lost and found
digging my own grave, and sleeping on it
Have you ever stopped to think about what you want? What you want to be in a few years? About what moves you, what pushes you forward? What makes you feel found?
If these questions left you weirded out or oddly paralyzed, welcome to the club. Chances are you can’t remember the last time you had an answer, or took a while to find one for these questions, or even cared about the topic for enough time to find any significance in it — which, fair enough, is totally understandable. The concept of knowing oneself is almost expected as a prerequisite, something you’re born with. I think society takes it for granted that we all know who we are.
On Tuesday, I had an interview for an internship, and one of the questions asked was ‘What position do you see yourself having here?’; I was so dumbstruck, and absolutely at loss with words. Worse than having nothing to say, I realised with an empty gulp that I had nowhere to escape, no one to turn to in that exact moment and tell me what I was supposed to say, what would be the right answer. On a whim, with my heartbeat in my ears and feeling heavily unprepared, I replied that right now I’m at a stage of my life and career where I don’t refuse any possibility. ‘No’ wouldn’t be in my dictionary. Openness, I quickly concluded, could never be taken as a bad thing. I’ll give up the assertiveness I don’t have in the first place, even if it might be a sign of disrespect towards myself.
Which isn’t totally a lie, but it is only an half true. Do I truly have no idea? As stupid as it might sound, for a professional overthinker, I know too little. I was never a person that thought too ahead, and perhaps that’s a huge character flaw; the future always felt like something so out of my reach, like most things I could possibly want, even if most argue that we must take both in our own hands, that we can shape them. Whenever I started to wonder through those chances, trying to catch them like a kid running after butterflies and grasshoppers, I’d get lost amidst the variables, the low bushes and high trees, the fuzzy feelings and the infinite ‘what ifs’, precisely the negative ones. I’d dive headfirst into hyperboles, fall into the lowest pits of worst case scenarios I could. I’ll dig my own grave by foreseeing and dictating my own misery.
Which is pretty shitty. With 21 years in this earth, I’m ashamed to admit many of them were spent trying to look for the best person I could be for everyone else, that could conjure the best kind of reception. Accommodating to everyone’s needs or wishes, letting myself go with the wind of the crowd’s desires, ruling my own future by whatever I did not want and ignoring, silencing any voice, any whisper that could tell me what I truly wanted. It came with a certain cost. Was it that I never had time? Patience? Enough curiosity? Bravado?
I’m not looking for sympathy when I say this. Rather, I’m making a case on my insecurity and negativity, and how they make everything worse than it actually is. When someone tries to cheer me up by throwing a silly ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen?’, they underestimate my brain’s ability to make stuff up. I’m like a chicken beating her beak continuously on the same rock, hoping I’ll find a grain. I let my most negative emotions tame so many of my long-term actions and decisions, that I end up pushing myself if not backwards then sideways, further from where I’m supposed to be, if that place really exists at all.
A teacher I had in high school, who slightly leaned to spiritualism, once commented that ‘our cerebrums feed themselves off negativity’. You can imagine these words both saddened me as much as they cleared some of the dark grey fog around my thoughts. My negativity is only the food for my brain so it can eat itself alive. Still, the thoughts being unreal don’t make them any less painful.
So I get distracted easily in my own feelings. And we have a tendency to think that if they come from within us, then they must be true. We all want something to believe in, even if the words, the phrases, the affirmations will only be half-hearted truths or lies. Even if they hurt us in the process.
I get lost and lost, not really walking but rather zig-zagging my way through the forest that is our brain. I don’t really know what I want, and it’s terrifying. This person that I’ve been with for so long is slightly a stranger. I easily find emotions, but it’s rather hard to come by concrete statements. I realise, I still have to figure myself out. By a lot. I wonder if there’s any way, any necessity to create myself from scratch.
These days I began writing a list of triggers, mostly with things I notice will upset me or put me on edge, uncomfortable. For years, I’ve kept papers full of random phrases that made me feel something, from hope to happiness to admiration. Since I’ve started writing here, I’ve technically been building a list of things I do love, that make me smile or wonder. It’s easier to let myself get beaten to the curb by all the things I’m not then to spend any time objectively building something worthy of myself, but I’m trying. Worthy not in an outward sense, more in a way that I can be fully, wholly sure it is who I want to be. Tuning in to what the heart says, writing things down in case — no, because I will forget them, and I wish not to. I know myself enough to recognize my working memory is useless…
And I try to pay attention to all the states I live through. When I’m at my anxious, my stomach tends to feel tense, my breathing shortens. When I’m calm, my whole body feels weightless. When I’m angry or afraid, my right hands has this tendency to grab something and grip it with all the force it can manage, mindlessly, or to just turn into a fist.
Funnily enough, the answer isn’t to totally delete all feelings and emotions, but rather to actively choose what you want to focus on. Focusing only in my distress will let the lostness widen, worsen. There’s this quote I love, said in the very last episode of Derry Girls (which is a phenomenal sitcom), and it goes like this: “If our dreams get broken along the way, we have to make new ones from the pieces.”. We’ll build ourselves not with big bricks, but with the pieces we’ll collect over the days, weeks, years.
Thank you for reading delicate this week. I don’t usually give out homework, but today, I wish you hold your own hand and get to know yourself a bit better. Be a bit more gentle then you need to be.
~ DELICACIES OF THE WEEK ~
“I have made this place around you.” Today’s letter was heavily inspired by Wagoner’s ‘Lost’ and Pádraig Ó Tuama’s afterthoughts in the podcast Poetry Unbound, which I’ve mentioned in the past. I’m not the biggest poetry lover, but I am glad the podcast returned for another season since I cherish it in my own way. If you have 12 minutes to spare, or wish to pause for a while, do consider giving the episode a chance.
Speaking of podcasts, I had this episode saved in my notion for weeks now, from the Radio Headspace daily show. The episode is short (not even 5 minutes), and most likely included some topic I found insightful or lovely enough to share with you.
I also happened to buy a keyboard and a mouse, since I was suffering from really awful wrist aches. It was cheaper than I thought, and I can’t recommend it enough!
SONGS OF THE WEEK: everybody wants to rule the world by tears for fears, halloween by phoebe bridgers and homework by onthedal || delicate’s spotify playlist!
homework is such a lovely song! i feel like it fits your writing very well