Does going back benefit us?
What I wrote to the girl I once felt ashamed of
Hello you
When I’m quiet I’m usually suffering. It’s how I cope - to withdraw. This is also what keeps me from everything I want. Two weeks without publishing online when this is my job is enough of a red flag. Where am I right now? Back in the UK of course.
Every return is the same. I have to break before I can rebuild. A huge swell of anxiety takes over in the days leading up to my return and then the resentment, grandiosity, sadness and exhaustion unfold. This is the first time I’ve realised what’s going on underneath this sequence and it has a lot less to do with me now than I used to believe. What really happens is I’m faced with my adaptive child. It’s not the tiny me, I’ve learned how to love and soothe her and now it’s second nature to the point where she rarely appears. No, it’s the teenage me - and her I would go as far to say, I fear.
I don’t have an answer to this question but I have a lot of thoughts on it… does going back benefit us?
Quite philosophical really but let’s expand, because this is what I’m finding myself in the middle of right now again and again. And again. To the point where it’s become a pattern and I feel I need to take some sort of stance. Gain a little control perhaps. Set a few boundaries. Or just make peace in my heart.
Learning to love my teenage self has been the hardest part of my growth and healing. Until recently I’d have told you she’s awful. Truly awful. Entitled, nasty, unpredictable, explosive, walled off and deeply deeply damaged, controlling and cripplingly insecure. Put it this way, I’m not going to put her on my YouTube channel. I’ve had to personally apologise for her behaviour as my adult self on more than one occasion.
I wrote her a letter recently that I want to share with you so you can see how this works in practice. Because it’s ugly, uncomfortable and not talked about enough online. We much prefer to imagine our little innocent cherub like selves and how we can love them. The visual feels maternal, pure and the emotions flow. To love a disturbed, older child is much harder and I’m sure any parents reading this will agree. But this is still the work. Often it’s the most fruitful work. Please try not to shy away from it.
One of the best writing tips I ever read was to share the parts of yourself you’re not so proud of, or ashamed of even. Those raw, human conflicting emotions, thoughts and actions - because this is what makes writing (and consequently us) real. I write because I can’t not write. It’s how I express myself and connect with the world. Make sense of it. Sharing these parts of myself have been the most healing for both me and others, because it’s a relief to see your imperfect self validated in the reflection of another.
So yes, going back can help us with all of this. But in my heart, I still feel there is only so much going back worth doing. Once you have a grasp you keep going, you never let what’s behind you stand between what’s in front of you. See that clearly, dream it, smell it, taste it and no matter what keep going after it. You owe it to yourself both now and then.
I’m slightly apprehensive of sharing just how disorientating it is being back in the uk physically, for fear of being diagnosed with some sort of disorder or neurosis. Or worse, cancelled. But in this fog, this dream - I feel a shift. It’s a stripping away sort of shift. A lessening of caring. Not about you. I love you and I always will. About the general masses or the people I imagine sitting at a little table judging my every move. Those I feel the need to perform for who aren’t even real. They’re an extension of my inner critic. Those I’m done with.
