whatishappeningtommm - Tumblr blog

[whatishappeningtommm]

Inside me is a bottomless well.

Its sides are rough hewn, cloaked in damp, moldy moss and the well goes down and down and down, opening to the ether on the other end. It cannot hold water. It cannot quench thirst. It can only take and take and take, and lose what it is given to its black depths.

I do not relax. I cannot relax. I am afraid of making a mistake. I am afraid of doing something wrong. Afraid of upsetting someone, of conflict, of punishment. Any unknown that arises, anything I cannot explain, I tell myself it’s me: I did something wrong and they are coming to punish me. The helicopter looping over the pond I’m sitting on - waiting, hoping for an elk to drink - is trying to chase me off because I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be. I’m too close to the road. I’m in national forest, not Wilderness. I’m on a man-made - not natural - water source. I panic, grab my gear, and run off farther into the woods to avoid the reprimand I know is coming. All day I hear cars on the road. They must be looking for me. This is what I tell myself.

The world revolves around me. Anything that happens adjacent to me must be because of something I did or didn’t do. I cannot do anything without consequence, without causing harm, and all that is bad flows from me. Any pain my friends feel is because I didn’t say the right thing or give the right advice. I got laid off because my boss didn’t like me - not because of the company’s financial hardship. When my boyfriend is stressed about work, it’s because I didn’t vacuum the floors or have dinner ready, because I didn’t do enough to ease his other burdens. It always comes back to me. I am responsible. I could have made things better, if I was better. If I thought things through. This is what I tell myself.

I fear the control I give others by caring about them. The power that caring gives them over me. I just want to be liked. Affection, praise, love, joy, pours into my well, but I cannot retain it. It only comforts for a moment - that for now I am safe. For the moment that they like me, I do not have to be afraid. My friendships are one sided. I am loved by others, but I cannot give love back. Not meaningfully. My well is empty. The only only thing I have stored up is fear, and that fear is a cancer - it is every cell, every fiber of my being. All I can give back is fear, and the things fear makes me do: the things I believe will make me more lovable.

Love is safety. It is protection. It is the antithesis of fear. It is the belief that I am worth something. That I have value. That I am intrinsically worthy, that whether I said the right thing or vacuumed the right floor won’t determine whether I will be hurt. That the people around me aren’t hired staff to care for my insanity, that my parents don’t pay for a host of watchers to let me live a ‘normal’ life. That they aren’t colluding behind my back talking about what a monster, a fool, a humiliation I am. This is what I tell myself. This is what I fear.

Sometimes I go through my texts and erase parts of conversations I wish I had not said. Information I gave out that could be used against me. My vulnerability still lives in my friends’ phones, but at least I can forget what I said, what they can use against me in a moment where I upset them. This is what I tell myself.

I feel at the mercy of others. I feel out of control. I feel like the elk, twitching and running at every noise like a threat.

Sometimes it all comes to the surface and I feel my fear like a punch to the face. Sometimes it simmers beneath the surface of my consciousness. I can fool myself into thinking whatever self work I did this time finally cured me. But the treachery of this cellular fear lingers, hinders. I want to be healed. I want to love and be loved. I want my well to be filled, and to give back what is given to me. Me me me. This is what I tell myself.

I don’t know what I like because I just want to be liked. I fill my free time with hobbies that become chores. Taking the dog for walks. Seeing the horse. Skiing. The walk wasn’t long enough, I haven’t ridden the horse yet, I didn’t ski enough runs. I torture myself with criticism and rip away my joy. I can see through the bottomless well, and there is no light at the end of its tunnel.

I wake up and see my mustache regrowing. I wish I was more desirable as a woman. I wish I had less hair. I see the bump of my rib cage under my breasts and wish I was more svelte and lithe. The stretch marks on my thighs are a promise that no matter how much weight I lose, I’ll never hide what I am now, what I have been. I see fat in the mirror. I’ve moralized it. I am bad. I am thoughtless. I am lazy.

How can I be nicer to myself? I tell people what I think and they tell me to be nicer. How? The things I tell myself are true. The walk wasn’t long enough, the dog still has energy, the evidence is there. I was too lazy to do more.

My thighs touch. My stomach folds. The fear is so constant this month I cannot eat without vomiting. I wake up every night at 3am until dawn. I've lost 15 pounds. But I catch glimpses of my double chin in the black mirror of my phone while my fat, lazy ass lays on the couch.

My thoughts are so fast and so painful, I spend most of my time trying to disappear. Trying to turn it off or distract it long enough for relief. For a moment of not feeling like absolute shit about myself. But relief doesn’t come. I am pathetic. Why can’t I face reality? Why can’t I go take a shower or another walk or make that appointment with my doctor that I’ve been putting off for months? Why do I waste my life on Instagram or candy crush or reading the same stupid fantasy romance series again and again?

I am not good enough. This is what I tell myself. I cannot forgive myself for anything. I’m not doing my best. I deserve my violence.

I’m seeking out a parent. Someone safe. Someone who protects and does no harm. Who is trustworthy. Because I cannot give this to myself. I am not safe. I cannot be trusted. I look outside myself for the gentleness, the unconditional love that I lust for. My essence is fright and hysteria and ruthlessness. It is chaos and reactivity. It is a 12 year old child dreading being hit, but knowing after the violence comes a time for calm and rest. It is the noise, the bully, the alert catastrophizing watchdog that keeps me in line. When I am too nice to myself, I fuck up. I don’t think long and hard enough. I trust myself too much. And others pay. I never learned how to be a person. This is what I tell myself. This is what the evidence shows.

There is yet more work to be done. There is new work to be done. There is the catalogue of symptoms and the promise of proven treatments that say things can change. Normalcy can be taught. Fear can be eased. Love can spill forth. The evidence is there. This is what others have told me. Me, me, me.

I have COVID. I am moving out of the house my boyfriend and I share. He is not my boyfriend anymore. He hasn't acknowledged I exist in days. I haven't slept in our bed in three and a half weeks. My horse threw a shoe. His dog is dying. My dog has a leg wound that won't heal. I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. My mom is flying in Saturday to meet him and look for properties with us. She doesn't know. My department is being reorganized and I am the newest hire. I am afraid of being laid off. I signed a lease on a new house I cannot afford. It starts Monday. I thought we just needed space and I found a place 587 feet, as the crow flies, from our house. Now I look perverse. Desperate. I am consumed with this now, and it is all consuming. It will consume me when I move. It will consume me as time moves. The town isn't that big. The fear is always here, and my well is empty.

[whatishappeningtommm]

Observations

When the swaths of miniature white tufts of high country flower that I keep mistaking for fields full of turkey shit - it is spring turkey season after all, and phantom gobbles wake me up throughout the night - are at their peak, the elk move freely, some higher and some lower, feeding on the grass slowly coming back to life on their way to safe pockets to birth their calves. 

When the pink and the blue and the purple flowers, sized for the fairy homes in the woods, burst forth in the wake of the now-wilted white flowers - and I am not watching my every step, terrified to step on, squash, one of those little morsels of color, my eyes buried in the earth - I notice the deer moving silently, so silently not even my German shepherd who has acquired a taste for deer blood notices. 

[whatishappeningtommm]

the bottomless well of unloving, of not loving, yourself. of growing up in a home where praise was held close to the chest, where mistakes were laid out in the limelight of loud words and soft fists, where the value, the quality, the goodness of the self was defined always by that which was not self. it is a quiet pit, one whose endless depths swallow up the echoes of the childhood during which it was built. whose moss covered walls soak up every sound of its existence, so much so that one forgets it is there - one can walk into the first day at a new job or into a classroom or a bar, unawares that the pit well walks in too, desperately seeking to be filled. it feels like the excitement of every new man i meet, the wondering whether this one is The One, of “cancer + aquarius love match” searches on google, of those first conversations trying to suss out if he feels Right, if he makes me feel Whole. it feels like the dissatisfaction of moving in with a new lover, the lingering gnaw of “what if he isn’t it?” it feels like the cloying question of seeking out my missing piece.

because i walk into a bar and i’m happily partnered and i’m moving in with him and it’s so much and so little of what i want. because i walk into a bar and i see someone attractive and i wonder “what if he fits differently into my life, what if he’s the thing that makes me feel whole.”

because i walk into a bar and i don’t hear myself in those depths, the sound of my voice dampened against damper walls. there is an impermeable dissatisfaction with everyone i meet. because there is no number, no numerosity of men in my life i could ever reach that would fill up that endless well of seeking the love affection attention validation and self definition that i crave from others. because the well is bottomless and any love that flows into it flows into infinity, flows into nothingness and serves no purpose beyond the immediate, momentary satisfaction of feeling that love pouring into the well. but it never stays. it never accrues. because without the earth substance of my own capacity to define reality, define my self, define my worth, without that precious, fertile dirt to fill the bottom of that well, to fill it and make it able to hold the water life of love, then anything that comes into the well immediately disappears into it.

i start to hear the silence, when the well walks into the bar with me. i don’t notice its loudness, i notice how hollow the conversation, the furtive glances, become. i notice how the attention falls away as fast as it comes, how little it satisfies me. i notice my desperate cloying desire for that attention - and as i begin to notice, i can begin, in those moments, to eke out little ounces of love for myself. and as those little bits come and come and come and fill and fill and fill, i know that i can begin to make myself a well that is capable of holding water, capable of filling, of overflowing even. of honoring and holding the love that is given by those who can give it truly - and more able to sustain itself in times of drought.

[whatishappeningtommm]

the point was continuous self discovery and self knowledge, to whatever degree we can ever have it. and the point was the stories we told ourselves yesterday about who we are today, and finding out the story you told yourself yesterday about who you are or would be today was a fiction, no matter how deep in your gut the truth of the nature of the person you told yourself you were lived. // having said that, maybe I am being a little hard on Michela expecting her to have skied for 6-7 hours a day every day for 3 months straight and making that the pass/fail metric of whether or not I am the mountain woman I thought I always was now that I am a mountain woman in location. 2018/2019 ski season I lived in Portsmouth and skied 11 days in the white mountains. And I said to myself then, “if I lived closer, I would ski more. I am a mountain woman who would ski every day if time/distance were not a barrier.” This year I lived 55 minutes from the mountain and I skied 30 lift access days and a few backcountry days as well. So halving my distance to the mountain effectively tripled time spent on it. Did I get up there every single day? No. Did I get up there every 3 days or so? Yes. Does my inability to do something every single day translate in my all/nothing brain into essentially not doing the thing at all? Yes. Is that unfair to myself? Yes. It it unrealistic expectations? Absolutely. Do I forget to tone down my self criticism when communicating thoughts to others? Yes. Does it freak people out? Big time. // this correction & retraction was written under duress to address the factual (rather than emotional) ideas around recent articles published. The editors apologize for not doing their job and will work tirelessly in the future with local fact checkers to rein in michela’s dramatics and theatrics.

[whatishappeningtommm]

green, green grass

Maybe I was better off at home, believing that if only I lived somewhere else, then I would be the person I thought I actually was; the potentiality of who I could be a potent hope that made the mundanity of my day to day somehow bearable, somehow in service of a future, better me. Once I got there. Once I got somewhere else.

Home. Coastal New Hampshire. Familiar roads, long time friendships, and hours to hike and ski in the mountains. The idea that my truest self was out there, in those - or any - mountainous region. The idea that if I were just a little closer, if I lived in their midst even, that I would find highest myself on the peaks I knew I would climb every day. That She - that on-high Woman - would know my deepest desires, my strengths and weaknesses, and that in that knowing, She would lay down for me the path of the rest of my life. She would know my calling, what I was born into this earth to do, to give, to nurture and nourish, to make, metaphorically, green and verdant on this land or in others’ lives. She would know, She would show me, what I love and how to love. She would alleviate my addiction to people who treat me the way I treat myself. She would show me self respect, love, compassion and the ability to be gentle, feminine. She would show me how to be soft and serious, to put my fists down and let people closer. She would show me what I valued in my friendships; She would teach me how to speak honestly, and She would love me so powerfully and with such forgiveness that I would never shapeshift to be more likeable ever again.

It was all there, at home, in sweet coastal New Hampshire: hope and fantasy of being “else,” someone else, anyone else, if only I was far away in that place called somewhere else. And so I planned my escape to Else.

A newspaper ad: Single woman & dog seeking one bedroom home for winter rental. Remote worker, need wifi.

Already I was planning, intending, preparing to be different than I was, placing that ad weeks before bringing my puppy home.

A phone call, a plane to Denver and a five hour drive to Pagosa. A meeting, a lease, and a return trip home to pick out the puppy, pack my belongings, and say goodbye the first time for increasingly indefinite periods of time. I sobbed leaving my parents’ home, a big group hug with my my younger siblings. “I moved home from New York so that I could make our relationships better, and I am so grateful that I have.”

And then I was in Pagosa. I was skiing at Wolf Creek, I was hiking out my back door into the San Juan National Forest. I had my eyes peeled, looking for Her at the top of every lift, but I could not find Her. So I went beyond the lift, hiking onto ridges and peaks, and still I could not find Her. What (and who) I thought would be found easily at ten thousand feet became an elusive treasure, and my treasure hunt continued and for a few short months I exhausted myself in the pleasure of seeking, my utter faith in Her existence driving me up and down, up and down. The knowledge that She absolutely was out there, if I just looked hard enough.

And after those few short months, in all that searching and not finding, slowly my faith in Her waivered. It started with shorter days on the mountains. Five hours became four, four became three. Every other day became every three days. The puppy was exhausting. The continuous reformatting of my personality to commune with others and make friends was a cold reminder of the Woman I was looking for and believed to be out here.

I tried to keep my house clean. I tried dating. I tried camping in the cold on the Rio Grande. I tried a second job.

And with all that trying, I am so happy, so elated, so warm and full with new relationships. So grateful for coming to Else. And so aware that I am still exactly as I was in my little east coast town. Still dispassionate, still lazy, still someone who would rather sit at home browsing reddit than huff and puff a few thousand vertical feet, except for the fact that I feel like such a waste-of-space piece of shit if I don’t get outside and move this body on a daily basis.

So aware that what gave my life meaning back home was the idea of Her. That distant hope of relief, that far off goal of ascension. She was something to strive towards. Finding Her, becoming Her, was the struggle that made each day worthwhile, consequential. She was an opus, She was the thing that would make the rest of the path clear, the thing that would answer “what next?”

Now she is revealed for what she has always been: a mirage in the desert, an imagined shadow in the corner of a vacuous eye. A figment dreamt up by a mind, like all minds, hardwired for struggle, goal-seeking, result-oriented. The afternoon thunderstorms have drenched the fire she created in me to climb higher and farther, in hopes that she would be over the next ridge.

I am stuck with myself. Stuck with this self that resents every step up a hill, that struggles to get out of bed in the morning, that fears intimacy and womanhood and being perceived as weak, helpless or needy. The self that throws up her arms to keep love at bay, hardens herself with humor, and fears anything warm and good. The self that has no idea what comes next or what it wants out of life or what it brings to the table. The self lost between its own perception and what others say, think, feel, who keeps all at arms’ length, disengaged, isolated.

How humbling. How humbling.

[whatishappeningtommm]

what is happening

So here we are.

I am sat on the couch in my little one bedroom home, the first home I have ever lived in alone - albeit with a 60-pounds-and-growing german shepherd puppy. The deck door is open, and the dog is staring at me from his rope tie, which he has caught on a rock in the volcanic dirt dust of our yard. The still-sinuously-connected spinal column Strider and I found a few weeks ago, mere steps into the San Juan National Forest abutting the back of our property, is swaying bearly in the breeze that's sneaking in through the open door.

I've just emailed a real estate agent for the umpteenth time asking if she has anything opening up towards the end of June. This house has been sold, not to me, and I have 6 weeks to the day to find other accommodations. But there aren't many. As the only currently running classified ad in the "real estate" section of the local newspaper says, "OWNERS, THERE IS A LONG TERM RENTAL SHORTAGE IN PAGOSA SPRINGS."

Last week, I was finalizing the bed/storage platform I built into the back of my Tacoma and packing up to leave New Hampshire. This was my preparation for the inevitable, iminent "It Is Time To Move" text from my landlord. In case - in the likely case - that I wouldn't find another house to reside in, the truck is my fallback.

The truth is, it wouldn't be hard to find a place to live. But there would be compromises I would have to make, and I'm trying to compromise what I want a little less these days after years and years of people pleasing. I'm trying to honor my wants and needs.

So my foot is planted, my arms are crossed. "If I can't live in a house by myself with my dog, then I won't live in a house at all!"

That is the kind of compromise I am willing to make.

I am on a desperate search for stability, but in seeking it, I will make myself unstable. Not with purpose, not with intent. It's not even an "I will..." situation. Instability just simply IS what is happening. I am not choosing to be chaotic. It is only the inevitable.

The air is spring-crisp, with that touch of moisture that comes with all the verdant life breathing itself into existence in the trees and the flowers and the dirt. Hummingbirds at mach speed whirr past. Strider lays outside the door, looking out on our little valley. We are on the precipice.