Things I Need to Do…insecurity versus vulnerability…a sacrament of threads
So I have things I’m supposed to be doing today, but I’ve run into one of the Things I Need to Do, and I’m going to let it take precedence, because I can. Most people can’t; I know doing this is a luxury.
The Things I Need to Do aren’t always things I understand or can identify ahead of time, but doing them almost always leads me where I want to go.
It’s frustrating. I *think* I know what I want. I *think* I know who I am. I *think* I know what’s best for me. I don’t. I am slowly learning that most of those thoughts are just thoughts, a bunch of chatter that has nothing to do with what I want, who I am, or what’s best. The chatter that comes out of my mouth when I’m in this mode isn’t right OR wrong; it’s irrelevant. It comes out of my mouth when I’m tired and cranky and I don’t want to cope. It’s like throwing down smoke bombs or caltrops: a distraction.
I am *sure* about these things. And I’ll tell you. At length, if I’m tired and cranky and I don’t want to cope. I try to be at least amusing about them, but it’s all blah blah blah.
The actual Things I Need to Do, in contrast, are terrifying.–I’m not an atheist, I’m an agnostic, not because I care whether or not there’s some sort of creator or divine power, but because I run into these fucking Things I Need to Do and they go beyond all reason. The tools I need to do them don’t make any sense from a rational standpoint, and I’ll often change tools and ditch the old ones, believing just as hard in the new tools as I did the old ones. And then I’ll go back to the old tools in a heartbeat if I need them. I talk to spirits (e.g., Most Favored Tree) and meditate, for example, but I’ll also pray in a pinch. Being an atheist would just slow me down. I am (metaphysically?) tool-agnostic and will use whatever I can get at the time.
When I run into these Things I Need to Do, I generally catch myself thinking: what am I even doing? This is just one more distraction. This is my ADHD brain lying to me. I already have too much stuff to do. See this list? This is not on the list. Who even cares? It’s intrusive and/or the person will be offended (if someone else is involved). I could just do “something good” that other people will recognize as being “something good” (like charity) and not have to worry about the risks involved in this other thing.
Nawp. That’s not how it goes.
Half the time I don’t know WHY the thing is important. I tell myself reasons, but I’ve come to recognize those reasons as unimportant chatter, a distraction. I just know that if I don’t do the Thing I Need to Do, I will be stuck in that spot until I do it, possibly under different circumstances.
Looking back, I can always see why I Needed to Do the Thing, and I never regret it, although I’ll often regret how long it took me to do it. I rarely consciously know where these things will take me, and I don’t think I DO know even on a subconscious level, just that I Need to Do the Thing.
Example: leaving my ex.–The third anniversary of which is coming up. Huh. Maybe that’s one reason this is on my mind.
Anyway: I was talking to him and suddenly realized how he was manipulating me. I asked him to stop. He doubled down and tried to gaslight me. I walked out of the room shaking. I asked him three times, later, to talk to me; he wouldn’t. After that I stopped trying. But I really left him in that instant. I needed to get out of the room, and I was never willingly again in the same room with him. Eventually (to serve himself when bullying me didn’t work) he suggested we go to couples counseling, the “good” thing to do, and I refused. Well, I told him I’d go, but only if he went to therapy and dealt with his own problems first. That was more of a “fuck you” than a legitimate attempt compromise at that point, because I’d caught on to the fact that he’d *never* change and we both knew it.
The entire time, I was telling myself it was stupid, that I needed to go back and make up with him, that it was just another stupid little fight that I was blowing out of proportion and that it didn’t mean anything.–But the way he acted in response to me not doing what he wanted meant that they had *never* been stupid little fights at all. I Needed to Do the Thing and leave, and I should have been paying better attention and trusting my instincts from day one with him.
…
So I’ve been in the grip of Things I Need to Do lately, and trying to figure out how to serve them (let alone define them).
I have been chewing on myself, on knowing who I am now that I’m not deforming myself to suit a couple of assholes, and on taking more risks in connecting with others (and surviving mistakes with same; I thank you all who’ve had patience with me these last few months). I’ve been working on my WIP and using it as therapy. I’ve been doing more things body- and health- and mental-wise to recover capabilities that I let slide while I was with the ex. And I’ve tried to keep connected to the larger world, caring about what happens and retaining hope.
I feel messy in a way that I don’t understand. It makes me intensely uncomfortable.–I just teared up when I wrote that.
I don’t know if the messiness serves the Things, or if it’s just a side product that will eventually settle down again. I don’t know whether I’m going to feel unsettled forever or if there’s a resting “state” that I’m supposed to be in. Probably not. Honestly, I just hope I get better at the mess.
I was working on the WIP last night, touched on something big, and abruptly got exhausted and went to bed. I think I had to process. I got up this morning and I knew another Thing I Needed to Do (something mostly unrelated to everything else I’m currently talking about). I don’t see how I’m going to be able to do it, but I’ll keep an eye out. Sometimes that happens: there’s no way to get there from here; it’s not even a matter of not being able to forge a path as it is to forge an internal change that solves the problem. Need to cross the Grand Canyon? Better get ready to grow wings; they fucking hurt, won’t work right, and will make you feel like a freak. Then they hang around until your feet take you back to the cliff you’ve been avoiding, and you’re like, “THE FUCK AM I JUMPING OFF THIS EDGE FOR?”
The Thing I Need to Do today–I think?–is to barf something up about insecurity versus vulnerability.
When you’re insecure, it’s like you’re constantly afraid of falling. You’re afraid of stumbling. You’re afraid of getting pushed. You’re afraid of the ledge–no matter how broad it is, it could be the entire state of Arizona and it wouldn’t matter–eroding out from under your feet. You see other people taking risks and go, “They’re insane” or “I admire how brave you are, but I could never do that” or “Where do you get all your ideas from?”
You have Things You Need to Do, and you don’t do them, because they make you vulnerable. When you’re insecure, vulnerability is awful, repugnant, disgusting, hurtful, admirable but foreign, too costly, going to hurt everyone around you somehow, cruel, jealousy-inducing, exhausting, hopeless, stupid, needy, an untruth that you tell others or that others tell you, inefficient, weak–I could just fill up pages of the word weak and not express how horrible weakness feels–weirdly perverse and stubborn, at times perverted, intrusive, dishonest yet brutally honest, rude, flawed, unworthy, out of reach, wise but disconnected, mystical, nonsense, bullshit, irrational, out-of-control. More things, too, I’m sure. Vulnerability feels like a complete fucking mess, from a position of insecurity.
So I’m writing last night, and my character Mr. Assassin is in the middle of getting ready to confront someone and finds out that stuff isn’t what it seems (which has been happening a lot in this book, go figure). He’s been the character who has the best gut instincts about tactics, but who also second-guesses himself the worst, and ends up doing things he hates because he can’t see solutions to the bigger problems he faces, and won’t trust anything he can’t anticipate and control.
Because things aren’t what they seem, he starts to get into his usual loop of questioning everything, including the people he cares most about. Then he catches himself mid-step and goes something like, “So what if they hurt me? If they need to betray me, they don’t even need to ask.” And then he keeps going but has to start masking so it looks like he’s less confident than he really is, because the bad guys are right there. His attitude changed internally just like *that.*
He has been secured. I know this; I wrote it. I wrote him insecure, then picked it apart, piece by piece. This is just him figuring out that the fear of getting screwed over by someone he trusts is less scary than the fear of–what?
I’m not sure, but it’s not fear of losing the people he cares about.
Earlier, he acknowledged to himself that he’d throw not only his life away, but the Goob’s, if it meant he could be *sure* that it would genuinely fix the problem. (It would be better to find a better solution with no sacrifices, but that’s where he was mentally at the moment.)
If it’s not fear of losing people, what is it?
Faith? Hope? Love? Those things? No, not those things either.–Here’s the Thing I Need to Do today, is answer this question. BUHHH. At least I figured out what it is, even if I can’t see the answer from here.
Okay, here’s a stab at it:
It feels like the word I want to use is “sacrament.”
It’s not that Mr. Assassin needs to be “securely attached” to the people he’s close to. He could move to Costa Rica and change his name and never speak to anyone he’s ever met again, and still be okay at this point. He’d be sad, but he’d never go back to the way he was before. Except maybe when he was tired and cranky, and then he’d be embarrassed about it later. It’s a thing centered in himself, not in his relationships per se.
–I know what it feels like in me, as I slowly come into it. It’s very much a gut thing, where I can go, “This person is acting weird; either they’ll tell me about it or they won’t, but I’ll hold space.” I find it much easier to be myself, moment by moment. I gush about more things (I’m gushy; that’s not new, I just hid it), I goof more often, I change my mind easier, I whine more and ask for more things without desperately needing people to do them for me. If that makes sense. I accept compliments and sympathy. I have better boundaries with people overall. When people disagree with me, I can go, “Okay, I’ll think about it” without feeling like I have to change my mind to preserve the relationship or situation.
It’s slow. I screw up. But overall, I see it happening and I like it.
Why do I want to call it a sacrament? I’m a recovering Catholic, Gen X, and have a weird sense of humor, so the answer “to get closer to God” popped into my head, followed by the Nine Inch Nails obligatory earworm.–But God is the wrong concept, too.
Ah. I feel like a piece of knitting that had a bunch of loose threads dangling all over, that people were yanking on to pull me this way or that. The things I thought I was doing to keep myself safe, were just ways to get used and hurt. I feel more interwoven with people now, but with different types of threads. MY threads have been safely tied off, for the most part, and the connections I have with others are extra, rather than something I need to pull out of my own fabric to sustain.
Okay, that’s a mixed metaphor for sure. A sacrament of threads.–I suspect that, being a social species, that humans can’t really do whatever it is alone. Also that it’s a process and we all get a bit frayed at times, and that there are always assholes who will pick out your threads, unravel you, and then sell you a solution that keeps you just stitched together enough to unravel profitably.
At the core, though, it feels right. There is something divine about it. If the people I care about need to hurt me, they don’t even need to ask. I’ll hold that space, as that space has been held for me, even if I won’t let them fray me out of fear that I’ll lose them if I don’t let them. I am *vulnerable* to them, not *insecure* about them. Most of the time.
Hm.
…
Ray and I went out to Fort DeSoto park. This is off the fishing pier. The grayish spot in the water is sardines, THOUSANDS of them! The guy filled a big cooler with just one net’s worth. I felt bad for the people trying to fish them by ones or twos, off fishing lines.
A Midjourney roll for “a sacrament of threads.” A work in progress.