When I was three and wacky and free
I squealed with delight for all to see…
Your comfort was constant not something to earn
At least
So I thought
Til it all took a turn…
Throughout my life I have struggled with a push-pull dynamic when it comes to relationships: longing for connection yet terrified of being exposed. At my core I fear that if people really knew me, they’d see how defective I really am. When I was a child my parents were around but not emotionally accessible for various reasons. What we see from our parents as children becomes our “normal.” It is the stage on which we continue to act out the rest of our lives and our relationships. I can see so clearly in my life now that I have normalized people being unavailable to me. I came to expect that in order to have relationships I would have to initiate most connection. That’s the role I had always played. To act in any other way would feel foreign. I’ve always had the longing for more - more love, more attention, more connection, more being seen and known - but as a kid I believed the absence of these things had to be because of who I was. “What was wrong with ME?”
The struggle of the main character in our book and my own struggle in life mirror each other beautifully. We are born into the world true to who we are, they encounter circumstances which propel them into survival strategies like people pleasing and self-criticism, and then they embark on a search for the truer version of themselves that they lost along the way. Part of my journey back to myself coincided with a writing trip I took to Carmel By The Sea.
On May 31, 2024 I packed up and full of nerves for what the trip would hold, headed for California by myself. I have to note that during this trip I was experiencing some depression as a result of reducing my dose of my anti-depressant medication which makes some of these reflections especially dark and contributed to my nervousness around this trip. When I arrived at Vagabond House Inn in Carmel, California I was welcomed by Diego at the front desk. The entire time I was interacting with Diego I felt that familiar push-pull: longing to connect but overwhelmed by the inner voice questioning if I was “too much.” Early on in my life I learned that warmth and love can feel so fleeting and conditional based on how I behaved. I learned how to predict what people expected from me, most especially anyone who I deemed to have “authority” over me. But because I wasn’t used to Diego or the culture he’d fostered at Vagabond House Inn, I wasn’t sure yet if his warmth was temporary or what I could do that might cause him to withdraw it. He was, after all, the one who controlled the big fire pit in the center of the courtyard. I couldn’t feel safe until I learned the “rules.”
Once I dropped my baggage off in my room I grabbed my journal and a pen, stepped right outside my door, and sat in a chair by the large fire pit to write:
“My welcome was warm but now my feet are cold.
My body tightening and struggling to settle.
My soul well-aware of how alone I feel.
Each interaction I have with another human is filled with my inner critic in my head. Terrified.
She is worried about every word I awkwardly utter.
Looking around me, this is how I picture the village of (main character).
The village itself is welcoming, hospitable, and womb-like in its center.
Yet here I am sitting in shrouds of shame and self-division.
A sharp dissonance between what surrounds me and what overtakes my inner world.
Diego seems to manage this place with such eagerness and I wonder about what lights Diego up. What makes him care? What makes a place warm, safe, and hospitable?
Nothing when my inside world is so hostile.
I perceive the loveliness around me with such a protective lens. Who is perceiving me? Can I let my guard down? Am I behaving correctly?
I am alone at the fire pit but I feel like there are eyes on me…I just don’t know yet where they come from in this place.
I’m cold and want to go inside and curl up but some…one tells me I might not be allowed. That might not be the right thing. I flew all this way to curl up in my room?
I’m cold.
My inner world has a lot of rules that don’t make much sense.
How do I gauge what is “right?”
I feel myself turn against myself each step I take.
How long will I live this way? I’m so scared of the world. I’m so scared of me.
These fake logs still make the fire burn. The fake waterfall still lets the water flow.”
I eventually went inside and turned on the fake fire in my room, letting it soothe me to sleep.
When I woke the next morning I still felt swelling discomfort around the uncertainty of my environment. Breakfast would be delivered soon and I didn’t know what to do. Swirling what if’s ruled my inner world. If I wasn’t prepared to answer the door, if I wasn’t dressed and didn’t know the proper etiquette would if prove the very thing I feared? That I, too messy, too much, didn’t belong here?
The same pattern of push and pull intensify like a rip-tide inside. And I was reminded of how risky it felt to be me:
When I heard the scolding I squelched those squeals,
Hushed my hope, lips more sealed.
In my sensitive soul I felt so afraid
That if I stayed me you’d go far away.
The next day I woke up and decided to explore the town and the beach before my scheduled counseling session with Whitney, my personal therapist, later that afternoon. Here’s what I wrote as I sat on a log next to the ocean:
“I’m at the beach, toes squishing in the sand, waves crashing over my grave as Taylor Swift would say.
Perched on a log, I watch a family gather stray Beachwood to build a shelter from the chill. Their dog roams free on the beach…something I would dream of for little Betty. I actually think I DID dream of Betty off-leash last night and me continually trying to make sure she didn’t run away. I watch as the dogs here run freely and then check back in with their people. Secure attachment. I long to be more like them.
Confused at your scowls in the face of my play
I ashamedly assumed that I was to blame.
It was me, all my fault that you left me alone
My horrible squeals turned your smile to stone.
While flickers of inspiration light up in me, I also long to make the sand and big ocean belly my final resting place. Is it depression, or something deeper? The haze hanging gently over the coast sets the tone. Melancholic mystery.
When to my squeals you had no response
Silence fell on my spirit, a most fearsome haunt.
In my vibrant soul the silence was so scary
And I knew my squeals I had to bury.
It was time for my therapy session so I gathered myself and headed back “home” to Vagabond House Inn.
Stay Tuned for Part 2: Connection and Self-Acceptance
