that's me in the corner!

June '24 Newsletter

I have not been posting at all. But today I am here. Returning.

I want to convey that a season of my life has ended and another has begun. For the last several months, it feels like these two seasons have been superimposed on one another and I have struggled to find my way in the transitional mess.

On one hand, I have felt a new life beginning, filled with purpose and awareness and an improvement of my circumstances. But not without a ton of hard work that has forced clarity.

That clarity has only come through seeing my old self and my old circumstances reflected to me in a very dark mirror. Many witches and pagans and other spiritual folks tend to call this the “shadow self” but the term was originally coined by Carl Jung to describe our most repressed and hidden parts of the self. The parts we judge and are ashamed of because they are in opposition to the persona we desire to wear in the world.

The “me” that has been worn in this world has been tied to outdated and harmful stories I tell about myself, and motivated by fears that I will never be good enough. Motivated by the fear that I MUST present something perfect to others at all times, but that even as I attempt to be perfect, you are staring down your nose at this screen and judging me inside and out. Seeing right through me.

It is the fear of being seen through that has made me curious in this new season.

Seen through to what?

That is where I thought I might find the most clarity - identifying exactly what the worst possible external judgments I could receive were:

• unreliable

• messy

• dishonest

• inconsistent

• lacking (money, purpose, direction, ability)

• ugly

• lazy

• selfish/self-absorbed

There are a lot of places I could have picked up these core self-judgments - and that’s exactly what they are, right? These sit in my core. They are fears of what might happen if I xyz. But they have no basis when I really look into them.

Do I struggle to post regularly? Of course… I see it in many creatives all around me. Periods of energy and creation as well as periods of utter destruction and stagnation. It is so common that they have words for it like “writer’s block” or “creative burnout” and all sorts of other things. I have resisted allowing myself the grace to name what I have experienced internally, and so I have historically gone with unreliable and inconsistent instead. Words that cut through and hurt for no real purpose.

I am not yet prepared to grapple with each of the negative bullet points I have listed above, but I know that they all reflect core wounds… and core beliefs about myself as a result.

On the flip side, I feel I have been on a wild goose chase. I have been chasing authenticity - something I built up in my head to be an exact moment of truthfulness from which we never return to descend into dishonesty ever again. But the real truth? I am a chronic people-pleaser and a perfectionist. My primary PTSD symptom is hypervigilance - if I can anticipate everyone’s needs and desires at every turn and meet them, then I will remain safe.

Even if meeting others’ needs means lying about my own. Lying about where I am emotionally to create comfort in uncomfortable spaces. Lying about what is and isn’t okay for me because I know it will make someone else happy or avoid confrontation.

And that… fucking sucks. It feels like an utter betrayal of everything I believe in.

But there lies the problem - I shrink under the gaze of others. And I have been praised for wearing falsehoods my entire life. It’s nobody’s fault - those praising me don’t know they are praising a mask curated specifically for them. I can’t blame myself for trying to survive with instincts left over from a volatile and truly horrific childhood. I can’t blame my parents for not being equipped to be parents. We all only operate with the best we have until we learn we can change. Until we cast the light of awareness onto everything around us and take stock of where we are and where we prefer to go from here. Then our best starts to look different.

No wonder identity has been so much of my artistic curiosity for all these years. When you shift your identity and code-switch for everyone all the time, you lose yourself.

I was so lost. So so lost.

I took months away repeatedly over the years to try and quiet the noise and find myself. I always felt like I succeeded. In the quiet. In my solitude.

And what happened when I returned to the gaze of others and found myself in the swirling noise and chaos again?

I kept that little piece of me I had found, forced it to stay tiny and small and quiet, and went back to trying to figure out what version of me would look best for others.

It’s very easy for me to strip away everything in solitude and be seen - REALLY seen - by myself.

But the problem hasn’t been my solitude. It has been my presence. That I need to find me even when I am IN the crowd, not just by myself.

I have always loved being alone. They say nobody knows how to be alone because loneliness is our biggest fear, but I find that interpretation to be horseshit, personally. It doesn’t account for someone like me.

I am more alone with others than I have ever been by myself. The sole reason is that I abandon myself in a room full of others.

I leave myself to sit in the corner and twiddle my fucking thumbs while I put on one of many curated personas because I am so embarrassed by that other person I had to bring with me.

That is what I have watched reflected to me over the last few months: shame.

Deep-seated. Mighty and vicious. All-consuming.

Shame. and shame. and more shame.

Frequently over the last few months, the real person inside of me, for which I hold all of this shame, has come forward to lash out. To say what I really mean, even if at inconvenient times. By inconvenient means. I am in awe of the ways she has completely set fire to others’ comfort (as well as my own) and brought something out of the ashes.

So I come to you in this newsletter with all of my shame front-facing. Because I love creating, but I can’t be any one thing all the time. I am still finding what works. I am still reorienting to purpose. To myself.

In a room full of people, I want the me in the corner somewhere to be a compass always pointing north. I keep moving towards her. Locking eyes with her across the room. She’s right there - a homing beacon pulsing ever so slightly.

The funny thing about it is nobody is actually paying attention to either of us anyway. She knows that, but I haven’t figured it out yet. I am too stuck worrying about what people think of me that I haven’t seen their eyes avoiding their own little disgusting selves they left in the corner too.

There’s no real end to this newsletter. I don’t have anything I intended to do here, except show up in all my shameful corner-person glory. And then maybe show up again. And again. Until I stop sitting in the corner all the time.

That’s how anything happens, right?

(also if you didn’t know the title was an R.E.M. reference, my god please go listen to them)

Hope you are all well. See you soon.

xoxo,

Lash

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