The Feather and the Sledgehammer

 

Hello Invisible Audience,

 

I’ve been working a lot with my therapist on a skill set. Or rather, on my lack of a skill set that I wasn’t even really aware I was lacking.

 

She was the one who came up with the metaphor. It will comeas no surprise to those of you who have read my work for a while that Istruggle with saying what I want and need. In turn, this means that I struggle in relationships, because I find it so hard to 1) identify that I have a need in the first place and 2) say that need out loud. But my therapist pointed something out that has turned out to be an important first step toward untangling this block:

 

Do I even know how to ask for what I need?

 

I mean literally, in actual words. Words, and the energy behind them. She gave me an example once, talking about doing somatic body work on one of her patients. She told one patient that she could tell her to stop anytime. The patient said yes, of course. And my therapist said, “Let’s practice.” She put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. And even though the words were simple and small and do not seem like they would be as loaded as they were, even in a safe place with a woman she trusted, the patient could not say them. She could not say no; please stop; no more please.

 

The feather and the sledgehammer, my therapist said. It’s like there’s a whole array of tools available to me, but I’m only aware of the feather and sledgehammer. The feather so soft and light that it’s hard to tell what I’ve brushed away; the equivalent of speaking so softly about what I want that no one can hear it. The sledgehammer, large and unwieldy as you might expect, and it gets the job done but it obliterates everything in the process. Like screaming at someone to leave me the fuck alone and slamming the door on the way out.

 

There are all these tools in between, she said, but you don’t seem to know what they are. There are many ways to ask for what you want. We can practice.

 

I believe you, I said. But I can’t come up with any on my own, and when you give me some examples, they go in one ear and out the other.

 

It feels like we’ve been talking about this for months, Invisible Audience. And I’m slowly understanding what she means. Last week, I came to an interesting realization: any request I make for something feels like I’m using the sledgehammer. It feels like I am unlikely to get it; that the other person will register my words, look me in the eye and tell me to fuck right off and die. So I only ask for what I need when I’m emotionally prepared for a relationship to end. Sometimes I end the relationship at that point because I’ve let it go on too long, you see: I couldn’t ask for what I wanted, and the tension became so unbearable that I was ready for the relationship to be over and past the desire to try and salvage it.

 

My therapist has observed that I don’t seem to believe people in relationships can change; that someone can ask another person for what they want and get it. She’s right: at a very deep, visceral level—one that defies what I logically know—I don’t.

 

So I’ve been sitting with that for a long while. Sitting with how that leaves me on the outside of many relationships, because I don’t know how to stay in them; how to have healthy conflict; how to stay connected to myself when something comes up that creates stress or tension. But it goes even deeper than that, Invisible Audience. Because last week we talked about some of my past relationships, and I realized my own role in their endings: when I did try to state what I needed, I was using that sledgehammer to demand what I needed, but I was also expecting far too much. I wanted someone to save me, Invisible Audience, because I could not figure out how to save myself.

 

This is one of those places where I want to make it black and white. I want to know where the line is. Because the number of times that I have felt abandoned to shoulder all aspects of the very deep pain I have felt at various points in my life is beyond counting. But so is the number of times I’ve probably pushed the moment upon myself, by only having a feather and a sledgehammer at my disposal.

 

When we talk about scenarios when I could say what I want with curiosity and kindness, it still feels like a sledgehammer; that bringing up something like that will inevitably lead to rejection; to being completely and utterly alone. So I use a feather instead, and gently allude to the fact that I have a request. If no one picks up on the miniscule strokes I’m making on the project of getting my need met, I drop it. Then I feel abandoned; left alone to tell myself, “See? This is just the way it is. No one can give you what you need.”

 

I am tired, Invisible Audience. I am tired of everything feeling so hard. I am tired of being seen as strong and capable when I’d give nearly anything to be able to fall apart just a little bit. Most of all, I’m tired of being the one who keeps me here, in this place, with only the feather and the sledgehammer for company.

 

Love and feather light kisses,

Morgan