A Bird on the Wing

A little Clairfontaine notebook with one entry: it was precariously perched among other journals on the shelf in my studio, and its paucity of purpose was bothering me enough to make me take it to my reading nest and use it to get my thoughts in some sort of order. I even chose writing in it over opening the cover of a second book this morning. The following is some of what I wrote down and some of what that led me to figure out.

This notebook is a problem for me. At least, it is today.

I am finding it hard to settle. I feel agitated. Is it the storm predicted for Thursday? Is it all the possibilities that are suddenly showing up on my doorstep? Is it just a part of the healing process, the this-is-who-you-are-so-be-her process? Is it the lack of sleep, the never-ending responsibilities, goals, and desires? Is it the literal and metaphorical clutter? Is it this notebook, started for some reason, back in October of 2021, which contained—until now—only four pages of writing?

It is all of it and none of it. I keep thinking about two statements: “You cannot organize clutter” (from FlyLady) and “I’m just shuffling shit, again” (from an old friend).

How much of my house and my life is a reflection of my soul?

Like a bird, I have perches here, there, and everywhere. I have notebooks and journals piled up, lined up, and tucked away: some are filled, some are largely blank, some contain only a few empty pages. I have the chaise section of the sectional in the family room (with books and baskets of pens and journals within reach). There’s the table (holding a brand new reading lamp) and chair near the bookcase in the family room. I have the desk holding my computer in my studio/laundry room. That space also holds a chair, and the table its sidled up to, from the kitchen of the home I grew up in. Not only do books spill out of the bookcases, they are balanced (in some cases, just barely) in piles nearly everywhere I turn. All of this, yet there is no real space for me, just for me.

The bad and the good and the in-between: that’s what life is made of, but there’s also so much more, and the very idea of labeling something “bad,” “good,” or “in-between” is the problem. Maybe that’s why I cannot—we’re talking constitutionally unable—create a system and stick to it. I have always been this way, yet I have always tried to conform. I’ve put on those black-and-white glasses. I’ve stuck labels to everyone and everything, but even while I was doing it, I was hating myself for it. It turns out that you cannot understand and acclimate yourself to a culture that was never meant for you by adopting its rules and evaluating according to its rubrics.

Yes, I know, as my husband tells me (with admiration in his voice), that I can do anything one day at a time, as I have proven over and over to myself and him and anyone who could be bothered to give a damn. But these things that I do are always just things that I do. They are ways to use my time, choices that I don’t have to think about much. I don’t, though, honestly believe that they can be classified as habits. They are simply the result of me telling myself (for however long I can keep it up): do this; do that.

One of the existential, “oh, shit, what do I do with that?” moments that arise in the process of healing entails trying to separate personality traits from trauma responses. I don’t know that it’s even possible, but it seems to be the default: this imagining your life and your Self as a mixture in which bits and bobs can be extricated and perhaps replaced. But you’re not a mixture. You’re a solution, and whatever has gotten dissolved in you cannot be removed. Therefore, instead of extricating and replacing, your task becomes analyzing, accepting, expressing, and deciding: deciding how to proceed. It seems to me that if you make the right moves (at least, mostly; not necessarily ALL the right moves), you’ll get to a point at which ideas and things no longer matter. They simply become what other people worry about while you’re being who you were always meant to be. That’s the goal I’m working towards, anyway.