The voice inside my head is like some sort of skeleton, whose bones are made from fears and old comments and stories I’m so used to believing I can’t even see. (See what? Their un-truth? Their lack? The ways they blindfold / hold / deprive me?)
Over the past few months of tackling my anxiety and my relationship with my body, I’ve realized how helpful it is for me to understand where the thoughts in my mind come from, or where they were born or egged on or who first said that thing that then morphed into that voice.
That’s part of the purpose of this blog: to dig in and down and through in order to understand the thoughts and voices in my mind, and also: to cultivate new ones.
Here’s an example of one that just happened: “don’t use another colon, that goes against the rules, and your readers will think you made a mistake, or they’ll think it doesn’t work. Maybe some authors can do a double-colon in a sentence that but only famous, avant-garde ones, not you, you’re too new at this (too young, too not-known)— your writing is not good enough to break conventions.”
I was able to fight the voice only because I saw this thing I’m getting better at seeing: that it was a voice that was not my own. It was—and is—some tangled ball of society and fear and control and capitalism and the patriarchy and heteronormativity and a culture of white supremacy that I have been consuming and seeing for for far too long, a world where you are never enough, where there is always more to change, a way to be that you are not.
No. It’s not true, and it never was. (Recommended reading and listening if this part is hard for you to see, as it was for me for so long: The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, Brené Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us where she interviews Taylor, and Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth. All of these use the body as their jumping off point, but their ideas transcend the physical and have helped me unpack all of the things I am told are not good / right enough about myself.)
I also have been noticing a pattern of thinking as I’ve been talking to more of my friends that are artists and asking them how they do it, how they tell themselves they’re going to make it, and this pattern is: that which you think only others can do is really (often) something you can do IF: you allow your mental barriers and self-talk to break down (awareness is key to this) and welcome it.
Noticing (barriers) is huge. Both the ones constructed by others / society and the ones you build yourself.
Prompts and thoughts:
What's one of your patterns? One of your barriers?
Do you have any recommended reading? Share it in a comment or fill out the contact form and let me know.