Fucked Up

“The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t make you a burden. It doesn’t make you unloveable or undesirable or undeserving of care. It doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. Everyone struggles. Everyone has a difficult time coping, and at times, we all fall apart. During these times, we aren’t always easy to be around—and that’s okay. No one is easy to be around one hundred percent of the time. Yes, you may sometimes be unpleasant or difficult. And yes, you may sometimes do or say things that make the people around you feel helpless or sad. But those things aren’t all of who you are and they certainly don’t discount your worth as a human being. The truth is that you can be struggling and still be loved. You can be difficult and still be cared for. You can be less than perfect and still be deserving of compassion and kindness.” -Daniell Koepke

I feel like for the past 4 weeks, I have said, "I'm fucked up" far too many times to count. I've always had this sort of twisted ideology swirling around being damaged to the point where love becomes impossible for others. It's a test of sorts. Part of me believes I am unworthy of love, so part of me projects this onto other people by telling them I'm too messed up to love. I have realized though, that I am really, deeply loved by enough people that I feel like a cloud floats beneath me. They peel back the layers of my decided fucked-up ness and soak them in warm, lavender scented bathwater. They brush my hair, they wipe my tears, they fill up what my mother would call the love tank. 

When people used to talk about self care, I would listen, nod, and smile. For a long time, I convinced myself that waking up at 6:00 a.m. to do yoga before work was a strong enough act of self care that I could prioritize a million other things over my own well being for the rest of the day. This is not self care or if it is, it's twisted by my own nonsense. Self care has become crucial to me over the past few weeks though. When the bottom drops out of your life, you, shockingly, have to continue existing. Suddenly, I feel keenly responsible for my happiness, for my emotional well-being, and for my ability to make it through the day. I make myself get out of bed, I make myself do yoga, I make myself eat, I make myself laugh, and at some point there is a wave of relief and stillness that falls around me. The letting is important too. I let myself cry. I let myself feel all of the nasty things that come with a break up. I let myself try things I'm afraid of. I test my limits and reevaluate. 

I meditate. I repeat the phrase, "You are enough." I listen to just a handful of songs. When I'm feeling risky, I listen to someone else's music. This is almost always helpful. I go to work. I do my hair. I douse myself in coconut oil. I realize I have gone several days without crying. I feel compelled to dance. I remember that I like to sing and so I sing freely. I remember that I like to read and so I read freely. I remember that I've always wanted to go to New York and so I start to try. I realize that I never disappeared, I merely buried myself under someone else's shit.

We dust our demons off. We dance to Nicki Minaj and we drink maybe too much. Maybe just enough. 

I feel 22 for the first time in a long time. I feel like the world has unfurled and opened itself up to me. And all I had to do was look past my circumstances and into what I wanted next. There are times when I feel selfish and I must remind myself that I have been given a gift, a chance, a choice; the option to leave behind the things that I thought I was permanently attached to. This recognition is an act of self care as well. I recognize my own physical and emotional strength, to start each day anew, to learn to be and to breathe and to live in a totally different way. When sadness comes, and it does here and there, all I have to remember is how well I can take care of myself, better than anyone else ever could or would. I am mine and only mine, I don't have to share myself anymore.

So this morning, I cry, I tell my roommate, "I'm too fucked up," and she says, "You're not fucked up. You're not fucked up at all." And I let myself believe her. Despite everything, despite what I've lost and what I've gained, despite what I'd been taught to believe about myself, I let myself believe that I'm not too fucked up for anything, not for happiness, not for success, not for any kind of love. I deserve love, every bit of it, especially from myself.

We all deserve it. Despite what anyone says or thinks or makes you feel about yourself. You deserve all the love that will befall you, every bit. Know yourself. Love yourself. Accept gifts. Accept love. Believe in an inherent goodness within people, despite all of the reasons you have not to. Keep going, it gets better. 

Freefall

I wrote an instruction manual for putting yourself back together almost three years ago. I'm not sure where it came from, I know I wasn't terribly sad at that point in time, but I built something for myself to return to when I was too far gone. Three days ago, my life changed in a way that I had been trying--and failing--to prevent for a while now. I tried to cope, I tried to fill a void that felt immeasurable, and I kept coming up for air, feeling like I had drowned, or died. My best friend pulled me out of my abysmal sadness and into her little white bean car that has rescued me countless times.

When I told her I was going to dye my hair blue and call myself Chrysanthemum, the flower of death, She sent me the link to that instruction manual, and reminded me that I'd written it. I read it. A few times. I cried and wondered how a nineteen year old me had provided such a fitting manual to cope with the present pain that felt like it was searing through my chest. I wondered how she was so wise and how I was so clueless. Then for some reason, Elephant Journal shared the article once more, and I received a new flood of sweet, beautiful people reaching out across the void and telling me they found solace in my words. Me, this ruptured pile of emotions, had somehow provided some comfort to people on the worst day of my fucking life. I thought about reaching out to people and felt too weak to do so. Within three days, each person I'd longed to tell but feared to burden, had somehow known to reach out. My friends filled my ears and my heart and my inbox with words they'd diminish as cliched and obvious. But they were saving me. They were healing me. Over and over and over again. With words.

This morning, I received an email from Notes From the Universe (I'm sure many of you did as well) that said this:

Chloe, it's time you step forward to claim whatever it is that you want from life.  Just remember, the gate keeper who will give it to you is the same gate keeper who has kept it from you, gorgeous.  Good thing,      The Universe I was riding the bus to work for the first time in a long time and feeling profoundly small. I felt people looking at me as I tried to make it seem like I wasn't crying when I was obviously crying. I felt my phone vibrate and while searching for something else, I read this and realized, better yet, remembered once more, that there is something vibrating inside of me. There is something strong, profound, ever-expanding, and incandescent that is growing within me. For a long time, I turned that thought off, I shut that hope down, and I willed myself to take up less space, to be less of what I was, what I still am. I told my sweet Sara this morning, that instead of increasing, my anxiety was shrinking. I walked down the street yesterday and looked at beautiful people for what they were, remarkable. I felt untethered to the emotions that had sunken my shoulders and left shadows beneath my eyes. I was floating. And also falling. Ebbing and flowing between what feels like all-consuming emptiness and freedom. I am shaken up and shaken out. I don't know what I'm stepping forward into, only that it has felt like stepping off a cliff and that I am now suspended in a glorious and excruciating free fall. There will be moments in time throughout this life where our deepest certainties abandon us. When we woke up seeing things one way and must go to sleep seeing them anew. It will feel like swimming through concrete and pulling off your fingernails one by one. It will feel reckless, wild, and sad, over and over again. No one will say the right thing and you will be sure that the feeling in your chest will end you. Pockets of clarity will come. Unconditional love will save you. And that has to come from inside of you. You have to believe that the person you are is worth climbing this mountain of grief, to get to the other side, to continue to be and love and live and grow. I will resist the urge to be reckless. I will resist the urge to believe I am lacking. I will take deep breaths when it consumes me and trust that I'll make it out to the other side. I will understand the impermanence of everything. I read this now and know that the hard work of becoming is slated in front of me.  It's time to put myself back together.

My Confidence Manifesto

The rhetoric tells us to believe that we are strong, beautiful, capable women, when we live in a world that teaches us to be aware of the opposite. Our bodies are not enough, our minds are not enough, we are lacking. It is easy to condemn this nasty ideology sometimes, and other times it is all consuming. As a woman who ebbs and flows between thinking I am hot shit and thinking I've just lied to myself for a long time, I can empathize with anyone who struggles with confidence from time to time.

I wrote this Confidence Manifesto for myself, and for my eyes only. I wrote it to read each day when I wake up. To remind myself at the beginning of the day that what I am cannot be diminished or extinguished, but only enhanced and illuminated. And then I read it, and realized, though its embarrassing to admit that I am not 100% confident 100% of the time, other people deserve reinforcement too. So here are my ideas for making the sad girl in the mirror see what an amazing fucking grown woman she is:

1. Try something new every day. Something that intimidates you, something you admire when you see others do it, but are afraid to try yourself. My ideas: taking any dance class, taking a pole dancing/burlesque class, karaoke, an improv class

2. Wake up every day and love what you see. Compliment yourself. Look in the mirror first thing in the morning with sleepy eyes and last night's makeup and tell yourself that you are beautiful, strong, smart, etc. Then repeat it. Again. Again. Until your thoughts wander to these words rather than other mean or unproductive ones. Don't wait for someone else to validate you. I promise that so many people look at you every day and are fascinated, take the time to fascinate yourself.

3. Notice the moments in which you are exercising bodily awareness and strength. Notice when you are pushing yourself to the limit in the gym or dancing like a minx. Commend your legs for making it up that hill or for deciding they deserved to walk today. Whatever it is your body allows you to accomplish is because of its strength and not in spite of it.

4. Be sexually decisive. Ask for sex when you want it and then ask for what you want when you're having it. Describe what you like and what you don't like. Try new things, even if they make you nervous. Don't worry about what your body looks like, embrace what your body looks like. If someone is having sex with you, they are extremely satisfied with what it looks like.

5. Write down what ails you. When you feel these pangs of insecurity, address them. Today I felt this way, and this occurrence provoked it. Train yourself to respond with self-encouragement and love rather than the deprivation of love and support. Do not admonish yourself for being imperfect. You need your own support more than anyone else's. You need your own love more than anyone else's. It is not an indulgence, it is a need.

6. Believe people when they compliment you. Yeah, they are being nice, but they are also being honest. You're fucking awesome.

7. Go outside your comfort zone. Talk about things that scare you, try things that intimidate you, and believe that you're capable of anything. Anything. I watched a Tony Robbins documentary where he said that each day he'd go on a run, where he said, "I'm fucking unstoppable." Over and over again. Eventually, he believed it. Eventually, so will you.

7. Admire beautiful things. Let them admire you.

8. Use each day as the beginning of your empowerment. Wake up, do yoga, look in the mirror and admire what you've built, go days without wearing make up and embracing your face free of it, wear make up and whatever you feel sexiest in and go out and command the room. Be fierce, be kind, be empathetic. Empower those around you to be their best selves. Surround yourself with people who enable each other to be better.

9. Smile. Even when you're sad/scared/unenthused. Just do it. It fucking helps.

10. Let go. Let go of the words people have said that hurt you. Let go of the painful memories of your body, sex, insecurity, etc. Forget what your ex boyfriend said about your body one time 6 years ago. Forget the shitty things that have rattled around in your mind for too long. Grow in your intelligence and your beauty. Grow in your ability to be wildly multi-faceted. Realize that your self-worth is only linked to your ability to love yourself and others unconditionally. Nothing else.

"You know what’s really, powerfully sexy? A sense of humor. A taste for adventure. A healthy glow. Hips to grab on to. Openness. Confidence. Humility. Appetite. Intuition. … Smart-ass comebacks. Presence. A quick wit. Dirty jokes told by an innocent-looking lady. … A storyteller. A genius. A doctor. A new mother. A woman who realizes how beautiful she is."

-Courtney E. Martin

The Tunnel and Not the Light

For the past three months since I graduated from Chatham, I have done a few things consistently: work, cry, rip my hair out, wonder what the fuck I'm doing, and yoga. I've applied to a lot of jobs and done a few interviews, some of which I really wanted, others of which I was horrified by; none of which worked out. This morning I found out that the most recent of these interviews had not worked out either and I started to cry for a millisecond.

Every time I have one of these meltdowns, Zach says, "What do you want to do?" and I roll my eyes and say, "Write." Every time. But I haven't been writing, I've been moping. I sit down to write and my hands feel heavy cus they're busy feeling sorry for themselves and then I get tired in the middle of a paragraph or a poem or a ploy and give up. This morning,  instead of going to hunt down the next job to apply to, I came here instead. Right now, I make more than enough money to live on. I like my two jobs, they're not my dream jobs, but I like them. And I have about two to three days off a week, depending on my schedule. Those two to three days are the bane of my existence right now, I question my purpose, get down on myself, and agonize over what I should be doing that I'm not.

Today, I decided that these will be my writing days, not that they weren't said to be that before, but from here on out, they will be. I'm stepping away from the 9-5 full time + benefits dream that's been projected onto me by myself and countless others, and I'm following my dream. I won't be a starving artist, because I'm working too. I won't decide to get an MFA before I know I need one. And I will stop wondering about what I've always known. Over the past six months while I was graduating and looking for jobs and Zach was transitioning jobs and we were super broke, I kept thinking about the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, that we're financially stable and able to save and plan a little, I guess I could think of this at the light at the end of the tunnel.

But I don't. I kind of like the idea of the tunnel, of keeping your head down and pushing through, even if you don't know what you're heading towards, even if you'd much rather curl up in a ball in your bed and stay there indefinitely. In the tunnel, I've found choice and voice and agency. I've found the ability to sweep my own floors, pay my own bills, and write my own story, separate and intertwined with all of the others I know. In the tunnel, I've learned that I'm tough, but now I want to build my dreams.

The other day, Chelsea Handler tweeted this:

Being an adult is exactly what I hoped it would be. More responsibility, but now I'm the only one I have to answer to, and I'm the best boss.

And I realized that I felt this way too. It is scary and it is certainly not easy, and who the fuck knows if I'll ever be a successful writer? But I want to be, I've always wanted to be. And wanting it is important, but doing it is more important. Choosing to fight for it, that's the key. Choosing to try, choosing to fail and stand back up, choosing to love yourself whether you win or lose; and they're all cliched, but they're the key, the piece of the puzzle I've been missing.

So consider this the beginning of a very long and exhaustive tunnel that I'm carving the walls out of as I go.

Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

About a week ago, my boyfriend and I had an argument that got blown cataclysmically out of proportion. I had hurt his feelings and instead of acknowledging that and apologizing, I reacted the way I frequently react when someone calls me out. I get really mad and really mean and freeze you out. Just straight up stop talking to you. And if you try to make me talk to you, I'll say any cold thing I can think of to get you to stop, to keep freezing you out. On this particular night, however, he was determined to break through, to talk to me, the real me, not the front I put up in fights.

He sat down in our driveway and asked me, "What am I supposed to do when you're wrong?" He was asking how to handle it, how to approach it, so that when he needs to confront me about something, I don't react this way. And something within me clicked that never had before. I am always right. Always. Always have been. In reality, I've been wrong thousands of times, but I really, really, really don't like admitting it. I don't like being wrong, who does? But in my situation, I commit so hard to being right when I'm wrong, that I exhaust whoever else is participating in my wrongness. I exhaust them to the point where they give up and continue loving me and everything goes back to normal. I'm lucky to be loved by some pretty kind people who'd rather not fight with me than be right. In my case, however, right-ness sometimes trumps reality. I've given up a lot to maintain my right-ness, friendships, opportunities, relationships, and more. I've told people I don't care if they walk away from me, if they never speak to me again, if they never look back, because some part of me feels that she NEEDS to be right. But the truth is, at the end of the day, I love being loved and loving more than I love being right.

As we tried to psychoanalyze me and what makes me so determined to be right about everything, Zach brought up my ego. When he said the word, "ego" I started to cry, because I realized quite easily what my right-ness was all about. I told him that my ego had taken a hit lately, that I didn't feel like the woman I thought I was, that I felt less than. I ascribed this to my inability to find an illustrious big girl job right after graduation. I said I thought I'd done everything right in college: gotten the grades, completed the internships, joined extracurriculars, studied abroad, worked my ass off, and now, it felt like all of that was just meaningless bullshit to ramp up a resume. I was so determined to win this fight--any fight--because I felt incapable of winning anything else. So yes, my ego is bruised. But my ego is not me. I am better, kinder, and stronger than my ego. I am better, kinder, and stronger than the voice telling me that I have failed, that I am not good at anything.

I turn 22 in seven days. I wrote this blog in my journal first, and as I wrote it, my foot fell asleep. I had to walk around while I was writing in order to keep it from falling asleep. It was very uncomfortable and made me want to rip my hair out at first, but as it went on, I started to think about what was going on. My foot has fallen asleep countless times, I always know circulation will come back if I move around and it will be over. I know it will end, and yet, in the moment, I am so frustrated by it. Just like this period of my life. It is kind of uncomfortable and scary, I don't know what comes next and I am pretty unsure of what I'm doing. But I know, this period will end. There will be a job, an idea, a transition, a change, a shift, and I will be onto the next big thing, forgetting quite readily the discomfort and anxiety I felt post-graduation. And what is so bad about discomfort? It reminds you that you're alive, that you're in control and able to alter your perception,  your surroundings, the way you feel inside and outside.

This is a strange period. My feelings change about it every day and I have to honor that. This morning, when Zach left for meetings, I started to cry. I felt like a failure again. I wanted to go to a job, a career, and feel like I was building something for myself. I felt like I was failing him and myself. He promptly reminded me that I am working close to 23 hours in the next two and a half days and that he is proud of me. He told me to write down 3 things I'm proud of, 3 things I'm afraid of, and 3 ways I can alleviate my fears. He is my boyfriend and my therapist and I am extremely grateful for his never-ending supply of love for me and I love him so very much.

So here are my things:

3 things I'm proud of:
1. How hard I've been working at jobs I didn't necessarily want but am starting to genuinely like, to pay my bills/rent, to take care of myself, and to do things that make the people I love and myself, happy.
2. For graduating. For making it out when I didn't think I would and for being okay on the other side, even though its scary.
3. For admitting, finally, that I can't always be right and that I have to let that control go. Who the fuck said do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? I forget. But I want to be happy :)

3 things I'm afraid of:
1. Failure.
2. Never getting published again/never getting a "dream job"
3. Being stagnant

3 ways to alleviate my fears:
1. Accept that I'm going to fail, over and over again, and I can't prevent or control it. Don't look at failure with a captial F, look at it as the place where you grow, learn, become a better/stronger person.
2. Keep trying. No matter what. Fight.
3. Recognize the difference between stagnance and stillness.

After the End

It's funny how reading an article about another woman who happens to be 22 and also, possibly, the next Einstein, sends me into a complete tailspin. Do you ever have a day when you're not feeling profound enough, so your ego just lies around, licking itself like a bored cat? It's stupid and self indulgent, as though profoundness comes in the mail and I just haven't gotten mine yet. The thing is, I didn't expect graduating from college to result in the following careers: tanning salon worker, restaurant hostess, and intern with potential. In fact, I expected a lot more but I admitted that very little.

When I imagined myself, four years ago, I'm not sure what I thought I'd be like. Determined, thoughtful, ambitious, creative, gentle, gifted: all words that swirl around in my head without sticking. Today, four years later, I work a lot. And I live in a one bedroom apartment in Pittsburgh with my boyfriend. And I'm tired from working a lot. And I like to read and write and love and smile and think and see my friends and do yoga and reject authority. I like to think that I oversimplified somewhere along the way, that I made my life too easy, and that that's why I'm not a PhD candidate at MIT, who may or may not be the next Einstein. I actually hated Physics quite thoroughly; I took it my senior year of high school for college credit, and because a certain Physics instructor liked me, I didn't have to take it again in college. But now I wonder, what am I doing with my life? Why am I not remarkable yet? Why am I not profound?

I think the answer, is that I am thinking about the wrong stuff. What you meditate on, what you hum in the back of your mind throughout the day, becomes your reality. Regardless of the way the rest of the world sees you, regardless of what you've accomplished, what ultimately determines your success, your abilities, is what you see when you see yourself. So if I look in the mirror every day and compare myself to 22 year old physics PhD candidates, that would be a misinformed thing to do because I am not a physics PhD candidate. Or if I look in the mirror every day and wonder why after countless years of working out, I am still not a supermodel. That would be another misinformed thing to do, for a lot of reasons.

I guess I've never worried before about straying from the beaten path and now that I'm here, on a weird path I never imagined for myself, I can't help but feel...stray. I have read countless stories of writers that worked as waitresses and bartenders and maids and taxi drivers and more, while they tried really hard to be successful writers and then eventually were. And then there are the prodigal stories, of twenty year old writers who stumbled into success and fame and fortune and a lifetime of writerness. The bottom line, the root of all my issues, is that no other story will be the same as mine. When I look into the shelves for comfort or solace, I'm only pulling up shards of other people's comfort and solace. The truth is, reading someone else's writing can make you feel a little bit better for a little bit of time. But writing something, writing your own advice, your own story, your own manifestations, it really saves you, from yourself and from the world. It reminds you that you exist, you're here and you're building and no one can take that away.

18 Year Old Chloe

This morning, as we both fought different degrees of influenza, Zach showed me a letter he had written in high school. It was called, "A Letter to my Future Self" and it was filled with rather sage advice from the eighteen year old version of my best friend. At the end, he told himself, "You're never going to be the best, but you can always be better." I laughed at this and read it aloud to him and he said, "It's true." And then I started to think about what it actually meant.

If I had a letter to read from my eighteen year old self, I don't think I'd like it very much, but maybe I'm discounting her. She is, after all, the reason I am where I am today. She is the one who got us to Chatham, to English, to Pittsburgh, to Zach, and to countless other adventures. When I think about her now, I only remember the parts of her that are different from me. She was extremely religious but failed to see her shortcomings. She was woefully romantic but failed to see how unromantic her predicaments were. She knew exactly where she wanted to go and exactly who she wanted to be. Unlike Zach's eighteen year old self, my eighteen year old self believed she would be the best at something, she believed she was impenetrable and revolutionary. Only to discover that the world changed quite drastically when you stepped foot outside of Cortland, Ohio. I discount her naivety, I scoff at it. I wonder how she could ever be so trusting, so rose-colored, so simple.

And then I wonder, why am I not? What changed between now and then, between 18 and 21, besides everything? Where have I hidden her away--the girl who believed she could, and then did, and then did over and over and over again. Why am I so afraid of just trusting that I will find my way? Why am I so hellbent on having "A PLAN" even if it has nothing to do with me or what I want? I have always trusted myself not to fail, not because I am exceptional or brilliant, but because I am too stubborn to have that kind of chink in my armor. And now, as the whole world opens up before me (the whole entry-level world that is) I can only see the vast array of opportunities I have to fail, rather than to flourish. I don't know why I think that, perhaps its that since 2008 people have been saying, "Good luck finding a job" to our entire generation. Maybe its that we live in a society of false perceptions and advertisements: look how great my life is, applaud me! False images that we are then left to compare ourselves to. Maybe its just that I'm scared and scrambling and feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff that has no fathomable valley. But just because things are getting less college, doesn't mean they have to get darker.

If I could sit down and have coffee with my eighteen-year old self, I don't think I'd give her any advice. I wouldn't want her to life to change, I'd still want her to become me. I'd want her to have all of the same triumphs and failures, to cry herself to sleep some nights and to go off the grid on others. I'd want her to have the good friendships and the bad, the meaningful relationships and the duds. I'd want her to stand in front of people she didn't know and read poems she'd been embarrassed to write. I'd even let her go to Brazil. I'd want her to do it all over again, in the same way, because the last four years were, simply, magnificent.

But if I could, I'd certainly ask for her advice. I'd ask her if she could choose, anything in the world, what would she want to do next? And I know what she'd say, it's always been the same thing. And then I'd ask her, if she was proud of me, if she was surprised about who I was, who I'd become over the past three and a half years since I'd left her, or if she was disappointed. I think she'd be really surprised, but I know she'd be proud and probably a little scared to do it all over again. Mostly, I'd want her to tell me that everything is going to be okay. It isn't that everyone I know hasn't already said this to me, its just that, I think I'll only believe it when I hear it from my own mouth.

And finally I'd say, "Zach gave me some really good advice today that I think I should tell you."
And she'd say, "Are you talking about that kid from the party the other night?" (Because my eighteen year old self knew Zach for precisely 10 days before she turned nineteen)
And I'd say, "No, someone else." Because I wouldn't want to spoil the ending.
And she'd say, "Okay what's the advice?"
And I'd say, "You're never going to be the best but you can always be better."
And she'd probably say I know, dickhead or Obviously or start an argument with me depending on what kind of mood she was in.

But then I'd know, that I didn't expect myself to be the best. I could just get better, a little bit every day, and see where I end up.

"Can you say it out loud? In front of an entire room of people, people you know, people you don't, your family, strangers, people who fascinate you, people who loathe you. Could you say it to them? The truth, the absolute truth of your life, the secret you've been keeping, the black hole you've been protecting. Could you stand on a podium, in front of a microphone, and bare your soul? Does it make you a bad person if you couldn't? I want to live in such a way that I can stand on the stage, in the spotlight, burning, sweating, scared shitless, and say it, no holds barred, and be proud of my truth." -18 Year Old Chloe