A reaction to a stupid video posted on my wife’s Facebook page

I feel it rising up through my body– anger, heat, the desire for destruction.  I hear all the words I’ve been told I embody.  A trigger pulled, a quick reaction impossible to slow.  Here is what I am:

i am dark
i am dirty
i am stupid
ignorant
ugly
smelly
just a girl
perverted
an abomination
can’t take a joke
small
quiet
plain
boring
no personality
whiny
annoying
no fun
unsuccessful
unfocused
messy
undisciplined
take things too seriously

I am going to stop with this list.  I must.  I must stem the tide of abhorrence I’ve been handed over the years… abhorrence for someone like me.  Where is my protector?  I am she.  I stem the tide.  I reverse it.  I will teach myself new words that come more slowly than the words on this list.  There is not yet a quick + easy delivery of words that embody beauty + love.  But they will come… I can feel them bubbling up to block the painful, disorienting heat coursing through my over-reactive veins.  They come to fight, to feel, to slaughter.  This work is messy.  It feels heavy.  But it fuels the creation of a new life.

Hi, I’m back.

My tongue is still, my fingers do not type

Lots of thoughts, feelings, happenings… but not feeling equipped to distill into any posts here.  All is well.  Mostly exquisite, with some pinpricks of newness, change, settling in, uncomfortability.  More waking up, more evolution.

But summer!  Ahh, summer.  I live for this.

A move to banish perfectionism

I’ve begun and then abandoned dozens of posts here (and in the shower, and on the train… ).  Which causes me to feel pretty fucking pathetic.  Also on that list of pathetic?

I am not a perfect woman, mother, lover, friend, sister, daughter, neighbor, ex, writer, employee, human, random passer-by.  I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up.  And I didn’t realize I shouldn’t have gotten married to a man until it was much too late.*

*Except then I wouldn’t have my growing toolkit of relationship skills, accumulated while living with + loving someone who never quite fit with me.  Always searching for my heart’s balm; convinced it was out there.  And I wouldn’t be acquainted my amazing daughter, who has grown + stretched every part of me (heh) beyond all my imaginings.  And I wouldn’t be where I am right now; right in this spot.  Because even though it’s an uncomfortable spot, I am pretty god-blam sure it’s where I’m supposed to be at the moment.

Back to the point that I wanted to make:  I haven’t been putting my thoughts out into the world because they weren’t perfect enough.  Which I know in my head is ridiculous.  (What is perfect?  Would I even want perfect?  No, thank you.)

So I will attempt to release my addiction to perfectionism + just spew forth the perfectly imperfect.

For more excellent thoughts on perfectionism, shame, ordinariness, earning approval + acceptance, and vulnerability, please see this awesome TED Talk by Brene Brown.  And/or this short interview with her on HuffPo.