Holding my own shape

What if I refuse to be agreeable

“I am proud of my boldness and I do not regret anything.”

—May Fai

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A couple of weeks ago, talking through shit with my therapist, I was berating myself for not being good at boundaries. He kept asking me questions, pulling out specifics (like it’s his job or something, weird), until I saw something new:

“Hey, wait… Maybe… I think… You know what? I’m not bad at having boundaries. I’m pretty good at it. I was just bad at having boundaries in my marriage. In this particular relationship.”

He nodded.

The top row of my bookshelf is a post-divorce self-help litany, a row of titles like Emotional Resilience and Breaking Free and Codependent No More.

I have read about myself on many of those pages.

Sometimes I got so angry at myself. For doing what women are so often taught to do: adjust, adapt, make yourself fit.

I’m a good student, quick to grasp the concept, eager to please.

Don’t look for the space that fits you, no; instead, disassemble and reform yourself to fit into the space that’s available.

Got it.

Several years ago I started a new year’s tradition of choosing a phrase as a marker for what I wanted to embody and learn in the year ahead. On January 1, 2019, the phrase I chose was walking in my own authority.

I had no idea of the shitstorm ahead, or how much, how very desperately, I would need to cling to that phrase. Or how many times, and how very badly, I would fail to do so.

I’m not angry at myself anymore. I had a lot to unlearn, and a big new concept to face. Learning it meant I had to wrestle with some things until they broke. I thought for a while that it was me breaking. But it wasn’t. It was me being, becoming, embodying my own self. All the cracking breaking splintering came from the walls and too-small spaces and distortions around me.

I am learning how to hold my own shape.

Of course it’s still temporary. What are we but water, or spirit, or the space between atoms, formlessness taking on form? But I am no longer water poured into a cup. I am a wave crashing onto the beach.

🍪 Sometimes you’re the wave, sometimes you’re the kid getting pummeled by the wave. Here’s a song that is worth listening to.