Were you waiting to see where I opened up today? Or maybe that was yesterday. I fell off the wagon from the posting perspective. I was exhausted and had to take a beat. Anyway, here I am. Happy Saturday.
Where was I? Cheating? Mayhem? Swinging? Sky is the limit, right? Just kidding. Sorry I couldn’t help myself.
Maybe you feel like I’ve taken you down a rabbit hole and you aren’t sure how we got to this place and you need me to make things make sense. I’m here for that. I admit that there are times that I run through a full story or post in my head and it makes perfect sense there and then I lay it on paper and things suddenly feel wonky.
I want to tell you a story. I want to explain by sharing something deeply painful and incredibly personal. I think it makes sense to start there because everything I write comes from within me. I write about what moves me and motivates me and impacts me, and the ones I love.
It was about six years ago and I was clipping into a spin bike at a gym around the corner from my then boyfriend’s apartment. The room was only half lit and freezing cold. The heat hadn’t fully circulated yet because the gym had only been open for a half hour or so.
When I close my eyes, I can smell the room, feel my body in that space, and experience the feelings and thoughts I had in those moments. It is clear as day. The room smelled like industrial cleaner, deodorant, dirty socks and metal. I run warm typically, but I felt chilly in the space and had my long-sleeved top pulled over my fingers. I was gripping the extra fabric into my palm. I was sore from too much exercise and too little stretching and even less sleep. My eyes were burning, and my hair was already slipping out of the bun I had haphazardly created with my fingers and my curls, with no hair band in sight.
I had been going to that spin class, that very one, for a few years by that time, but there was something still intimidating about the process of walking in and settling into my bike. I always chose the stationary bikes because no matter how hard I tried; I couldn’t seem to master the ones that moved underneath you. There’s some message there, some tale, but I don’t feel enticed to explore that in any serious way. You know, like I seem to prefer the earth solid and stable beneath me whilst craving something more.
I was clipped in and cyclists were milling into the room and filling in the empty bike seats surrounding me. I was mildly conscious of their presence, but then also, not. My brain and heart were still deeply tied to the evening before, where I tried, yet again, to win my boyfriend’s affection. Even calling it to mind chokes me up. I don’t know how to talk to anyone about it, because it feels so humiliating. He didn’t want me, and I knew this with every cell in my body, but every conversation we had back then planted a teeny bean of hope and I continued to water it and hope that a monstrous stalk grew out of its humble and even unimpressive beginnings. Also, I was so fucking embarrassed. Part of me still is.
He’s told me it was him, but also, it could be me and there was no definite answer and I lived in an open space where I could only think it must be me. There were no alternatives. Everything about me felt undesirable and I accepted that he was only able to bear staying with me because of the shared history that we had carefully curated over time. Trips and meals and hobbies and adventures and all the quiet time. I believed he was doing me a favor by trying to stick it out and in turn, I tried to make as little trouble as possible, and that was how we did things.
Sometimes, when you hint at things like this, these stories self-and-aided destruction, people will tell you their own tale of woe. Their very own rejection. Their story of humiliation and dejection and depression. Normally, this kind of solidarity is refreshing and comfortable. Based on what I experienced, it can actually have the opposite effect. It can feed a rage that lives deep within you. You don’t want to hear why they are miserable and what that looks like for them. Not because you can’t have compassion or you don’t, but rather, because it makes it real. Normally you want things to be the purest form of reality, but where this is concerned, you feel much more comfortable living in la-la-land. You want to keep things exactly as they are and to do so, requires the most precarious tightrope walk.
You see, if you accept their narrative as something relatable to your life, then you will have resigned yourself as being a member of that club. You will have been recruited and hired and promoted. You will have to admit that this is not just a brief moment in time or one incident, but rather, an epidemic. A huge problem that is beyond challenging and quite frankly, has taken you to your knees.
Remember when we chatted a few weeks ago about the reasons why people feel compelled to draw ties between what they’ve gone through and what you are experiencing? I shared that I believe there are several reasons why someone might do that, but most profoundly, they want to be able to relate, to connect. It should feel better. Ah, another person in my shoes. It must not just be me and this human will know exactly how I feel and somehow, things are going to start to trend in the right direction.
However, when you are insanely embarrassed of a thing, it’s unlikely that you all want to be in the same pen together, right? That’s when we start to make excuses that don’t make a whole lot of sense, but start to remove us from the level where another person can say “oh my god, I know exactly how you feel and I’m sorry.” We don’t want people to feel sorry for us, or draw a line in the sand, a place where they’ve decided we need to get to as it’s the place where they’ve found themselves (i.e. acceptance, etc.).
It’s a weird process because sometimes it feels good at first, but as soon as the details emerge, we want to find the nearest emergency exit. High level generic relatability? Cool. Getting into the weeds of what someone’s unique category of rejection looks like? Squirmy. Uncomfortable Unnecessary. So, we try and shut it down in a million different ways. Ah, thank you, so glad we’ve both felt like shit about ourselves and our bodies…moving on.
And don’t even get me started on the notion that we will very naturally think, well, sure, you went through this-ish, but your significant other doesn’t mean nearly as much to you, so…
Have a good rest of the weekend. Talk soon.
x.
L.
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