Reflecting on a song by Orla Gartland, how the only way forward is through (not around), and the concept of grief titration.
Dearest Doodle Soupsters,
I’m listening to a song called “Mine” by Orla Gartland. The lyrics go like this -
You're just a boy
And I've heard about boys
Yeah, you take what you want and you leave us in pieces
I was an optimist
He said it seemed like I wanted it
Oh, ever since then it's felt like a weakness
Now it's not easy to do
It's taken me twenty-eight years
To let anyone touch me the way I let you
Kiss me slowly but not so gently
Oh, whisper a word in my ear like a secret
Melted like butter
Always the fucked and never the fucker
Rewrite the rules and start from scratch again
I still remember the time
You look me dead in the eyes
And I realized that my body was mine, mine
Her voice is haunting and pure. As each word travels through me, I can sense the heaviness, the darkness, the pain and confusion I know all too well.
Aren’t I still learning that my body is mine? That my life is my own?
Sometimes, I wish there was some switch I could flip and I’d just be automatically unaffected. I’d believe myself without so much effort and internal conflict. I’d know that I deserve to simply live, that I don’t have to earn my own existence.
It doesn’t work that way, I know.
Oh, ever since then it's felt like a weakness
Now it's not easy to do … I know.
I still want to prove how strong I am. I still want to prove that I don’t need anyone’s help. I still want to prove that no one can hurt me.
And how do I prove that?
Why do I want to prove anything, any of this? What is this obsession with the appearance of strength? Don’t we all know, deep down anyway, that trying to be a statue of a human instead of a real one in the flesh, flawed and aching, is a fool’s errand and not really strength at all? What is the difference between posturing and holding your head tall? What is the difference between being strong and shutting down?
How can it be that I am still so scared? And I ask this question because I don’t want to ask the other one which is, what am I really feeling right now? What am I grieving?
Dr. Ingrid Clayton asks, “Is it self-sabotage or grief titration?” She writes:
You know how sometimes you do like 70% of something that’s good for you? You never quite do the full shebang and wonder, “why don’t I just take care of myself?!”
Then you beat yourself up – calling it self-sabotage.
I have another idea. What if taking care of yourself – like really doing it – was the portal to feeling the contrast to what you never got growing up. What if feeling the structure, love, goodness, capacity you want to give yourself today, makes you FEEL the lack of it before?
In truth, this is an aspect of healing from trauma. We have to feeeeeel the depth of what we didn’t previously get. And knowing the contrast, experientially, is one surefire way to get there. OUCH.
It makes sense that we don’t want to widen that gap too much – we want to subconsciously normalize not quite having enough. I think this is a much kinder reframe on the self-sabotage idea. We aren’t self-sabotaging – we are stepping into greater capacity over time, at a pace we can tolerate – because this $&*t is HARD and it hurts.
Eventually, we go there and find that it’s worth it. But in the meantime, let that shame go my friends.
This explanation helped me a lot. I think terms like self-sabotaging (or self-loathing thoughts) feel almost comforting because they play into the familiarity of blaming myself instead of dealing with the grief and letting myself feel the pain of being hurt by others.
It’s also a way of avoiding the facts of what really happened and the dealing with the complexity of the facts of the present: that I’m in control now AND the ripple effects of the past take a lot of time and effort to sort through AND that has a real and big impact on me now AND that makes me feel scared like I haven’t fully gotten away from the control, danger, harm, etc. AND it’s just unfair and painful in general to accept … in other words, self-blame/hate is a way of avoiding that pain but also the complexity and confusion embedding in acknowledging the truth.
I want to skip over this part, but there is no skipping over … only going through.
I want to run ahead so far and fast that I don’t notice my feet are calloused, blistered, and bleeding, but there is nowhere to run except in circles … because the path ahead requires me to treat my body gently, with care.
I want to harden my skin until I am made of stone or steel so I don’t have to feel this, but I know that I won’t and I can’t because I am human and inside somewhere, I can still hear my soul whispering, Sweet child of the universe, let it out, let it be what it is, your fear is natural and so are your tears, feel your grief and it won’t kill you, I promise.
And the more I draw, the more I sing, the more I write, the more I let others hold me through this, the more I recall that there is no escaping this pain.
There is only feeling it, slowly, gently, distracting from it now and then, because as I let myself experience structure, love, goodness, capacity, and as I let myself feel the corresponding grief, I inch forward into knowing what part of me also already knows: My body is mine. My life is my own.
Slowly, gently,
Nicole Sylvia Javorsky