Hi. I’m Jes.
Welcome to my experiment in vulnerability. Also known as, a secret “blog'“ page I made on my website.
I have been a writer since I was eight years old but I was also born under a Full moon in Scorpio. In short, this means for me that I have always loved to write and felt deeply connected to myself and others through writing, but I fear sharing my deepest feelings and being vulnerable or exposed. When you have been thinking about and wanting to share your writing for many years but have managed to talk yourself out of it, it’s very scary and difficult to start. I’m looking to share more because I’m learning it is part of the process of my becoming my whole self and that when I do share, it is surprisingly (possibly only to me) appreciated by those who love and care about me.
The push to share on this particular day came from my therapist, bless her heart. I have been with the same therapist for 5 years now and she has helped shepherd me through my past and present in ways that have created a much more holistic view of my self and my 38 years here. Today, I brought up the same subject and person that I have spent many dollars discussing and trying to get free of on and off for four years. I brought this person up for the umpteenth time today because last week, I was told a thing that I have long suspected about the narrative being shared about me by this person. I’ve long suspected it because it’s simply the only story that cleanly makes me the villain and them the victim and therefore takes away any responsibility on their part for what happened between us, which I have kept largely quiet for reasons listed here and also many that might make another post if I’m ever even brave enough to post this one. My therapist ended our session by reminding me of the saying “do no harm but take no shit”. My take away, we all cause harm and we are all (or like, mostly) deserving of forgiveness. Then she encouraged me to choose ME, to not make myself small in favor of someone else’s self protection.
After trying to get free in silence, I’d like to try getting free out loud.
It’s felt too complicated, scary, vulnerable or even not my place to share some of my own stories for most of my life but today I wondered if I could simply do it anyway. If I could put down the complex and messy, even if it were still vague, as a small act of defiance against the ways I was taught to carry grief all alone. It’s a hard thing for me to let people see me fall apart but the alternative has been a sort of hiding that has injured me further for some time now.
I have gotten stuck and this is a way for me to get unstuck so let’s start where it feels right and see where it goes…
I had a dad who died early. I had a mom who couldn’t cope. I was raised by a church who hated my most basic identities. All three of these archetypes taught me to be strong and good in the ways that meant caring for and protecting myself so that no one else would have the inconvenience. I married a man who loved me and let me be me so generously that I left him for a woman who was my fate in more ways than one. I started becoming something else then, something more true and brave and connected to my purpose and dreams and self. But I let the grief from my relationship stories centered around abandonment and not coping and hating of my basic identities repeat itself by continuing to care for and protect myself in the ways that my very small self insisted were best. “If I could just be good and honest and try very hard to accommodate what they need because then they will see how good I am and they will love me and there will be peace.” That is my younger self who still speaks for me often but who I am learning to work with instead of against. So when there was something that others found too heavy to carry that they handed it to me, just like eight year old me, I took it. I carried it for those who could not cope with their own sadness or pain or shame. It felt like my duty, a showing of my goodness. “I know you are but a baby and I have been grown since childhood. I am well versed in grief and pain and holding so please, let me have yours... I will take the blame and let you lash out both at and about me because I can handle it and you cannot”. This was my very noble brain speaking who is often very stupid.
*Fucking surprise of the century, it did not work well*
I had become a person that others could count on to be the mature one, to talk them through their crisis, probably to take the high road in a falling out, to do the holding and handling. But I did not become someone who expected anything from anyone else in return. I still cared for myself, hid away to keep the peace, and grieved in secret so as to not disturb anyone else’s experience of me.
Here’s the rub, I EXIST. And I happen to exist inside this small queer community inside this also small town. And I am a part of this community in a lot of ways. In order to be this mature, responsible, capable handler that I was convinced I needed to be, I’ve chosen to make myself smaller at times. I’ve chosen to support the ventures of those whose blame and shame I was carrying. I’ve come up with a script of what to say when asked about these situations and people that was often vague because I thought I should protect their reputations. As it turns out, I am not their real mother, and they are not my responsibility. As time has moved on, I’ve discovered that anyone who goes around “warning” others about me has truly dug their own ditch when those forewarned folks discover me to be an indeed flawed but equally beautiful person to be in community with. Yet, the grief of abandonment and not being able to cope and hating my very existence still stings. I am someone who deeply wants to repair because I was raised with this series of wounds that I never want myself or any one else to experience. When someone is unwilling to even entertain repair with me, even when the harm was made as a collective or pair, my wound tells me I must get small for them. But my therapist and other trusted confidants tell me something very different. Confusing how that works.
Then this past year I experienced something so profoundly disorienting and painful. Something worse than all the griefs I’ve ever grieved before. Something so heartbreaking that I am still truly healing and coming up for sips of air between long bouts of holding. It’s rewiring me, this grief. Anyone who has experienced something that sounds like this knows that these kinds of grief stop time. There is both a zooming in, where every small moment is noticed and analyzed and important and also a zooming out, where one can see their whole life and this one moment or series of moments as a pivotal point on that arc. I’ve been reminded of how strong I am, how much I’ve been through in life, and how much I can handle, even when it becomes incredibly messy. I’ve also grieved for the ways I wish I could have been held, and loved, and cared for in the ways that I deserved and yearned for but still didn’t know how to expect and ask for from those around me.
New grief brings up old grief and then they intertwine to become one new big-boss grief. This fresh grief added a new layer to the grief of being labeled a villain by folks in my community four years ago. My healing this fresh grief forced and allowed me to face my continued healing of this old grief and here is what I know of both at this specific moment in time.
-I am not a villain. I am a deeply caring and cautious person who is capable of repair and of owning my wrongs but who sometimes takes on too much responsibility for others’ portion of the wrong when I think they cannot carry their own shit.
-I am not dangerous. I am a safe place for those around me to be their vulnerable selves and feel heard and held.
-I am not perfect nor do I ever hope to be. That shit is rooted in white supremacist and individualistic thinking and does not leave room for being human and making messes and learning to clean them up in and with community. AND, I’m learning that just because something is messy, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it openly. I have seen so many times that sharing the messy is what brings the most healing and intimacy.
-I am not the most responsible one in the room. And if I am, it is out of emotional capacity and choice, not out of a deference to someone who is my same age but perhaps also gets stuck as their 8 or 13 or 21 year old self sometimes.
Maybe this is the end or maybe I’m just getting warmed up.
It’s similarly hard to know how to end this thing that was difficult to know how to start.
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