I feel alone in this city, which is ironic as this is the most received I’ve ever felt. People here don’t compare my passions to their own, feeling as if me loving something unusual to them somehow threatens their own passions. Instead they very easily accept that what matters to me….matters to me, and more than that, they’re happy someone’s loving it.
For instance, although hermit crabs are more common as pets on the east coast, fewer people here question how I could love Spencer as much as I do.
In turn, this also makes change less terrifying. Last week, for example, I started drawing with our store's iPad Pro, and suddenly coworkers and strangers asked if I was a visual artist; quickly I realized I was the only one laughing at the idea of that being true.
I had changed myself overnight and it was accepted effortlessly. Back in college, you couldn't change your hair color without worrying about how it would be seen. So it's odd to me, how in an environment so willing to see you as anything you so choose, that I still feel unhappy.
Perhaps it signals the end of me discovering myself: I found what I wanted and that’s who I am. And if having those choices validated doesn’t satisfy my craving for more, then I’m already onto the next item on the agenda.
When I was a kid I knew the type of person I wanted to be, and it seems I’ve finally grown into the shoes.
So that just leaves walking somewhere.
When I visited Philly in April, almost a year after being away, I started crying when one of my friends/mentors noted how much I had grown; as much as I wanted that to be true, it was hard to believe.
Life is monotonous here. Every day looks the same, feels the same, so it’s only logical to feel like you’re the same, too.
But consider a rock at the edge of the sea, longing to be pulled into the magnificent chaos. Every waves makes a promise as they come towards it, and every wave breaks its heart when they leave it behind. It’s tortured in the monotony, with each little splash teasing it with the salty taste of adventure.
And yet.
Each wave that brushes against it helps it glisten in the sun, tugging away at its imperfections, subtly chiseling it towards is truest form, where it’ll only bear the weight of what defines it the most. And eventually the day will come when the final wave convinces the rock to let go of the final burden rooting it, and the rock will be carried back with the wave, towards adventure it longs for no longer.
So that’s my final business here. I have to let go of the final piece keeping me here, so that I can move on to greater things.
And I know what it is, too.
I met a dog in our store the other day, and when I kneeled to pet him, he climbed onto my knees, lifted his front legs and hugged me. His owner commented that he likes me and that he’s such a loving dog; and how shocking it is that when she found him, he had been stabbed.
The pup had been recently groomed and when he walked away I could see the scars from his wounds. And yet if his owner hadn’t told me, I never would’ve known. That dog was more loving and more forgiving than most people.
A few days ago I tried to find a book I hadn’t finished. My room is still in the pandemonium of moving five times in a year and no longer owning a bookcase, and so I couldn’t find the book. But I found another I hadn’t finished and I tossed it into my bag instead. I take so long to read that I continued where I had left off rather than restarting the book. The book as a whole takes common children’s stories and breaks down what the symbolism means in adult psycology. This particular chapter was about “the mistaken zygote,” a.k.a. The Ugly Duckling a.k.a. the trauma we face when we are abused as children and have to grow up too fast in the face of not receiving the unconditional love and care that we need in our developmental years.
I also have been watching The West Wing, and there was an episode where a character works with a psychologist who diagnoses him with PTSD. The worst the doctor says to him are such: “What we need to get you to do is be able to remember the [traumatic event] without reliving it, and you have been reliving it.”
The book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, phrases it incredibly as well:
“There is another issue to be dealt with. Mistaken Zygotes learn to be survivors. It is touch to spend years among those who cannot help you flourish. Being able to say one is a survivor is an accomplishment…And yet there comes a time in the individuation process where the threat or trauma has significantly past. Then is the time to go onto the next stage of survivorship, to healing and thriving.”
Now I’d be too nervous to say the threat has past, but I met a customer who understood quite a lot of this and confidently told me I didn’t need a restraining order. I’ve been here for a year and was only stalked once. It triggers me, I’m still coping with the trauma, but I am safe. Definitely safer than I was then.
The book continues: “One can take so much pride in being a survivor that it becomes a hazard to further creative development.” For me, I think it’s that I went so many years on my own, people not knowing how hard my life was, before and after the abuse, that saying I survived validated the struggle I still felt I needed to prove.
But, “at some point, allying with it exclusively begins to inhibit new development…Liken it to a tough little plant that managed — without water, sunlight, nutrients — to sen out a brave and ornery leave anyway. In spite of it all. But thriving means, now that the bad times are behind, to put ourselves into occasions of the lush, the nutritive, the light, and there to flourish.”
That’s greater than “making survivorship the centerpiece of one’s life.”
That dog did it. He is a creature made entirely of love, and still he was betrayed and almost killed by those he had chosen. Miraculously he survived, but he didn’t remain in his abused state, bowing his head to those he feared would hurt him again. He forgave and trusted and let go of the burdens rooting him to the shore — and now is as happy as he could be.
That’s my next step. I didn’t just accidentally bump into all of these themes in the span of a week. They’re the waves that have chosen to come towards me, highlighting that which I’m gripping to tightly, which in turn is gripping tightly onto me. They splash me with the importance and safety of letting it go. Ultimately, I’d rather say I’m happy than say I’m a survivor. So if I can change myself overnight, tomorrow I will wake up in the direction of health, moving a step closer towards being a thriving individual.
