Here I am again, random, as always with a topic that falls from out of the blue. I’ve had a week off from work and instead of going places like originally planned, I stayed home. This was no lazy week off. I have been cleaning out my house of the remnants of my toxic boyfriend. I have been cleaning out my soul. Personally, I am still reeling from the Philadelphia trip and it is hard for me to shake the feeling that even when I thought I was being still enough to unpack my lifelong luggage, I was still running. I am definitely afraid of the ugly I will find and have to claim with a flag of my country. No one wants ugly.
I took the rare Sunday off to take my son to the Ithaca Market. When I had weekends off we would go all the time. It was a nice little trip to share coffee and a pastry, conversation, and sometimes a walk. We’d soak up the sights and smells of an open air market and feel good about life for a little while. Our usual bakery wasn’t there and it gave me a little panic because things would not be “like they always are”. I scoured the market three times for them each time hoping they would appear until Kai pointed out that a place we passed three times had perfectly beautiful pastry. This meant I had to step out of my comfort and try something new. I’m not opposed to this concept at all because I love new things, but I had been testing my mettle all week and looked forward to the comfort of sameness. The pastry was delightful. The time was not spoiled.
We went to the Commons and walked around. It was hot and we were overdressed with the hope of fall. We were sweaty and getting cranky. We stopped in the DeWitt Mall because Kai wanted to go to the guitar shop. He is dropping chorus this year in favor of guitar lessons. He wanted an instruction booklet to help him along at home. I picked up one for my Ukulele that sits sad and underplayed. I took a cue from his playbook. I need to dust off my life and make time for all things. We stopped in the Buffalo Street Books. I don’t go there often and I’m not sure why. It’s a very lovely shop. I also have been trying to not buy too many books since I have shelves of unread wonders already.
A book immediately caught my eye: “The Body is Not An Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s colorful and flashy but something in me made me tiptoe to reach it from the top shelf. I opened it and saw things in myself that made me cringe and I put it back on the shelf. I walked around looking at other things. I found a pencil sharpener for my specific pencils I found in Philadelphia. I found a poetry book. And then, I was standing in front of this book again with a feeling of dread and panic. Then I was at the register buying it.
In the quiet of my house, I read the prologue and sobbed. Do you know that kind of sorrow that is mixed with the realization that you have been so cruel to yourself for a lifetime? Yes, it was that sort of sobbing. I recognized myself. I had forgotten what I looked like underneath the shame.
I’m in chapter one and Sonya professes that she is not going to fix my problems with self-esteem or self-assurance, but she is waking me up to myself. She calls it radical self-love and maybe this is what I need after 40 years of putting myself down, hiding who I am, being something for someone else, harboring abuses not meant for me, and being quiet when inside there was screaming. There are “Unapologetic Inquiry” bubbles in this book. Questions to be answered honestly without worry of shame. Normally, I would keep such things to myself, but I feel like this process needs a wider opening. My average post gets 30-40 visits. That is wide enough. So without further ado, here is Unapologetic Inquiry #1:
“We all live in multiple intersections of identity. What are your intersections? How do your multiple identities affect each other?”
I am a middle aged white woman, divorced, and single. I am a product of childhood trauma. I am a mother of a transgender son. I am an emergency room nurse, an artist, a writer, and a Buddhist. I do all these things living with a thyroid and an ovarian condition, arthritis, depression, anxiety, and adult onset ADD.
The childhood trauma informs all my other identity intersections. It was the base of my life. It was how I learned to do everything. It steered me to choose a career that is filled with trauma everyday from strangers. These traumas change the way I look at the world as an artist and a writer. These traumas give me something to meditate over. The combination of my health issues help me with my self shame for being overweight. There are wheels that spin so fast I can’t get off without feeling like it will send me into a depression, so, I stay on the wheel. The childhood trauma made me strong and allowed me to stay alive and achieve, but it made me go about it in the wrong way. I have achieved goals without letting people in my life, without sharing the best parts of me because I don’t trust them to not break them and walk away.
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In the last month, I have started to see how these intersections behave with each other and this might be the key to recovery if I can be brave enough to keep looking. I am not going to profess that I will be any less random on this blog, but my hope is to share these Unapologetic Inquiries in case you can’t find the book or you don’t have access to it. Ask yourself the same questions and see what comes up. I’m tired of living in a world that is defined by others who don’t know me or care about me, and who think I should look, act, feel like something that pleases them. I’m not sure how many years I have left in the world, but I would like to know at least some of the time I staked claim to them.
Thanks for reading. This was a long one. Be Kind. Love each other.
Aleathia
