Encouraging Field Notes #3

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Who are you on the other side of realizing you should have done something differently? Whenever I feel caught (whether I’m “catching” myself or being “caught” by someone else) my knee jerk reaction is to hide in the corner of my mind where my ego lives. I feel small and get defensive. Over the years, I’ve learned that pausing does me better than any of the first words that I want to say or scream.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because I called myself out for the way I’d been moving through parts of my life. Instead of healing wounds or relationships, I was staying in the safe space that resentment and anger create for us. It’s like a small fortress that protects you from the hard memories or bad feelings, but also makes it impossible for anything good to enter. A lot of times when we’re living in that fortress we don’t need to be punished, we need to be encouraged and held.

If you’re in that fortress now, I know why you stayed even if I don’t know why you retreated in the first place. There’s a shit ton of coffee in the fortress. It keeps you stimulated and pissed. It allows you to feel anger, resentment, wronged, all in a vacuum. You don’t have to navigate other feelings because the solitude is emotionless. Only your feelings matter and they tend to eclipse. There’s a payoff to staying too, there always is. But, there’s also a debt you build and it’s worth its weight in stone. The longer you’re there, the heavier the weight sits on your shoulder and the darker the bags are under your eyes.

If you’re looking for your way out, the answer isn’t cutting caffeine cold turkey. The key that unlocks the door from the inside is using the momentum of that stimulation to push yourself past anger and towards other feelings. Most likely sadness and regret will come first, but then you’ll start simply acknowledging your humanity and that will shift things for you even more. Having a therapist helps, but isn’t an option for everyone. You can substitute an empathetic friend or a good journal, at least for the beginning. Committing these big feelings to your present moment help you contextualize them. It reminds you that you’ve kept growing, even in the fortress. You’re like those tightly packed washcloths that expand once you place them under the faucet of running water.

I’ll give you an example. At some point after my mom’s death, I built a fortress that held my anger for her never smiling in any of our pictures together except for one. I was probably five and she was all smiles as I pressed my cheek against hers. It’s my favorite picture of us because she looked happy to be my mom — it felt like the only picture I felt held that emotion. I recently added a picture on my desk of her and my brother, all smiles, and realized that in that picture, she’s my age. 28 years old with a 5 year old. Fast forward to her 30s, when most of our pictures were taken, and if I put myself in her shoes I’d probably have a hard time smiling too. She was the single mom of two kids by then — a kid and a preteen-teenager — and was working to support us and keep her life moving.

I unlocked the door and stepped out of the fortress because I stared at her in the polaroid with my brother long enough. I sidestepped the stories I’d invented about her and the version of myself that was 10 and ridden with grief. I started looking at her smile for what it was. A mom, at the beach, with her son, bare faced and present. I can imagine it was hard to feel as present when the cards felt stacked against her later in life.

Your fortress was maybe built over simpler or more complicated triggers. I don’t know. I do know that there are a range of feelings I wasn’t experiencing inside of it that I now feel overwhelmed by. It feels human and like I’m alive. That’s my payoff lately. The reason I walk out of the fortress — so I can be alive.