Here is a mystery to me, but I know it happens. (It happened to me! Just this Friday evening actually! I was doing a word puzzle, jazz on the speakers, rain pelting the windows, hot toddy in my hands, Friday night chill out.) This is the mystery- to understand how someone I love deeply and trusted had, the week before, cheerfully sat around a bonfire, delivering unfounded lies about me! And that people believed those lies and all of them smiling to me the next day with side hugs, how are yous? and we love yous!
And not one stopping to ask “Is this true?”. The only reason I know is that one person text me to tell me to stop doing what it was said that I doing ( and actually I wasn’t since the whole story is a fabrication).1
I’m not sure why, but I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t really slept since I heard this. I think it’s because I want to be one of those stoics who just doesn’t care; I pretended to be one for years, it was the safest way to survive my childhood. I don’t think I really want to be a stoic, I think I’m just sad and it’s been the hardest year and I’m tired of feeling so much pain.
I’m done with staying silent, making nice, having so many regrets because I just didn’t make the call to clear things up or show up at the door to say “We’ve got to talk”. And when I think about my writing voice, I feel the same. I’m going to start getting a lot more honest about what it was like to grow up cult adjacent, in a family with constant competition “who deserves to grieve more!”, ready to cannibalize character as soon as someone leaves the room. I've sugar coated experiences, laughing off trauma because I can spin a funny story. I’ve lived a life revolved around not wanting to upset people (That is the cardinal sin, right? “Thou shalt not speak thine mind in case someone doesn’t like it”.) But this weekend reminded me that it doesn’t matter what I say—I am so out of control of what people think, and that it is such a gross overreach on my part to think that I can “make” people think a certain way. Harkens back to a cult like childhood.
So on Saturday, while I was driving around for work, my heart broken, I had flashes of lightness as I started to imagine what a life of freedom would look like. (Jason Drees would call this frame shifting.2)
And maybe, being honest will inspire someone else to step into their own freedom.3
I’m not doing the old school Facebook vaguebook here, it’s just that the details don’t matter for the purposes of this little piece.
https://store.biggerpockets.com/products/do-the-impossible I bought this book off of and Instagram ad on a whim back in May. Its has been one the most life changing books I’ve ever read. After Zach died, all personal development, positive thinking, manifest your best life became complete bullshit to me— I felt like I lost a religion. This book is none of that.
Also, God bless my husband who’s stood by me for this chaos for nearly two decades, and especially this last terrible year. He is the most loyal and sincere person I’ve ever met and when my pain is hard, I cling to his steadiness.