Breaking the Silence

“Hi Litty. I'm going to walk around the table now. Here I go. I’m coming toward you.”
“Hey there Litty. Nice to see you. I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“Hi Litty. Are you hungry? Here’s my hand. Don’t worry, I won’t come any closer.”

Litty is one of four cats I’m petsitting for the week. I was warned that it would take her awhile to warm up to me. Litty – Little One – was a rescue cat – rescued from two kids that were torturing her.

Litty came halfway down the stairs to stare at me while I was working at the dining room table. She was skittish and skeptical, and at first any movement I made was enough to make her bolt up back upstairs. Slowly she grew accustomed to me, moving out of the way when I came near, but only far enough that I couldn’t grab her if I tried. That was ok with me -- I've known enough cats to know not to try. The more I talked to her, though – the more I told her I was coming out of a room so I wouldn’t startle her, the more I started talking before I started moving – the more she relaxed.


 

I’m a lot like Litty, I think: I need someone to tell me they’re about to try to get close before they do, or I’m likely to bolt, expecting the worst.

Since I don’t need a babysitter, the real world version of this is a little different. I have learned through much trial and error that I stoke silence into a growing wildfire of dark thoughts, fears and rejections, and the easiest and best way out is to break the silence myself or ask someone to break it for me.

I have a friend who shows me in countless ways that he cares about me. I also know that he only checks his email once or twice a week. Remembering the ways he’s shown me I’m important to him feels about as easy as trying to grow a third arm when I’m waiting for a reply to an email whose contents make me feel vulnerable. Even when I’ve just forwarded him some benign piece of information, my mind is much more likely to leap to the most terrible option available instead of to what is most likely the truth: he hasn’t read the email yet.

The same woman I wrote about last week, Jeanne, pointed out to me that I need to hear it: I need people to tell me how they feel, because, well, because the words are important to me. I’m a writer, after all. Although I can say I write for a living, I actually call myself a writer because writing is where I turn for understanding and legitimizing my feelings: I write when I am happy, sad, afraid, vulnerable. Writing is where I go to feel more alive, and the words are what bring it about. Yes, recently I’ve found many holes in the language and I have been searching for a way to describe what does not exist in the words I have been taught, but I’d rather you bumbled the words and tried to say it loud than simply show me.

This is a new discovery for me, invisible audience, but an important one. Now I know that I need the words to feel safe, and that’s changed something: it means I can’t be silent anymore. Now, when I’m starting to feel skittish and like I want to bolt for the door, I gather my courage and say, “What do you think about this?” OUT LOUD to the other person. And where before I always feared the rejection in their answer, now I am finding sweet relief in hearing the silence be broken, regardless of what words they use to break it. By breaking my own silence, I have managed to ask others to break theirs around me, and I’m finding that the sound of their voices, regardless of message, was all I needed.

Love and broken silence kisses
Morgan

I Give Up.

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I give up.

I say it in my head a lot. When I’m shaky, exhausted, owing things to people or to myself, I let myself think it. Riding on the tail end of that thought is always another one: you can’t give up.

Let me clear: I’m not talking about ending it all; about pouring my blood out onto the floor, or swallowing something to make all the hurt and the pain go away. When I say I want to give up, what I mean is that there’s a deep, dark part of me that wants to just fucking let go – to say screw it to all I understand to be right, good and moral in the world, pick it up like a piece of electronics, smash it on the floor multiple times until both the tile and the apparatus are no longer recognizable, and then heave it out the window in a fit of rage.

I want to give up. I want to give up the socialization of my gender, of my age, of my role, of my humanity. I’m tired of being told why I’m the way I am by people who can’t hear what’s racing through my head; who have no idea that I have not just taken their words to heart, but swallowed them into the nuclei of all my cells, where they have multiplied like poison into my innards, soaking their way through my flesh.

I can name them like dark eyes in the night, peering at me from the darkness, waiting for my guard to be down so they can run at me full-tilt and tear out my throat, destroy my peace of mind and feast on my very self. They are the rules that I have tried to push away from: the ideas that you must be either mother or career woman; busy or lazy, driven or a failure. I want to chase after them with my sword and my warrior war cry, but the minute I get away from the shelter of my own sanity and run out into the dark after them, their eyes wink into blackness and there is nothing where they once stood, as if I was imagining their stench; their laughter, their very existence.

I want to give up. I want to rip away the fabric of what I have learned and discover what’s underneath. I want to stop taking it for granted that bloodletting kills the infection, and see what feeding the flesh does instead. I want to find the brave, courageous part of me that stands wide-legged with her sword and yells, “Who fucking SAYS that’s the only way to do it? I want you to bring them to me,” and waits, patiently, smirking, as no one is brought forward.

I want to give up. I want to stop gnashing my teeth and wailing that it’s not fair, that I don’t want to do it anymore, that if only someone would listen to me they’d see that I’m not crazy; that world can, in fact, be different than what we are taught that it is. I want to give up needing someone else to tell me I’m right, and just know that I am – know that I know what’s best for me, and if that is threatening to someone else, that actually has nothing to do with me at all.

I want to give up, and I think I’m almost there. Knowing is half the battle, after all, and now I know what it is I want to step out of. I know what expectations I will no longer buy into. I know what ideas I’m casting aside. I am tearing at the scab and willing to see the blood welling up underneath it. I am ok with sporting a scar, if it is one I can show with pride as I say, “See this? This was a battle won. This was a messy yet successful escape. Without this scar, there would not be me…the me I am today, the one that finally gave up.”

Love and given up kisses

Morgan

The Turtle: Coming Out of My Shell

Judith Grob in the Turtle Pose. Read Judith's blog here.

About five years ago, a friend of mine’s mom gave me a necklace. It’s a carved woman, naked, with a turtle shell on her back. She is the woman who carries her home with her, and Jane gave her to me because I am her: I move around often, and I can feel at home wherever I am.
I have always identified with the turtle, although the extent of which I did so has been lost to me until recently. Before, I would have said that I identified with her because she carries her home with her; because she likes water, and because she has the ability to find safety inside herself, despite what is happening in the world around her.
Last summer at Yasodhara Ashram, someone showed us the turtle pose in a Hatha yoga class. I don’t remember who the first instructor was, but I do remember when Judith showed it to us again, because she could get into the FULL turtle pose, with her arms under her legs and back behind her on her butt. I was impressed and wowed, and even if I could never get into FULL turtle, simply wrapping my arms under my legs and around my ankles and breathing into the shell I created with my body was soothing…and also made me cry.
One of the first legends I ever heard was the one of the turtle creating the world by bringing sand up from the bottom of the ocean. She can dive deeply, hold her breath, and find herself and the answers in the underworld. She is unafraid of the dark, and capable of covering long distances with a slow and steady yet constant pace. She is wise, older than time, and manages to survive despite lack of speed or defenses that will not hurt others, and consist of simply hiding herself without having to go anywhere to do so.
These are the good parts of the turtle; the safety of eons of slow forward motion; self-defense without attacking others, and the ability to dive deep. Just as important, however, is the shadow side of the turtle, which I have only recently realized I also identify with.
The shadow side of the turtle hides when things get tough. She goes mute and can do nothing more than keep her limbs in as she is skittered along on her back by forces greater than herself. Her strength is not in lashing out when needed, but in staying in her shell until the coast is clear.
The coast is never clear.
I love feeling at home wherever I am, and yet I am ready to pick up another totem or animal to identify with. I want something loud and raucous this time, with the ability to reach outside itself for affection, and also to bite, HARD, or claw, or otherwise use tooth and nail to protect my niche, instead of being forced within myself until the predator loses strength or interest and wanders away. It is not that I am forsaking the turtle that has, until now, taught me how to survive with the resources I have had available. It is simply that now there are MORE resources outside of simple patience, slow forward motion and a shell to hide in. Now, it’s time for me to take wing, bare my claws if needed, but also find a different view besides the plodding one I have had until now: the one where only what I can see from the ground is available to me; where my only defense is to hide, instead of to shine.

Love and out of my shell kisses,
Morgan