{ an essay of cut and pasted interconnected yet separate writings }
Part I
Anxiety has been my default setting for most of my life. It has colored every single moment, day, and memory for as long as I can remember. It was such a normal feeling that I didn’t realize I should be asking for help.
Ten years ago I started experiencing panic attacks and anxiety over small things. I have always been an anxious person, but ten years ago it got really bad. I told myself I could manage it. I could exercise and meditate and read books about it and make it go away. Instead I spent ten years avoiding things that trigger my anxiety and existing in a very tiny life. The avoidance became a habit and I didn’t even think about ways I could enjoy my life anymore. I stayed home most of the time and I stressed over the few things I couldn’t avoid doing. I became my grandmother who never learned to drive a car, suffered from undiagnosed social anxiety, and who lived her whole life as a friendless recluse, except for her family and an occasional bingo night.
When I realized that it had been an entire decade since the worst of this anxiety started, that it had just become my default setting, that I had gotten used to it and just accepted that I would never do certain things, I decided that I really needed to do something about it. Isn’t a decade enough time? Isn’t ten years enough to sacrifice?
Last December I realized I was avoiding living to avoid my anxiety and I asked for help. I’ve been on medication since then and it has made such a difference. I can think more clearly, I can drive and eat without constant phobias (and they were phobias. To be avoided at all costs. Fear inducing activities that lead to obsessive rumination.). I can be there for my family in a healthier way. (I still get anxious, but so far it has been manageable.) Last week I started therapy to dull the edges of anxiety even more.
I feel like the room in my brain that used to house my generalized anxiety has been swept clean. The space that used to be filled with shadows and fear has been aired out by a spring breeze through an open window. Maybe the light doesn’t reach every corner, but it’s a breath of fresh air. Through the open window stepped creativity. It brought color and new decor and a desire to create new things. I have considered myself a poet and writer for decades, but with it always came the feeling that I wasn’t good enough. That people were judging me and laughing at me and that even though I put words on paper, I was not really a writer. Even with a pile of journals, binders full of poetry, and a published poetry collection, I still believed I was wasting my time. Since the critical, anxious voice has grown quieter (though not completely), a new voice has grown louder.
It tells me to make things without caring if they are “good enough.” I get one go round in life and I might as well stop worrying what everyone else thinks of me and just live my life. I might as well try new things and share those things and connect with others making things and tell my inner critic to quiet down and take a nap on the new sofa that creativity brought to the room.
Part II
I turned 50 this year. Something that I haven’t wanted to freely admit to the world at large. I want to present myself as younger because 50 seems old and out of touch and irrelevant. What could I possibly have to contribute to the conversation as a perimenopausal, middle aged woman? Who will take me seriously? But that’s just a belief system, right? That’s just a thought that I have come to believe and seek confirmation for on a daily basis. I have tried to fill my Instagram feed with people like me. Middle aged, imperfect women and men who are still vital and contributing to the world. Still creating and living and inspiring. It challenges my belief that I might as well spend the rest of my life on the couch in front of the TV because the creative part of my life is over and it’s time to shut up and wait to die. I think this belief that women become invisible in midlife is put out there by the patriarchy to silence and control the very women who have gained the wisdom to challenge their systems of oppression.
I spent years afraid to share and to post because I felt that my voice wasn’t worth adding to the cacophony of voices. Plus, I was just very afraid of my own voice. And of ridicule and silent judgement. But, the reality of years lost and years ticking away, has reminded me that I don’t have to care. I don’t have to disappear just because I’m a middle aged woman. I don’t have to follow the rules of the patriarchy and fade away because I no longer please the male gaze and my childbearing years are ending. Society knows that as women age they become more powerful. They are wiser, they are stronger, and they no longer give a shit what is “expected” of them. The patriarchy and those in power fear the strength of the crone. So they create stories about old women and ugly witches. They glorify youth and erase our faces from media. The shame we have internalized over wrinkles and grey hair makes it easy for us to agree with the erasure. Certainly we don’t belong in this world of flawless skin and glossy hair. Surely we have nothing left to offer. Nothing left to say. Internalized sexism and ageism causes us to silence ourselves and each other.
Middle aged women are portrayed as frumpy and out of touch. Clinging to their youth and meddling in their adult children’s lives. Listening to the music of their teen years and stagnating in nostalgia. In reality we are vital, creative, powerful, sensual humans just as engaged with life as someone half our age. Why does youth get to claim today’s music and culture? Why are we lead to believe that we must only claim what we knew when we were young? We are still here existing in this culture and we should be able to claim a piece of it for ourselves. There is a damn good chance we will live into our 80s, yet we are supposed to silence ourselves after 40. To live half our lives in a state between living and dying. Fuck that. Reclaim your space. Listen to whatever you want, share whatever you want, create whatever you want, wear whatever you want. Don’t let them erase you. Crones are powerful and there’s nothing the patriarchy hates more than a powerful woman. Let that be the fuel to whatever fire you start that burns down all of society’s expectations
I’m rambling now, but I’ve realized something else. I have been given an opportunity denied many. Denied people in my own family. I have been given the gift of 50. Two of my cousins died by suicide before they were 30. Another died in a car accident as a teenager. So many people are denied aging. How can I appreciate this gift? By living. By writing, creating, loving, feeling, speaking up, and supporting my fellow men and women doing the same. I have been allowed something denied to many and I want to appreciate the hell out of that.
I might as well just write bad poetry and sappy short stories and create silly collages and not care if anyone thinks that’s “cringe.” They’re not living my life. I am and I want to have fun with my creativity. I want to be bad at something before I’m ok at it. I want to give myself permission to suck and to try things that may not stick. And I absolutely don’t want to be limited by some fabricated idea that I need a “style” or an “aesthetic.” Why do humans put so many boundaries around art, emotion, experience, and life in general? Do we know that we are not going to be here forever and really no one cares what we do? Do we know that life is shockingly short and we don’t get a do-over? We are such a miserable lot. I think if we made things that make us happy without boundaries, we might all be a little less miserable. Ask yourself, why are we all limiting ourselves for an aesthetic? Shouldn’t art and creativity be fun?
You will not get an aesthetic here. You will not get just one side of me. It’s poetry, collage, photos, thoughts, essays, and whatever inspires. I recently read an article about an artist who created in obscurity because he never settled on a style. I have searched for the article again, but I forgot to save it. I believe he had an art school in the 50’s (maybe?) and did Jackson Pollock type art before Pollock, did other styles before the artists who later became famous for them. But no one remembers him because he never settled on a style. Good for him! I’d rather live in obscurity than die having put myself in a box.
Part III
But then there’s the problems with the platforms where some of us have chosen to share our passions. For all the alarmist articles that get written about social media, it was finding a poetry community on Instagram that helped me reclaim my creativity. I also feel I need social media to feed my brain’s constant need to have something to think about.
I crave input on a level that the people in my personal life can’t fulfill. If I didn’t have extra outlets, I would drive them crazy with my need to express what’s going on in my mind. I am constantly thinking and social media gives me new things to think about. I love reading articles and posts about things I never even knew existed. I love the way people string words together into something that enlightens me or moves me. And I love stringing my own words together in ways that surprise me.
Of course there is a downside to everyone in the world having a platform to say anything they want. I have always been a huge believer in the quote, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Which is generally attributed to Voltaire, but was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in a book ABOUT Voltaire. Correctly attributing quotes is one of those things that sends me down rabbit holes of learning.) But in the age of disinformation and foreign bad actors trying to sow discord, I sometimes wonder if social media is the place for that belief. Yes, you can say whatever you want and express that belief to as many people as you want, but what happens when you are knowingly spreading disinformation for nefarious purposes and that disinformation gets disseminated by people who didn’t realize it was a lie? Should we have an unregulated public square where we can spread lies as quickly as truths? I think it would be ok if civil discourse followed. If we could hear ideas, discuss them in a civil manner, and depend on facts to help us reach a conclusion. But that is far from what happens on most social media. Instead we are all in the public square shouting and spitting in each other’s faces.
Which is why I left Twitter when Musk bought it. I liked Twitter for its poetry community and for the people I trust to help me understand bigger ideas about the world at large, but there is little civil discourse. Musk thinks that letting people scream and spit in other people’s faces and call them slurs is free speech. And I suppose in the pure sense, it is. But when we allow people to threaten other people, we actually limit free speech. We limit what the other side is saying. We close down opposing ideas. People become afraid to speak their own truths for fear of mental and bodily harm in the public square. So many people don’t seem to realize that some of the things they want to scream so loud about are not even real. They are stories fed to them by people who want to shut down the very free speech they think they are trying to uphold.
Part IV
I worry about what social media has done to us because it does seem like we are encouraged to brand ourselves even if we are just a human being and not a company. We are encouraged to have an aesthetic and a way we present ourselves to the world. To make sure we don’t reveal who we really are or go “off brand.” I am not a brand. I don’t want to be a brand.
I saw this tweet several weeks ago:
Your real story is all over the damn place —and that was never a bad thing— because YOU ARE NOT A BRAND. Allow yourself the room to transform, over & over, for the entirety of your life.
Alexis Rockley, Dec 2, 2021
I started what was my blog and now has become my Substack because I wanted a place of my own, away from the algorithms of social media, to write about anything. To have an outlet for the many facets of my overthinking brain. I realize people may not want to follow or read my accounts on the regular because they aren’t about just one thing. That’s ok. I’m not doing this for likes and follows. I’m doing it for a creative outlet and to hopefully connect with people who share a similar view of the world.
I looked for tips on designing a blog on Pinterest and now all I get are pins about making money blogging, branding your blog, writing a blog post in 5 minutes, etc. That is not why I’m here. I don’t want to write a blog post in 5 minutes or an ebook in 30 days. I want to enjoy what I’m doing. Creativity should be a playground, not an assembly line.
I worry about how capitalism has gotten it’s tendrils into every aspect of our lives to the point we even want to monetize our hobbies and brand our lives. But, that’s a post for another day. Just remember – people didn’t always make themselves into a brand. Was Mary Oliver a brand? Was Audre Lorde a brand? Was Henry David Thoreau a brand? No. And you are not a brand either. Don’t let the white, rich men who own social media convince you that you need to be a brand to make the algorithm happy.
My poems tend to be too wordy. My essays longer than snippets. I’m long winded and wordy and not made for social media or today’s short attention span.
The point is, I am creating for the wrong reasons. Maybe for the wrong platforms. I know I have to have a social media presence if I ever do write a book and sell it, but I am so disillusioned by it all. Creating to keep social media companies in business when they sell your data and hide your content. Why are we doing this? Why are we engaging with it? Which is the motivation behind my decision to move to Substack. An organically built following of people who appreciate what I’m making with no ads or algorithm to please.
I did come across this tweet from Brad Warner that I had bookmarked:
I’m impressed by artists who do amazing work when they assume no one will ever see (or hear) it.
Brad Warner, Twitter, July 12, 2017
There are so many of us out here creating and sharing when we all know no one is going to see it. I want to be ok with that. I want to be mediocre and share my mediocrity and have a handful of people see it and be good with that.
Part V
Going forward I hope to write more new poems and short stories and essays. I hope to share more collage and photography. I hope to add more poetry collections as I still have a few in mind. I hope to maybe get back to that novel I was going to write. I hope to write less about wanting to write and just write. And I hope that one or two people come along for the ride. Although, there may be reasons I’m unpopular:
- I put my poems on cringy backgrounds.
- I share too much.
- I am unapologetic about being a middle aged genXer
- I am a jack of all trades and a master of none
- I am messy and all over the place (like this list, like this post)
But I am real I’m not AI generated or posting for money or trying to sell you a damn thing. I just want to have fun creating and share the joy that brings me with the world.
Conclusion
In a long life, if we’re lucky enough to live one, we will go through hard times. Days, weeks, months, hopefully not years, of challenges both big and small. Sometimes the slowly applied weight of small things can crush us in just the same way we are floored by tragedy. This is a fact of life. The Buddha upon leaving the sheltered bubble of his lavish palace, saw the despair of the world and declared that to live is to suffer. Because of the negativity bias that we all carry in our caveman brains, we tend to focus on these sufferings. Remembering that something caused us pain or anxiety or sadness, protects us from going down that path again. If we remember that we had to run from the tiger behind the bush, we won’t pass that bush again. If we remember that the red berries upset our stomach, we won’t eat those berries again. If we remember that a person hurt our hearts, we (hopefully) won’t give that person our heart again. While this protects us, it also makes us focus on the negative at the expense of the positive. We are also equipped with a fight or flight alarm system that is too sensitive and prone to disfunction. It would rather alert you to a potential threat that never materializes than be cautious and allow you to be eaten by the tiger behind the bush. All of this adds up to brains that forget to remember the joy.
Which doesn’t really make sense because you would think we would remember the safe path and the good tasting berries just as strongly as we remember the bad, but it just doesn’t work that way in everyone. In my last post I talked about what a stressful year it has been for my family. How the slowly applied weight of small things has been weighing on my shoulders. But, let’s not forget the joy that sneaks in unacknowledged and lifts just a little of that weight.
When we add a little gratitude to that joy, the weight is lightened even more. I’m not talking about toxic positivity. “Good vibes only” is an impossible and unhealthy goal. We thrive on the whole range of human emotion that moves us to tears or angers us to action. Trying to only look on the bright side is to deny that the dark side exists, which is toxic denial. We are all the light and the dark and should embrace and share both. When we share the darkness, someone else finds a little light there when they realize they aren’t alone. But, some gratitude, some amount of saying, “In spite of the bad, there was this glimmer of good,” can help us to remember the sweetness of those delicious berries.
The world has been under a global stress for at least the last three years, but, hasn’t there also been joy? Hasn’t there been something to be grateful for? (I’m not a religious person, so I’m never sure who I’m offering these thanks to. The universe, I suppose.) Flowers bloomed, books were read, music was heard, new friendships were formed, new things were learned, once again the leaves turned colors and fell and once again they have returned in a flurry of green.
Why am I doing all of this anyway? Not because I think I will become a world famous poet, but because I want people to read the words I loved putting on paper. I just want people to read my words. And that is the same goal that is driving me to keep going with this Substack and to publish my digital collections. I just want to share my words with the world. If just one person reads them and finds a little something they liked – that will be enough.
It’s all a love letter to anyone who bothers to read. I don’t want to keep my words hidden in notebooks. I don’t want to hide my words behind a paywall or between the covers of a self published book only available from one seller. I want to give them away as a love letter to the world.