How to Hold Your Own Hand
In both the darkness and the light
Note: I took a different approach to this post. Just fucking free flowed on a Friday morning. And this is what I came up with. I’m in bed still, all crusty, so I’m not gonna film me reading it today. I want to send it out as is so you can taste me raw. I’ll maybe put up a vid later.
With God’s breath
as the wind at my back,
my pain postures
on behalf of my past—
call it a re-flex,
causing me to reflect,
but I don’t regret
a single thing that got me where I’m at…
Respect.
It’s funny how as you age, the young parts of you become older and older…
My pain has fear of abandonment. “Don’t worry, little ones,” I tell these former versions of me, who all still sit superimposed in my psyche from now forevermore, “We are integrated.”
But they don’t buy it. How could they? They’ve earned their place in my soul. Their resistance derives from wisdom— not naiveté. They ask me: if you keep your heart this open and free, who’s gonna have your back?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a compulsion to martyrdom. I’ve been conscious of this for a little over a decade, believing in my bones I live to serve and elevate others (and this is not untrue!), and this was how I carried on, helping fully and dutifully, deriving some semblance of purpose and place on this planet.
You know, I’ve stopped hating myself long enough to realize I really fucking love myself. Including these younger versions of me. And I see that I wasn’t just sacrificing for others— allthewhile, I was sacrificing for future (now present) me.
My younger selves worked so hard to do the right thing, to gather tools to live in integrity, to listen and learn and love from the purest possible place.
And I owe it to them to finally fucking enjoy the ride.
Dr. Brene Brown, American psychologist specializing in the power of vulnerability, coined a term “foreboding joy” to refer to the feeling of dread/worry immediately following a rush of happiness. She uses the example of seeing her young sleeping son, experiencing love in her body, and then tensing at the thought of something horrible happening to him. The fear of future horror shatters present joy.
What about a joy that is haunted by the past?
Lately, as a big smile has been on my face, my big pain has been on my mind. I’m feeling more compelled than ever to share my creations, a lot of which explore love in all its forms. I am a creature of light.
But I have spent so much time in the darkness.
Like a fucking diamond.
(I truly do love being distilled to a coffee-mug cliche. Makes me feel human. Belonging.)
And these past versions of me are haunting me already because they think they’re ghosts. They think I’ve killed them. But, no matter how much I martyr, I would never actually kill them. I’ve just disentangled them from my primary identity.
It’s funny… As I walk forward in time and future becomes ever present, I feel my pained past selves’ hands in mine… and they’re so small… so soft… Still, despite how hard life gets. They haven’t yanked away (even then— deep down inside I loved myself) but they’re still not fully trusting. Not of me, necessarily, but of LIFE.
Life can be a beating,
but my heart beats back.
Open letter to my past selves:
Dear me’s,
Baby girls, I am not going anywhere. We are.
Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us. You have been so strong for so long, and you did it with SUCH signature pizzazz, which kept our soul alive. Right on.
Let’s play a game: pretend— just try it— that everything is gonna be okay. Great, even. You’re smart so I won’t lie to you: there will be difficult things, but I got us.
I promise: I will not ghost you.
But you must also promise: don’t make ghosts of yourselves. You do not need to haunt. You can stay fully alive, and I will keep holding your hand until you trust me as much as I trust the divine forces at play.
That’s a good idea… Play. We deserve it.
Love,
You
Do you get what I’m saying, Muser? Ask a question.
I’m out here. You out here, too? Let a girls know they ain’t alone.
Reflections on reflection
One of the “pain” experiences that I’ve been thinking about is my experience in the hospital almost exactly a year ago, on the same day as the complete solar eclipse. My radio show last Friday was themed around this experience, called “Total Eclipse” where I mused and played music around the process of pre-darkness, during-darkness, and post-darkness (listen here).
I learned a lot during that experience (read some of my major realizations here), but the main one on my mind today is the nature and utility of “reflection.”
There are two types of reflection:
Reflection of the original object: if you look in the mirror and see spinach in your teeth, you can go right ahead and take that spinach out amen hallelujah. You are using this reflection (which is just an image and not an actual 3D object) to learn and then perhaps modify an original actual object.
Reflection of the reflected object: The reason we can see the moon at all is that it is reflecting the light of the sun. The moon itself does not have any light. Because seeing is so important to believing for our monkey brains, we may not even believe the moon exists without the sun “proving” it. But it would still be pulling the tides, cycling currents, manipulating menses, and then, occasionally, shutting the day down in total darkness.
Eclipsed.
It is this second type of reflection I currently engage in. As I underwent the pain in real time a year ago, I was in total darkness, and only now in the safety of the present can I shine a light on the past to understand it better and reveal any truths that may be ~enlightening~.
And help you get that spinach out ya teeth.
Ask me if I care about mixed metaphors of diamonds, past-selves-as-ghosts, and personal eclipses. Go ahead. Ask me. Actually, I’ll ask you: how do YOU feel about it?
Go ahead. Ask me if I believe in ghosts. Ask me if I’m scared of joy. Ask me if my “yesses” to both of those questions are gonna stop me. Actually, I’ll ask you: do YOU get scared of joy? And do YOU let that stop you?
What’s the point? Baby, I’m a Speer— I stay sharp, but I’m more about the poem than the point, ya feel? So I’ll ask you: what of these musings penetrated your mind/soul/body?
^^^IDK what all those “leave a comment” things are about… feeling poetic af 24/7 and any medium is fair game for me when it comes to getting across my message… this includes substack buttons. In fact, here’s some more:
Also, for all of those who don’t know yet must:
I write and perform poetry about the beautiful superposition of love and lust. I post a new work each Wednesday (hump day, obviously) on the 🍊zone section of Emuse. Check out my most recent post here. We keep it wet. Next Wednesday I’ll be posting about my process and demos of a song I’ve been working on in three different styles: soul/funk, indie acoustic, and Lady Frank Ocean. Stay (at)tuned!
Being a Martyr is not all a darkness or negative; we shed the dying parts of ourselves for emergence of the new! In essence, every day could be a Martyrdom--if we let go of Fear.
Love ya,
Mama