I have not written since January. It’s safe to say a lot has happened in that time, so many things personal to me as well as bigger than me, changes that have been both a long time coming and way too late. I started this year with a word in mind, a practice that I began more recently than not, and that hasn’t failed me since. The word always comes to me, right when I need it and always in a meaningful way, calling me into a new season of life. Then, as time progresses, I keep track of the way it inevitably shows up—and I am never surprised to find that the word is actually more of a promise, or a premonition of things to come.
This year, my word was home. I think for me it was
almost a longing, a pulling towards what I had hoped for most in my twenties.
And not necessarily in a literal way, or even in a familial sense. What I
wanted was to feel home, within myself, regardless of my circumstances.
I wanted to come back to a place I felt like I had never really been, a place
that I had maybe in fact been running from for a long time. One thing that
became very clear to me in the pandemic was that we are all just trying to get
as far away from ourselves as possible. We are so afraid to look inside,
terrified of ourselves and unaccepting in the most damaging of ways.
So we put up a good fight, and this is real fucking
exhausting. We wrestle with ourselves I think more than anybody else. We want
to blame it on others, shifting uncomfortably in our seats as if the whole
situation could be remedied if we just found a new position, or chair, or room
to be in. But the truth is we carry ourselves with us wherever we go, whether
we like it or not—and I believe that the parts of us that are hurting will continue
to get our attention by whatever means possible no matter what seat we are
sitting in.
I’ve learned its best for everyone if we just settle in.
Here’s what I’m figuring out about coming home: it is much
harder to do if we create an inhospitable environment. In general, we do not
want to experience shame, and so we shuffle about looking at pretty much
everything but ourselves. We can’t separate what we feel from who we are, so
the process of sitting with our pain becomes an almost untenable process. We
reject any experience that causes us discomfort, and most certainly the parts
of us that we deem bad.
The fact is it is so much easier to shut down than it is to
stay open. Our defenses are there for a simple reason—we want to protect
ourselves. But in doing so, we inevitably block the way home. Everything I have
read, discovered, or heard this season has told me one thing and one thing only:
Stay. Open.
When you hurt, stay open. When you are angry, stay open.
When you are sad, anxious, indifferent—stay open. My friend has another way of
putting this I like even better. She calls it “sitting in your dirty diaper.” Sometimes
you just gotta stink up the room and call it a day. Eventually you will get it
changed, but in the meantime, you just have to accept that you are sitting in
a heaping pile of your own shit.
And believe it or not, there’s value to this. If you sit in
your shit long enough you really learn what it smells like. You aren’t so
repulsed by it and come to realize it is a natural part of the human
experience. Everyone shits! Maybe I’m not so bad after all?
And if your home has piles of shit locked away in
rooms and an insane amount of Febreze plugged into the walls, trust me—eventually
you will have too much shit and no place left to put it. Might as well turn it into
manure because really, we are all just trying to make some room for things to
grow.
Another way to think about it is we cannot hold on and let
go at the same time. This is why I write so often about open hands. If I
want to come home, I must be willing to hold hands with myself in a compassionate
and genuine way. I must open my arms up to all my experiences, I must be
patient and kind and gentle with the smelliest of shit. And most central of
all, I must believe that I am not a piece of shit.
This is important.
Staying open is maybe the hardest thing I have ever done, because
it requires all of me in truly agonizing moments when all I want to do
is lash out, retreat, or go into some other mode of destructive
self-preservation. But after wrestling with myself for so long, I now know with
no amount of uncertainty that staying open is the only way to be fully alive.
It’s like realizing you have never actually taken a deep breath, or finally
getting to rest after a long trek back to the place you have always longed to
be:
Home.
