Proving myself

Still uncertain, but with less need for certainty

I have found, at various times and in different places, that I need to take a long break. From: something. One thing. Several things. Everything.

I’ve never managed to take a break from everything. I believe this is properly called death and it’s a tough one to come back from.

Anyway, I used to feel bad about taking breaks. This was a dumb way to feel. All feelings are valid but some feelings are dumb. Fight me. (When I say fight me I mean send memes and songs, or tell me a joke, or say hello. I don’t want to fight but I like to be antagonistic.)

Some things you can’t, or shouldn’t, take a break from. Like, say, showering. Or eating.

Mini-breaks are okay.

Middling-length breaks from necessary self-care and certain responsibilities tell us there is something serious going on, something that requires attention and may merit intervention.

Long-term breaks from these essentials often lead directly to that part mentioned above, the break-from-everything. And while the break-from-everything is inescapable, imminent, awaiting us all, it’s a tragedy to rush it.

After all, one of the best things about taking a break is coming back again. You don’t get to do that (as far as we know) with death.

---

I haven’t felt like writing in about, oh, 7 or 8 months. I write for my actual job, of course. Beyond the job writing, though, I haven’t written anything but a birthday list and a few blog posts since the start of this year.

I took a break.

It felt weird.

I kept trying to come back to it.

And failing.

Then I quit trying to come back to it.

Then I started wanting to come back to it.

And now here I am, wanting to and writing and maybe this will be a little one-off hello letter and it will be followed by another break. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. One of the best and most glorious changes I’ve experienced, a change that’s happened slowly but solidly over the last several years, is this immense holy freeing and beautiful lack of desire to prove anything to anybody.

Along with this beautiful lack of desire is a kind of humbling clarity about how many things I’d been doing solely, or mostly, for that purpose.

Writing itself is not for proving something. Writing is for existence, for processing, for understanding, for experience. Years ago when I needed to choose a college major the choice was between music or writing. And I thought, Hm. I do love music. But I can go days without singing and still feel like myself. To go days without writing feels like not breathing.

If this sounds melodramatic, it was. I was 18 years old. Give me a break. (Or fight me.)

Writing itself is not for proving anything, but being consistent, being reliable, being publicly productive: Yes. Let me prove all the things to all the people.

How silly, how human.

---

Like so many of us, I lost a lot of certainty in 2020.

Things I’d relied on, taken for granted, things that felt like the foundation of my life crumbled into dust.

And it felt like I, too, was crumbling into dust. Ripping apart, coming undone, unable to find the shape of me, putting hands out in the dark. I wrote frantically, questing and grasping for answers, but mostly for the sound of my own voice. I needed feedback even if it was just an echo. And I got it, and it helped. I had to prove my own existence to myself, find my own form, separate I from we, identify myself outside the entanglement of relationship that had defined most of my life.

It was a rough go.

And, I’m finding, it’s not over. This need to know myself and shape myself for my own purposes requires constant cutting of the cords. Not just from an ended marriage, but from all sorts of internal obligations and unspoken debts.

If this sounds melodramatic, it is. I’m only 43 years old. Give me a break. This is my very first time being alive.

---

Have you ever put things in storage?

You pack them up carefully, sure of their value and meaning. Then you come back at some point, and take things out, and think, Why did I save this?

And you toss it out with a little laugh, because you don’t need it anymore.