confessional #1: summer ruminating
shame & self criticism: the devastating effects of a new year, same me
noun: confessional
an enclosed stall in a church divided by a screen or curtain in which a priest sits to hear confessions. "the secrets of the confessional"
an acknowledgment that one has done something shameful or embarrassing; a confession. "tabloid confessionals"
a series of thoughts & feelings caught in my body, that need to be released
jan 2023
It’s been a summer of nightmares. Ones that I try to analyze in the morning. Waking up with a headache because of all my teeth clenching. A summer of trying to find balance, getting close, and falling once again. Of wanting more than what I have. Of not being able to turn off the obsessive monologuing in my own head.
Last new years eve, I was upset that I couldn’t feel that a year had passed. I was deep in dissociation. The year was so intense, like a slow unfolding car crash. It felt like I was living alone in outer space. Like I would be forever. There is such pain in that kind of isolation. Seeing the people I loved right in front of me but not being able to feel it. When you lose your life and yourself like that, it’s hard to find much hope to hold on to.
Much to my surprise, NYE 2022 came and I knew for once that time had gone on. Recentering my focus on rest in late 2021 created a lot of room in my life. I’d had enough of my exhaustion and wanted to try to get my feet on the ground. No longer working, all there was therapy, art, and friends. All I have ever needed. Things moved slowly. Not because I was counting away each minute, but because I could feel them. I’d felt each month in my body and watched each season. I clawed my way back through galaxies and black holes. Was able to say I was here.
I fell willingly into Jan 1st, 2023. I felt full of love, joy, and gratitude. For a fleeting 24 hrs, it felt like everything would be okay. But the clock ticked on. The days started to roll in, and the pressure of this year started to rise.
Who are you, and who do you want to be? That is what our resolutions and dreams are made of. A fresh start always feels tempting. It can be such a relief. I often am quick to dive into setting plans and clean slates. But this year I’ve felt completely frozen. Everything good feels out of reach. All goals fill me with apathy. I don’t know what will take me forward, or where I am at all.
I’m afraid of what is next. Afraid of being hopeful. It feels like I’m heading toward a season finale in my own life. I want to put it all off for as long as possible. I am just so exhausted. Tired of making choices, looking after myself, and fighting so hard to be different. Better. When I was a teenager, it felt like my life would stay the same forever. Now every single day something changes. There’s never any time to get ready. It all just goes by so fast.
At this time of year, it’s hard to not build up conspiracies that everyone you know is a careers counselor in disguise. It feels like the whole world wants to know what is next for me. What I’m looking forward to. What I’m hopeful about. They’re incredibly caring questions, but it makes me feel like I’m wrapped in barbed wire. Like when you finish uni or a job and your potential future is all anyone will talk to you about.
There’s nothing worse than not knowing the answer.
Like every anxious person, my list of worries is a long one. Lately, I’ve been worrying about my brain. I’m focused on how my pre-frontal cortex may be done maturing. What if I’ve grown it wrong somehow and I’m not able to flip it out of shape? My personality now could be my personality forever. I don’t know if I like the one I’ve got now enough to keep it. I’m constantly seeking clues from myself and the people around me on what parts of me are good and what are bad. 99.999% of my thinking revolves around this. Finding and fixing. Correcting. Again and again.
It makes me measure everything I do. Gives me the need to constantly check my own intentions. How do you know if you’re an okay person if you don’t check? It always becomes obsessive and hyper-critical. Am I doing this because I want to or because I think it will make me more interesting or loveable? Am I doing this because secretly I am a Bad Person and just want people to think I’m Good? Because really I’m evil? I'm deeply suspicious of myself. As if I committed a really serious horrible crime and forgot about it. As if, I am a monster in disguise, even to myself. I check under my own bed.
Zeroing in on my faults and trying to erase them seems like the only way I could ever really feel loved. If I improve myself enough, I could finally believe that I’m worthy. Of course, I’m not there yet. I have a basic understanding in my mind and body that I deserve love, as I am. Even though that feels so silly to write. But I don’t quite trust that people have taken me in properly. I get concerned everyone is missing something horrifying about me. And that once they find it they will not only leave but tell everyone else who thinks they love me. And also probably post about it on the internet.
I have thoughts that writing that down is just a plea for attention, and for people to tell me I’m not bad. Even if Taylor Swift herself sat me down and told me I’m okay, I wouldn't believe it. Every good word feels forced. Like somehow I’ve tricked people into believing it. When people are good to me, I think it’s an accident. A misunderstanding. I patiently wait for hate inevitably to boil in the people around me. Wait to be exposed.
I think of being a teen and all the angsty things I wrote, said, or did then. Most of that stuff, if I do cringe about it now, it feels gentle and compassionate. It doesn’t have to represent who I am now and no one expects it to. Everything I’ve done as an adult I feel is some sort of thesis statement on who I am or who I want to be. Like a self-portrait or sentencing. Every awkward conversation, inconsiderate ask, or rude assumption, then feels like it’ll follow me forever. Stains I’ll never get out. Any wins feel like a fluke, undeserved, and completely unlasting.
As my body and brain are nearly done growing, I feel the need to reach an impossible state of completeness. of certainty. wholeness. All my friends seem so much more solid than me. Even the ones that are younger. They feel like real people. Full people. Grown-up. Who know what they want. Who they are. Where they are going. I know they may not feel this themselves of course, but the grass is always greener on the other side. Comparison is such an instant killer, but it begins to feel like a survival mechanism. A necessary metric to find who we are, and who we are not.
I want to ask people how they knew when they had found themselves. If there is such a thing. To know you’re done cooking, and will just keep living as you are. You’ve settled into yourself. No more cicada shells lying around. The idea of being in constant metamorphosis exhausts me. When will it end??? My life started over 8,968 days ago, but I don’t feel like I’ve even cracked the surface of being alive or being a person. I still don’t feel like myself. Don’t feel certain.
I worry about what I say, write, and post. What art I like, what I wear. What I put my name to, and what I should or shouldn’t do. It feels like there are so many ways to do it wrong, to be wrong & I want to avoid all of them. “You don’t understand, I can’t do another thing wrong” weeps Anna Kendrick’s character in Alice Darling (2023). I already feel so awry that any tiny mistake sends me off the edge. It has since I was a kid. Forever trying to find the correct and holy path often stops me from doing much at all. I freeze, every damn time.
I wish to have patience and understanding that, of course, I’ll do things now that I don’t like in 2 or 10 years. But part of me is afraid of relieving the past. Ending up full of shame similar to what I feel now when I look at my early 20s. I’ve been working hard to make peace with that version of myself, and find compassion for all the pain I was feeling. But in my darker days, the fear seeps back in. I get so afraid of myself. Of who I’ve been. Of who I could still become.
I still can’t look at pictures of myself from 19-22. Can’t read my poetry, journals, or social media posts. Can only think or talk about it for so long. I feel embarrassed when I run into people who knew me then. I feel like I have to hate that version of me, to make up for the painful, silly, stupid things I did. I decide to agree with everyone who’s ever rejected me. I reject myself entirely. Like it’s the only way I can hold peace with who I am now. To show I have Grown. The only way to be clean.
Part of me thinks that if I say on guard I can protect myself from horrors I have already experienced. Both from the poor actions I’ve taken and the harm done to me. By overcorrecting myself every second of the day I’m trying to cease fallouts in the future. Be so agreeable no one would want to leave me. Be so passive there’s nothing to argue with. Be everyone’s friend but my own. By trying to make myself un-hateable, so right, I make myself a blank slate. So I wonder in doing this, what’s there left to love?
In one of my recent dreams, I am in a doctor's office. I think it's after-hours Newtown, where I went a lot as a child. A man is in front of me. He talks about how I need to be punished because I don’t have enough shame for what I’ve done. That I need treatment or something. I know immediately that this is wrong and upsetting. He starts to move towards me. I’m afraid. I start punching outwards again and again. I use so much force that I woke up, fists in the air above me.
I’m glad my subconscious is starting to fight back against things I struggle to wrestle with while I’m awake.
music: comfort song rn, got me through the impossibly hard but final week of jan (the whole breathing song/honey album has kept me company while writing this ♡)
reading: I feel like after writing this I probably need to read The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, but for the time being I’m reading a novel called The Pieces by Melissa Broder
tv: girls and love island, what else is there
"I still can’t look at pictures of myself from 19-22. Can’t read my poetry, journals, or social media posts. Can only think or talk about it for so long. I feel embarrassed when I run into people who knew me then. I feel like I have to hate that version of me, to make up for the painful, silly, stupid things I did."
Whoosh. Feel that. Great newsletter, Kate. You are such a gem.