Dear Ones,
I have this laugh. It’s different from my usual laugh. I’d almost call it a cackle. It happens when I find something so incredibly funny that it shifts into a space of being completely unbridled, joyful laughter. I know the sound of it. It hasn’t been present during this Wintering. It’s been a while.
On Saturday, it surprised me by revealing itself twice; both stimulated by a conversation with my wife. It felt unfamiliar almost; that laugh. It felt like I had forgotten she had existed. But in those two moments of joy, she came out, and she came out loudly. It felt wonderful. I thought to myself; “Gosh, is Winter coming to an end? Is this laugh one of the signs of it?” I felt hopeful in that joyful, cackling moment.
But, don’t get too excited, the next day, I got hit by a very high temperature that made me feel beyond shit and incredibly vulnerable, and I had a conversation that made me feel like I was playing that game where you sit on a chair, above water, and someone throws balls at a target. If the ball hits the target, your chair falls away, the support falls out from underneath you, and you land up dunked under water. That conversation hit my target. My foundation fell out from under me and I got dunked. And that hope I felt from that joyful cackle turned into the ongoing relentlessness of the clusterfuck.
I saw my therapist the next day.
I’ve just started seeing a new therapist. I’m over 20 years into my therapy journey. Let me tell you, I know my stuff. I could write an entire fucking PhD on myself as a patient. And I know that I can use knowledge and intellect as a defense mechanism. If I can understand, then all will be well. This approach no longer works for me. I understand. But all is not well.
A little while ago, I decided I wanted to stop using my intellectual left brain and move into the space of my right brain. My feeling brain. My emotional brain. My ‘I don’t have all my shit together just because I’ve been in therapy for 20 years and I know all the theory there is to know about myself” part of my brain. So I went searching for something different. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was looking for, other than the fact that I wanted it to be someone that didn’t know me from mental health colleagues circles, and that I had a few adjectives to add; “warm”, “held”, "nurtured”, and didn't mind me swearing. We are in the early stages but I think I may have found her.
And what she told me on Tuesday was that I needed to slow down in my session. You see, I was trying to tell her everything I already knew about myself. And what she wanted to hear was the story. I felt both frustrated (I’m very goal oriented. My wife says I can go into a fix-it output mode that she’s never seen before.), and I also felt seen. Nuance. My 2023 word. Again.
I needed to slow down for multiple reasons.
The first was that my story, and I, deserved to take up space. I didn’t need to rush myself. I have enough worth and value to take up space. Slowly. Without being rushed.
The second was that I wanted to get to the “fix-it” part, and from what this Winter has taught me, you can’t always just get to the “fix-it” part. Sometimes you just have to be in the “be in it part.” I don’t like that. It’s new territory. I work better with a blueprint. A plan. A known outcome. So I’m over here, not being able to accelerate anywhere, all my strategies tapped out, really just being. Being in my story.
Maybe both the cackle and the getting dunked are actually both a move towards Spring. That’s yet to be discovered. But I don't know. And I'm working on getting comfortable with not knowing. I’m definitely not yet, just for the record. But I don’t have any other things I can do right now, other than sit and not know. And when you can’t move just yet, you may as well learn to get comfortable whilst being there.
I often go back to something I heard right at the beginning of this Wintering:
“Maybe you think you are buried, but really, you are being planted.”
I know that to be true of life.
It’s just what the fuck to do whilst you are sitting under all this damn sand, waiting for the ground to break.
In other news, and in complete contrast to the fact that I am in the middle of Winter, I will be giving a talk on “The Pursuit of Happiness” next week with @3afterfive at Youngblood Gallery on Bree Street. Be prepared for some swearing and the view that the real point of life is not happiness. You’ll need to attend for me to tell you what I believe the point to really be. (Good marketing, right?)
All my love, (particularly to my fellow Winterers today)
Jess
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