This Week’s Reflections

National Geographic, October 1972

ph. Robert W. Madden

Three Reflections From My Past Week: In Chronological Order

1. I give my power away to others in my moments of vulnerability. I am often searching for approval and validation. This is what it feels like: I pool my worth into my cupped hands, kneel on the ground before you, raise my arms and look to the floor. The specifics of what brought me to this position do not matter because the pleading baseline is always the same. I am a person. I may different than you thought. I have peculiarities and specificities. Do you see me? Will you be kind? In these moments, I feel on the brink of erasure. With a word, a gesture, a facial expression from whom I kneel before, all or part of me could crumble. Some of these moments I am still recovering from.

My terror of disapproval and invalidity has fractured me into multiple selves. On the outside, I present in a way that hardly - outside of my therapist’s room - leaves me in a position on my knees. My hands are not cupped. I sit on them to make sure. Inside of me, there are so many parts unexpressed. I feel unknown, genuinely unknown. I feel like a lonely liar.

What does it look like to live an integrated life? How can I share myself without needing others to validate me? Can I be vulnerable without needing approval?

There have been people who I have knelt in front of, and instead of taking what’s in my hands for themselves, they hook their arms beneath my armpits and lift me to eye level. Then look at my pooled worth with recognition and say That’s yours. I have my own. They smile in a way that leaves me crying. When someone sees me, it is like all the gods have come to press their lips to my brow. I am human. I am good. I am here and safe.

2. I protect others (often men) from facing the impacts their actions and words have on me. On Halloween, my grandpa told me not to eat too much candy because I was finally skinny and I didn’t want to gain it back. I told him don’t comment on my weight but my face was getting hot. I said I’m going to eat all this candy just to spite you, but then I didn’t want to eat anything in front of his watchful eyes. I have been nervous about gaining weight since I moved home. His words were all I needed to confirm that my fear was warranted.

Almost immediately, I began to feel guilty, nervous that I had made him experience his own guilt or shame. As the night went on, I avoided telling the story in front of certain people in order to save him from their judgement.

This habit of protecting the men in my life from the judgement of others and from having to take accountability is a through line. I do it with my dad. He has been dead for nearly three years, and the habit has only grown stronger. Aside from making myself the butt of a joke, I don’t speak of his abuse with anyone but my therapist. As if in his death, he has grown more fragile and I need to protect him even more.

There is a multitude of reasons why I struggle to hold men accountable. These reasons overlap and intermix. To name a few, there are the ingrained patriarchal lenses, past abuse patterns, my own shame, as well as the desire for my own privacy. For all those reasons, I am scared of being the person that casts the spotlight on how these men have caused harm and violence to the women and children in their lives. I do not want to want to walk with them down the road that will lead them to what is surely their own insecurity and shame. I have known for a long time that there is a threat of violence (physical, emotional, sexual) when men are taken to their shame and do not have the tools to deal with it. Often, women and children are hurt in the spiral that ensues. Historically, I have felt so guilty in these moments of accountability that I tell the men it’s okay. Yeah, I love you, too.

I no longer want to be in the business of protecting men from their impact on me. I don’t know what that may look like, but I’m working on it.

3. I do not always want the best for the people I care about. At least, there is a part of me that does not. I woke up to a text from a friend from Utah telling me that the cute neighbor has a crush on her. I am in Minnesota without a plan to return to Utah and I still was filled with disappointment. I don’t even know him as a person, but it felt like another failure. Envy was my first emotion. Some part of me feels betrayed - or possibly, definitely embarrassed - that life is continuing in Moab for her and it is continuing in a way that I had wanted for myself. I was nervous she could tell my enthusiasm on the text back was forced. I was nervous she could tell I am a shitty friend for it.

I have dreamt of Moab almost every night since she texted me that. I want her to move home to Tennessee and stay there. Another friend living in Utah, one who was maybe going to move somewhere new, told me that she’s planning on staying, and the same feeling washed over me when I read her text. I want her to leave Moab, too. I feel a sense of jealousy knowing that life there is continuing on without me. That I am left out. Missing out. If I can’t be there to enjoy it, I don’t want anyone else to either.

I have been content to be home this week. Genuinely, I have felt a sense of this feels right. Being home feels good right now. I have been relatively happy. Stable is good word for it. And still, there is this nagging desire for all of Moab to pause until I someday return. A nagging desire for everyone to notice my absence. The part of me that is jealous of my friends back in that desert town is intertwined with the part of me that believes nothing worthwhile happens at home. They make a fierce duo. It is an odd juxtaposition to feel the desire to stay here and to hear their voices that try to convince me to leave.

I am not a shitty friend. I know that. I do want the best for everyone I know and all those that I don’t. But there are parts of me that do not always hold that same sentiment. Is that normal? Sometimes I wonder if I could be a narcissist.