. Am I special enough to avoid being cast into the ocean? Tell me I’m special to you. Will you throw me away if I give up my control and relax under your touch? 

In fact, will you touch me at all? 

I believe is our responsibility as eternally connected people to treat this kind of vulnerability with friendship and care. Because people who are willing to be held by you are the people who will make you feel more like yourself, as these people understand your hands and your spirit and your intentions. There are fewer things more sacred than people who see you and trust you to treat them with goodness.  

We are each worthy of good, sacred, and playful moments – our worlds and systems often tell us that we are not worthy of these things. Or if we are, we should be paying for them. Capitalism’s downfall is our reckoning with the idea that money isn’t real - or at least, not real enough to be the foundation of our pleasure. People were good, sacred, and playful before bank accounts.

Where are we going to reconnect to these essential fruits of life?

When are we going to reject this colonized idea of joy and peace?

There is more to this life, more to understand, more to feel. When are you going to feel it? 

All that being said, as I said before, I have not met many people like me. This is a lovely blessing that I interpret to mean that I am a wonderfully special person. I am tired of convincing myself that sad and hurtful things happen to me because I am unspecial or unworthy of people who understand me. That is not true. My existence is a statistical miracle, and my worldview even more so. When I remember this, the cosmos sends me little bits of stardust in conversations, phone calls, letters, and friendships to remind me not to forget next time.

Of course, I forget often, but I always remember.