Day 132: When I Let Things Settle

July 23, 2020
Day 132

One of the questions in one of the prompts in the current group I'm leading is: Who are you without your various "roles" in life?

If this question sparks something for you, set a timer for 10 minutes and see what happens when you just start and keep going. Here's my (unedited) freewrite from this morning.

In the past, I would have met this question much the way I would have met a trap. Ensnarement would ensue. Who am I when I'm not a... (wife, mother, etc)? I would have snuck off to write in my journal, furiously self-reflective, searching for the elusive "self" beneath the roles, beyond the roles.

I have changed, apparently.

I no longer really read this question as a trap or a source of tsuris, which happens to a be a great Yiddish word for angst.

It's not that I don't have tsuris. Oh, do I have tsuris! (You have to read this with a Yiddish accent.)

But my angst is no longer quite as snarled and tangled up in this idea of roles. This probably reflects the fact that who I am in my life feels less and less like "roles" over time and more and more like just my whole self. I don't parse them out anymore, perhaps because I don't feel the fierce need to claim and protect one part against another as I might have in the past.

This made sense when my kids were little and I was desperately searching for Susan, I mean, me, I mean, the writer, artist, freedom flyer me who felt bound and sometimes gagged by the contracts I'd made. I quit job after job, or so it felt at the time if not in reality (it wasn't really that dramatically serial). In my mind's eye looking back, I bucked against so much even though you would not have looked at younger me and necessarily have perceived bucking.

Anyway, where was I? Where am I? Who am I when I let all the things settle?

Just here.
Really just here.

It is rarer than I would like. I still get myself so very agitated internally. Perfectionism and anxiety float like errant debris through my veins. I drink a lot of water, as if to flush these out and replace them with ease, with calm, with authenticity and centeredness, with steady steps up the mountain. I am at my best when I'm focused and not allowing myself to be swirled up in habitual worries, worries like, "Who am I when I'm not all these roles."

Finally, the words "good enough" float to the surface and I want to gently scoop them into cupped palms, place them in a bowl with flower petals or something similarly lovely. I want to protect this notion and keep it close. Nothing to buck up against or reject, just this knowing that I can stop trying so hard. That I can rest.