When clarity comes like a fist to the face

Prelude

Just after midnight on Tuesday I woke with full-body nerve pain like I've never felt before. It was agonising and it made me nauseous. As I vomited tidily into a plastic bag, I thought: Is this a spiritual event or just a neurotoxin? 

Three hours of sitting in bed later, still twitching and spasming and aching like I'd been beaten all over, but no longer nauseous, I tried to take a sleeping pill. I instantly vomited it back up.

By Wednesday afternoon, the pain and nausea had gone but the fatigue was still bone-deep. So when my friend Tommy sent me a self-love exercise, I said I wasn't in any fit state to attempt it right now.

He said he totally understood and I should just rest.

Like a fist in the face

Obviously I did the exercise. It wasn't complicated. It involved sitting quietly, telling my vulnerable, inner-child self that I loved her, and waiting to see what she had to say to me in return. 

And fucking hell, it gave me clarity like a fist in the face about how I have added myself to the list of my abusers.

Friends, what the child I spoke to inside myself expressed to me was deep, deep sadness that her feelings didn't matter. She wasn't angry, she wasn't confused, she wasn't bitter. She was just sad. She wanted to matter, and she didn't, and that was breaking her little vulnerable heart. 

And when I asked her why she believed that she didn't matter, my own behaviour as an adult was an uncomfortably large part of the answer. 

Huh?

If you have followed me [on socials] for a while you'll probably notice that I am fairly calm, kind and non-reactive most of the time. I put effort into stepping through my own anger before I respond. 

The main reason for this is (to oversimplify a nuanced and evolving belief set) that I don't really believe in free will, so I don't really believe people are accountable for their actions, cosmically speaking. I believe everyone's just out here trying to be happy, and some have much better endowments in this regard than others - including better pre-natal and early-years experiences, more prosocial characters and temperaments (which I believe are largely inborn or post-natal epigenetic), and better choices available to them throughout their lives. And in my book, none of that is virtue; it is luck. 

And I feel so incredibly lucky with my own birthright in these regards, I have been so blessed with so many gifts of nature in terms of my mind and heart and soul, that I feel a duty - maybe it even amounts to calling, sometimes? - to be as kind and open and loving and tolerant as I can be. Which isn't all the time to everyone, of course; I'm a flawed human being. But I try to be always on the side of light and peace and goodness. 

Isn't that a good thing?

What that child told me - within the first three minutes of doing this exercise - is that sometimes the way I strive to stay open is a betrayal of her, especially when it happens in relationship. When I turn the other cheek, I fail to protect her from harm. When I refuse to speak reactively with anger, when I stay calm, when I lean into seeing the other person's perspective and I empathise with their emotional experience and I hold space for them, when I refuse to take it personally even though it's personal - I am telling her that her hurt doesn't matter to me.

And when I treat myself in an interpersonal situation as more able to deal with challenge, more resourced-up, more able to suck it up and be the calm adult than the other person, even when it's true, she experiences that as her feelings mattering less. Because that is exactly what my behaviour is telling her. She ain't stupid, this kid. She notices what actually gets prioritised. Children do.

I thought I was good at self-care. What I'm beginning to realise is that I've actually been good at metabolising injury and abuse, being resilient, and lying to myself about how hurt I am.

I also realised that this is why I needed to be awake for all those hours, why I needed to experience the pain of the battle going on within my body. I needed to come to this lesson brought low by exhaustion, so that I would have the stillness and humility to really listen 🙏

My chemical romance

In minute four of the exercise, my inner child added the absolute stinger that when it comes to romance, over and over again, with dismaying eagerness, I give my heart away to people I know will not hold it safely or lovingly. I don't fear doing it - in fact, I often walk toward it. I crave the high, and I know I can take the comedown. But it hurts her so, so much.

I have promised her that I will try so hard not to do that any more. I think that is going to be the hardest promise for me to keep.

Choosing myself

Tommy once told me I work fast. I think he's right? My experience of myself since those ~five minutes on Wednesday has been quietly transformational. Over and over, throughout the day, many times an hour sometimes, I have said to myself: "I love you, Amy. What are you feeling right now? What do you need from me to feel like you matter?"

And the replies I get back are informative and often surprising. I need to spend more time in meditation. I need to do less, commit to less, let people down more. I need to get out into the ngahere more. I need to dance more, run more. I need to buy the jacket, the hat, maybe the drum. 

Most confrontational of all, I need to say some difficult things to people I love about how they have made me feel. Not in an effort to make them responsible for my emotions or deny my own adult agency and choices, but just because she needs to hear me say it out loud. Sometimes the choice really is between her pain and someone else's, and I need to stop always making that choice the same way. If I want my love for her to be more than words, then when it comes down to it I have to be willing to fight for her. To risk conflict and rejection and judgement and loss for her.

It's a hard thing for me to hold onto, but the sacred truth is that I matter as much as anybody else.

It doesn't end here

As I continue with this mahi, I guess it may come to feel less like a two-person conversation and more like I am nurturing an integrated self? Or it may not, and that's fine. As long as I can keep letting myself know what I need, I know I can keep on showing up for myself with the same kindness, courage, tenacity and strength of heart with which I show up for all the other people I love.

It is incredibly humbling to realise that I didn't already have myself on the list of people I was committed to really caring for in this life. But hey. We can't do things until we can do them, right? And once bad things have happened, they don't seem so bad🙏Winter has ended, spring is here.

As I walk backwards into my future and take a peek over my shoulder, I feel scared (of course) but also genuinely hopeful. I think maybe I can have a life that is not just full of moments of deep wonder and awe and joy and gratitude and service - I've always known I could have that - but one that is actually happy in its day-to-day experience? That, I never really expected. Well, let's see.

Dedication (in all senses of the word)

Tommy, I know you'll say I am the one doing the work here, but you know I'll say I couldn't walk this path without you by my side and sometimes ahead of me, reaching a hand back in the dark. I can't find words to thank you, but I hope you see me living my appreciation and love for you every day.