Yesterday had many of us #215800-ers taking a look at the creatures in our own heads. Many of us recognized in Bindu’s “cobra snake person” a variation of our own in-dwelling critters and commenced battle.
I confronted mine while agonizing over the decision to sever connections with her counterpart - the very real and still living person who gave her the script she uses to undermine, diminish, trivialize, and mock me (thank the havens I hired a therapist on day 10, because this is about to get messy). I nicknamed her “bitchslap” and started practicing the mantra to keep her at bay when she gets out of hand. “Not now, bitchslap”. I went about the day as one under the influence of super powers. I felt strong, steady, a little bit taller. I not only did more yoga than usual, I went to the gym and biked like a fiend, then got in the pool and did all the yoga my knees can’t handle on land. I discovered I’ve lost three pounds. Now I was feeling limber, capable, a little bit gorgeous - in other words, fully possessed by Brave Me (see yesterday’s post if you haven’t met her yet) who was driving from the helm from the moment I hit “publish” in the morning.
On the way home we stopped for lunch and I said to my partner, “You know how in movies there are these segments where - sometimes a character has made some kind of commitment or is undergoing a transformation and there’s this segment that shows them doing all the various things that get them there? Like in Rocky, all the punching bags and running up the steps...?” (don’t know why Rocky came to mind, I’ve always been more of a Personal Best type of girl myself) ...”And there’s always some kind of a soundtrack song that epitomizes the whole thing?”. She indicated that she understood but was not sure where I was going.
“Well, it seems like my life’s been kind of like one of those segments lately. I imagine shots of early morning yoga, tapping at the keyboard, bumping it in therapy...” She nodded. Then I got to my point: “I wonder what the soundtrack would be”.
On coming home I declared it time to clean house in a big way. For one thing my room was a pit from being neglected too long while more important things happened.
For another, I’m having surgery in a couple of weeks so I’ll be spending a decent amount of time in there and I won’t be able to clean then. So off I went. Sorting, tossing, organizing... doing the grand purge-and-order routine.
As the project progressed, we put on some great house-cleaning music. When one album ended I was going for my old standard cleaning album (Laura Love’s Helvetica Bold) but suddenly took pause... wait a minute. Yeah, some of the older stuff that used to define me in the way that only young people can be defined by their music. The stuff that transports me to the volatile time and place of my formative years as surely as the smell of fried chicken takes me to my grandmother’s kitchen.
So it came to pass that Siouxsie and the Banshees was blaring from a stereo barely equipped to withstand the rigor of such an exercise, while I huffed and heaved and strutted and threw. out. everything. that. doesn’t. serve me. Me. ME!
The angst-ridden me of the 1980’s had arrived, and she was demanding her due. The respect, consideration, and care that were not hers when she was being torn to shreds on the inside for want of someone to confide in about what she’d gone through on her way to young-womanhood was suddenly sitting on the edge of my bed, putting on black lipstick and wiggling her ridiculously high heel back and forth from the tip of her toe. She was putting on her “don’t fuck with me face”, and practicing emotional distance.
On her behalf, I sang along at the top of my lungs and let the anger sing through me in order to release its grip on my physical being at least.
The album ended. My partner said something about tripping down memory lane and mentioned that the cat did not seem to enjoy Siouxsie, hiding as she was in the back of the house. I promised to switch tone but keep it in the same era... flip, flip, flip. Oh yeah. Smiths.
More morose and brooding than the Banshee’s dark ravings, and so melodic. I let my voice trail along with the dips and curves as I began to tidy up from the whirlwind cleaning. Singing along, singing along...
My partner calls out that dinner is ready, and asks what I’d like to drink. She repeats my name several times, and finally comes looking because I haven’t answered.
When I enter the kitchen I am unable to speak; my throat is blocked with choking sobs. I have been hollowed out on the inside and filled with a sensation that is larger than my body can contain, my face contorted and red, my body shaking.
She asks what’s wrong and I can only say I don’t know. I’m pointing to the stereo. Morrissey is going on about “15 minutes with you...”. Can that be it? Surely not.
It takes only a few minutes to cry myself out. In that hot, moist place of sudden anguish I relive the trigger moment and come upon these words:
“It’s time the tale was told, of how you took a child, and you made him old...”
Grief for the child that was me hits me like a wall of hot air.
My eyes turn hot and well up again, my heart rising against my breastbone like it’s coming up for air. Bingo.
In 1986 I would have thought it cool that my soundtrack would still be The Smiths at 42 (if I could have conceived of living this long).
Today though, it simply serves to show me where my melting point is. I can cry it out without attaching more history to it, and use it as a kind of bookmark for where to start the next round of healing process.
The Meltdown is never a bad thing if you use it for transformation. When you are melty you are vulnerable, yes. And malleable. Each of these conditions bring our attention to the strength of things that are not rigid. Who said, “Nature has a funny way of breaking what won’t bend”?
So when you can be present in your vulnerability and malleability, you are in charge of the meltdown. The final form is still up for negotiation, and it’s in your hands. Be bold!
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You're right. Sometimes we have to melt down in order to shape ourselves anew.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post.
~ juliana