milkweed musings

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, really. It’s been a season of less (but not totally void of) thinking, and more doing. A goal of mine this past year has been to expand the bounds of my comfort zone, because I’ve found my zone to be quite small. This is probably the reasoning behind why I have felt very resistant to change or committing to plans that are out of my control. Doesn’t take much to make me feel Not Great! But restricting myself gets so exhausting. I’ve found that baby steps have stimulated positive change, and stimulants have stimulated my ability to make baby steps (I’d like to say thank you to my psychiatrist). Overall, this year I have found myself less resistant to things that previously made me feel like I was getting electrocuted just by thinking of them. Like cartoon-style electrocution.

A positive effect of baby steps is that they’ve brought me deeper into existing friendships; I’m finding it easier to trust others and be my entire self without apology. For example, I found my inner child being present at my recent birthday celebration. It was during a round of Poetry for Neanderthals that I found myself not being on in a group of people for the first time in a very long time. Expressing myself in single syllables, trying to convey to the group that “WHEN WET, ONE GROUP — ALL” meant “swim team,” and not something salacious, it felt right to be silly. Speaking in a fully optional grunting voice (feeling very much Planet of the Apes, “ape no kill ape”), I had to try and express what I was thinking in an unusual way. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but this theme would return to me soon in a different context.

My friend Sabrina hosted a collage event this weekend, collagerie. The prompt for this evening was based off an oracle deck she recently was gifted. The plan was to ask an open question (like something on your mind lately, or something for which you’d like guidance), pull a card, and allow yourself to interpret the meaning of the word and its corresponding poem. The interpretation would be based on the question you asked, your feelings, and/or intuition.

I pulled “patience.” Ha ha ha. “How will I feel at home in my body?” was my question. Technically, my question was “When will I feel at home in my body?” but I wanted to be more open and compassionate toward myself. Patience was an apt card to pull.

PATIENCE

Much of culture runs at a frantic and flawed pace

Always rushed and always hurried

distorting the organic rhythms of life in the race.

But all true things take their own time –

you cannot rush a baby out of the womb

you cannot force a butterfly from the cocoon

and every seed waits for its season to bloom.

-from the Poesis Oracle Deck

Committing to the theme, using my question and pulled card as guidance, my collage began to build around the topic of weight and freedom in one’s body. This has been a recurring topic of controversy in my life and spirit. Since the age of ten! I just turned thirty-two, for context. Over two decades of strife between body and soul. I’ve grown impatient with my self esteem!

With age, I’ve certainly stopped demonizing my body for looking the way it does. But I still maintain a challenging relationship with self image and health in general. There’s a mixture of wanting to wake up transformed as well as realistically understanding that conscious effort and work must go into making impactful change in my body. However, this mixture also contains a heavy pour of resistance and shame that I am STILL trying to locate the origin of. This relationship between body and soul is so complex and honestly so tired… I struggle to find the words to explain how body image affects the way I move through the world. This is especially frustrating to me because it feels like if my true form of expression (words) can’t help resolve these feelings, then what will?

In introducing collagerie to the group, Sabrina explained how collage is the medium that helps her process and express her thoughts. Me, I’ve always been inclined to process my thoughts and emotions through writing, especially through song. I’ve found that visual expression can be very intimidating for me, and that I tend to be quite careful and structured (to the point of curation) when I create any type of visual art. The importance of releasing control in self expression is vital. With words I can let go. Collaging is a challenge because I want to be in control. But as Sabrina says, “sometimes you just gotta go monkey brain with it,” and kind of just follow your intuition and put together what feels right.

I tried to embrace that concept the best that I could. While my narrow comfort zone wanted to protect order and control, there is a point where you really have to go monkey brain and think less, just do. I followed my feelings and the response turned into this collage (I did compromise with my preferred method of expression, words, using writings from an essay I felt connected to, along with other snippets and compiled thoughts). I expressed what I subconsciously needed to through texture, color, and sticky, gluey hands.

While the question of “how can I be at peace with my body?” is not answered in this collage, I do feel like this experience screamed loud and clear that I must be patient. With my body, with the process of improving my health, with trusting myself, and with my ability to express myself. Be patient while I think less, do more. And keep doing it. Consistency will embrace you and teach you how to embrace it. It also showed me that there is no one answer to self-expression. When words fail, go monkey brain with it. If that doesn’t do the trick, you’ll surely find another way.