Enjoy the Ride
And then, suddenly, there was a thought: It’s truly twisted to be drowning in vulnerability for months, and being such a stranger to it, you have absolutely no way of recognizing it, saying hello, shaking hands with it not even a slight hint. Until you banged your head really hard on a big bad (but kinda hot) decision and can’t help but ask yourself: “Why do I feel ok, but also mostly feels like some stranger took over my brain sent it through outer space and switched it up with an orange for the past year?” It’s a funny thing. But also not funny at all. Welcome to lesson one: feeling. In this class, experiencing real love and losing it, will change your insides from a self-proclaimed cement wall into the bus of recklessness you always swore not to be. Enjoy the ride.
The Love of Your Life
The first time somebody said to me (at least to my face and not in a 4am drunk text) that I was the love of their life, the only thing I could think of to say back was “how are you so sure? you haven’t really live through the rest of your life” - I was genuinely confused.
But let’s rewind. It was not that I didn’t irrationally loved this person either. Honestly I never had felt what I felt with him in my life. That was not the point. The point is “You’re the love of my life”, makes absolutely 0 sense as a statement. Is deeply illogical. Is like saying “I know that the answer is 4” without knowing if you’re supposed to be adding 2+2.
And yes, I haven’t studied math since 9th grade but I will still use it to explain every point I make about relationships, and that’s probably why I should stay single.
Ennui
I’m not good at communicating what I feel. Never been. Feeling gives me the sense I am losing control, that I have no free will on what I do or what I think. And being a certified over thinker, always made me post-rationalize everything I feel as soon as I feel it, and immediately take control of the emotion, by rejecting or find a logic reason why its happening. This is a coping mechanism. When you see the strongest person you know losing their shit over how they feel about something, you automatically don’t wanna follow that path. You don’t want anything in your life to have that power over you. And you don’t want anyone or anything to have the power to affect you. So you numb it down. You shut it up, you find the reason.
Similar to when you zone out, emotional numbness happens unconsciously. It’s the result of our minds disconnecting from our thoughts, actions, sense of self and sensory experience of the world around us. Nemmers describes it as a survival mechanism from our sympathetic nervous symptom.
“In the face of physical or emotional pain, or a traumatic incident, Our brain shuts down as a protective response to keep us safe when our nervous system is overloaded,” he says.
Initially, emotionally numbing is helpful, because it helps calm our overwhelmed minds. Over time, it can be harmful and lead to behaviors with serious consequences to our emotional and physical well-being.
'In the face of emotional pain or a traumatic incident, our sympathetic nervous system has three responses: fight, flight or freeze. Emotional numbing is freezing. In this scenario, your brain literally shuts down, your temperature drops - you dissociate from reality. It honestly just feels like… nothing. I cant tell how many times I have felt that. At some point it became my pre-set response for any type of emotional over stimulation. It took a lot to recognize that and be able to shut down that pattern. I told myself I would never be in that space again (its dark tbh). But growing up is also recognizing maybe some things are not just there to get ‘fixed’. Maybe some things just take maintenance.
Im might not be really good at expressing emotions, but Im very good at making playlists that do. So here’s a new one.
PEEL
It feels like something you peeled of you but still has some glue left on it. And everytime you get thrown at it (an you will, multiple times) you still get stuck. But you pull out. You pull out everytime, because that’s what you believe now, that’s what you learned. That’s your biggest accomplishment. Until with every new hit, you start lingering for an extra second everytime. The glue seems to become a little stronger (for some reason!), and everytime it feels a little more comfortable. Everytime you think “I’ll get out of here, I just need a day - a week - a month”. Until you can’t peel it out anymore and you’re hanging around with it again. You thought you could get rid of it but suddenly - there it is. And it feels nice. Or rather, it feels like nothing, really. This is where you feel nothing. And that’s familiar. That’s predictable, that’s what you know. And its hard not to indulge in that feeling because everything else is already just… hard. And at some point you remember you gotta pull yourself out and you just can’t. And this time, it really seems like there’s no point. It really seems like you’re pulling out from something that’s also you. And that’s ok. Because that is you. And maybe it’s not about pulling it off. Its about learning how to best carry it around. How to accessorize. Maybe one day even, figure how to work around it. Even though it is a pretty sharp object - it literally hurts everyone but you. But maybe there’s a way — that’s a thought for next mont though.
The Real Challenge
I love the challenge in dating but not the type of challenge where each person is just trying to see who can play the hardest or who has more fear of commitment. Similar to rare birds there’s a particular dance to be played that can be exciting in dating but beyond that, whats really interesting in crossing paths with someone is when people can put in check your limiting beliefs about things and be so open and honest about how they feel about your interaction and where they stand that you have no chance but give that same energy back. In all this time I’ve been single I haven’t been truly felt that spark when you feel scared but you also feel challenged and excited about figuring out what and who you have in front of you. At the end I realized is not about being too difficult is just no one is actually excited about the possibility of growing up, learning and take on real challenges that don’t result in instant gratification anymore. And nothing good comes without that, does it.
Big Brother Energy
If I had to name a constant in my life… I’d definitely say ‘Big Brother Energy’,
Growing up with an older brother was the definition of though love. Till this day, he doesn’t give a fuck what I do as long as he doesn’t have to worry about me. I was overprotected by him and his other male friends though. He kept all my secrets. He also was patient and kind. He introduced me to all the cool games and things boys liked.
I always was jumping from male best friend to male best friend, mainly hanging out with boys as a child and also mainly wearing my brothers clothes when they didn’t fit him. I had best male friends from all kinds of the “masculine” spectrum. I always connected with men better because they had a way to push for me, to always make me believe I could achieve bigger things and inherently they were as ambitious and competitive as I was but also always very caring and emotional when they had to be.
All GROWN men I grew up with were assholes tho. And tbh it’s often unfair how these examples often overpower the good ones.
My male friendships teached me about men’s emotionalisms and their innate protective nature. I always saw myself as an equal, as one of the boys. A lot of the times I was assuming decisions in the group, as one of my friends once said to me “you were always making us work!”.
I neglected my female friendships for sure, tho I did have some. But the ones that persisted were definitely with woman who shared the same traits - mostly really high ambition, high intellectual tendencies and low emotional touch. It’s still hard for me to make new female friends, and I think in some ways I ended up adopting some of the biases against women myself. One of the hardest things for me to admit as a self-proclaimed feminist.
I will never be able to tell my story without mentioning the men that recommended me, mentored me, helped me get better, believed in me, mention my name in rooms, took me in their wing, challenged me, sacrificed their education for mine, made me cry bc they knew I could do better and till this day keep putting all their bets on me when to be completely fair, most days I don’t believe in myself as much as they believe me.
Chill is a Strong Word
People often describe me as chill. Very chill. It’s an interesting point of view for someone which mind is absolute fucking chaos.
I think two of the greatest skills that have gotten me through life is hardcore dissociation and anger. Dissociation is interesting. I got so good at it that I absolutely forgot entire parts of my teenage years. In every stressful moment I had, or any hard situation I went through, my response is very immediate “this is not happening, i am not here”. My body temperature drops. I very quickly jumping to the part of my head where i can meet quiet. “Not this, not this in front of me”. And that is also interesting because its like I am just inside my head, observing reality but literally thinking about everything else but what is happening. Through the years this has been a very hard reaction to understand from everyone around me. Ask me the most difficult question, burst in tears, drop to the floor crying and begging, have a meltdown in front of me, I will absolutely, most likely, hold any emotional reaction.
From our worst life moments, I remember the times my mum constantly looked me, with so much confusion in her face, after she just had a breakdown: how can you not cry? how can you be so strong? you are so strong.
But strong is…. a strong word. Strong is not necessarily it. I wish I could go back and say “well mum, i am hardcore dissociating from reality right now and also I have so much anger in me that it is all I can feel. its so big its paralyzing”, but that wouldn’t help much either way.
It would probably help her understand, maybe. And that’s what I am very bad at - making people understand that about me.
I never shared my life troubles with anyone at the time because I never wanted people to look me with pity. If I can build and shape people’s perception of me, I can make them not ask the questions I don’t wanna be asked. However there’s always a breaking point. A moment you’ll have to move to another city and have to justify why. A moment where you just not performing and you have to explain why. A moment when someone just catches your swollen crying eyes and you can’t hide it anymore.
I learned to suffer in silence because everyone around me suffered very loud. But also there’s the anger. I didn’t ever wanted to give anyone in this world the benefit of affecting me. Nothing hurts other people more than not giving them a reaction. And somehow I still live and die by this belief.
I am Stubborn
Very. But so is everyone who achieved anything in life (this is the excuse I tell myself and everyone else). I am also intelligent and for me personally, the greatest sign of intelligence is self-awareness. Creating very strong ideas about things (aka being stubborn) is very helpful to get you through life and build your sense of identity. And having a very strong sense of identity and being unapologetic about it is the ultimate magnetic thing to do in a society that encourages self-realization. But when you have very specific/limiting beliefs you also take accountability out of the picture, because “this is just who i am”.
For a lot of things my stubbornness is and has been extremely useful. But besides being a stubborn but self aware person I am also constantly seeking change and seeking how I can better myself. Really slowly but I am. One thing I recognized lately is how you think about things creates a lot of energy in your brain. Saying you’ll never do something, you’ll never be that person is very different from thinking “ I don’t know yet” and its again, easy to not take accountability for your own self growth and self development when you keep saying it to yourself. I have learned that a lot of the things I said I never want to do or would never do I actually not that true in the end - once I try them I start to develop obsessive behavior towards it because for so long I just believed it was not for me, so it sorta creates this very unhealthy relationship with things besides everything being just a “i don’t know”.
Being stubborn also come from a necessity of control. Defining strict limits of how you operate gives you a fake sense of being in control and doing everything you “can”. I read something recently that kinda shifted my perception a bit tho. It said “you need to feel at peace, more than you need to feel in control” and it completely altered my brain chemistry.
For a certified control freak, this was both attacking and making painfully evident one of the biggest issues for me in the emotional real - letting go of control. For a long time I struggled with love (still do) and expressing my emotions. I feel like I grew up seeing people completely get lost by irrational decisions based on what they feel and not what is actually the truth. As someone who has a high IQ is very easy to disconnect from your irrational brain, because you seek problem solving and explanation for everything, you seek logic, you seek meaning more than the highs of feeling. I found comfort in rationality and coming up with fake logic scenarios that validated my limiting beliefs about myself so I can feel better about myself, feel superior to others and feel I had again - control.
One thing I realized as I get older, is the more you try to deny something about yourself, the more obsessive will be your fixation with it, and it might turn into the thing that actually you become when you told yourself over and over you wouldn’t. I have been working hard to turn a lot of my “I would nevers” into “I dont know yet”. One of those things is - being in a relationship.
I don’t agree that romantic love is the ultimate type of love. I cant tell you how much I have growth with the love in my friendships and the love in my family. Way more than any relationship I ever had - matter of fact. I don’t believe relationships have to be conventional or forever. I do believe in the capacity of love to make us better more empathetic people, and the world could use a lot more of that. I believe we are better when we are able to step outside of ourselves and truly care. I think having people supporting you, your growth and loving you in a way that you always feel enough is one of the quintessentials of achieving a “successful” life that fulfills you. No matter what shape that takes.
I recently started to do something called scripting, a practice in which you write as if you were already living the reality you idealize to be in. I thought this would be the perfect concept for a love playlist, as it would give me the opportunity to idealize what that would feel like for me (and creating fantasies in my head is also like, my number 1 favorite activity). Romantic love is still a mystery **for me. But whenever I think about my “perfect” love I just deeply crave a caring, tolerant space where I feel I can just be myself and that’s enough - where I feel I have the space to show up how I am and truly be seen and understood.
Truth is, most of us often wont have the capacity to be selfless enough to give someone that grace or be ready to ask “how do i wanna show up for you?” instead of “what do i need you to be for me?”, not in a culture that rewards individualism above all. But if you do find that eventually, here’s a playlist that hopefully captures that feeling as good as any good as any perfectly scripted heart wrenching novel or sitcom would. Ps: This could be a naomi sharon only playlist tbh but.
Off Switch
If you are a true artist theres no off switch I am sorry. Your life is your work and your work is your life. We try so hard to create these rules for whats balance and whats not but for me, an unbalanced life is the one we keep throwing ourselves into - without passion, numbed by infinite scrolls and lack of deep thinking. Lack of community and basic humanity and empathy towards each other, which throws us into a loneliness epidemic that makes us uncomfortable with our solitude and constantly seeking for the next thing to buy or wellness trend to follow to feel something. Sitting with our own demons is too hard and self accountability is an abstract concept that barely anyone seems to grasp no matter how many degrees you did in school and we spend our paychecks on strangers for self-validation instead of ripping growth out of where it lies - within ourselves and on the other side of our own fear and mindless dopamine hits. A true artist keeps going no matter what because in the end thats all there is.
Measures
And suddenly the only measure that I’d like to learn is your thoughts per minute. I am obsessed with learning that precise songlike burden. I wonder…if you’re walking down the street and you’re suddenly here, and if you also just carry on like it could have never happened, not in the moment but also not in general. Hopefully you also think everything and nothing at all. That’s how I think about you, at least. Everything + Nothing equals zero. Zero is good, is comfortable. “You wouldn’t recognize it even if it was in front you” - I guess you were right. All I feel is nothing and everything all the time. There’s something worse than fearing you. It’s this persistent illusion of control. The day I miss the most is when you looked straight into my eye and told me “you know that’s a lie”. It was - it is all a lie, all the time. But so were you.
People Displeaser
I don’t even know if the word displeaser exists, but if it does, this title is certainly going to be my future book title or my band name when I hit a midlife crisis.
Psychology might call us contrarians, I prefer to die an undiagnosed misfit. Not a lot of things have been very constant or stable in my life, but wanting to be different from everyone and also firmly feeling I didn’t belong wherever I was was some of them.
I am deeply allergic to people who lack personality, point of view, attitude, and have a following, people pleasing mindset. I also understand it’s not everyone’s job to agitate and question, otherwise the world would be absolute chaos. So I am learning to be less judgmental of that (I swear).
In any case, as a creative that makes a living out of her creative output, and also runs her own studio you can imagine there’s not really a big separation (there’s literally none lol) between my personal life and my professional life, and my personal values definitely permeate the practice we are building everyday with our work and our studio.
I think this subject of being disliked and misunderstood becomes exceptionally evident when you trying to pay your bills with you art, and not just applying this philosophy to certain aspects of your life where you can safely dare and rebel. But as the image points down, it does comes down to a lot of courage.
Having the courage to be disliked and misunderstood, takes knowing exactly who you are at the moment, what moves you, what you believe in. It takes being ruthless with your boundaries and being a pro at saying NO. It takes being courageous enough to draw the line whenever it has to be done, and knowing the right people will respect that more than anything else. It takes believing in your essence so much that no matter how many fall outs, rejections or no’s you’re gonna get in life, you always believe that sticking to your values and to the core of your art is going to lead you closer to your truth and your real “success”.
It’s easy as a creative to get lost in the comparison mindset, and it is easy as a service provider to fall trap to a pleasing mindset - its not a linear journey even for the most rebel of rebels. Being validated and accepted is a inherently human need. I do want everyone that ever works with me or has a relationship with me to feel they have been challenged and to feel they were able to create and believe in something they could never have the courage to believe in because its unapologetically themselves and it takes a lot of courage to show up like that and run the risk to be disliked or misunderstood. But that’s where growth happens, that’s where people will follow you and connect with you. That’s when you’re actually putting out something that truly can inspire people.
“You try to please everyone you’ll just be forgettable” this is the thought I keep saying to myself whenever I think everything I wrote above is complete BS and things feel so hard that I just wanna give up and open a flower shop. Whenever I feel me slipping through the cracks of fear, I remember all the stories that inspire me are of people who live a life that was most true to themselves and their art, without caring how they might look to the outside. No matter how “successful” that will make me, I want most of all to keep having the courage to keep digging deeper and deeper into what makes me - me, and how I can express that in the best way and most of all also help other people realize that about themselves or their businesses and projects and create truly inspiring things.
Maybe a random text will be it for today.
Keep digging deeper.
Got a Thing for Love, and I Can’t Let Go
I love, LOVE!
Like, conceptually.
Red nails, long yearnings, passionate sights, flowers, sweets, spontaneity, excitement, lust. It’s all so…pleasing. There’s just something so visually and aesthetically indulging about feeling without constraint, without logic, having your insides turned upside down for a smile. Feeling like you’re gonna die if you don’t see that person again. Feeling like your heart has both been ripped off but also replaced for a thousand itchy butterflies dipped in gold. For years we’ve been trying to capture love and heartbreak in two minute songs and in five hundred page books, and I just love how brutally illogical these states are. The high of it, the intensity, the drama…the things we create while our brains ride high on oxytocin.
There’s a reason why you can’t physically be like that for long tho. Why it fades away. And also, just because I love LOVE, doesn’t mean I necessarily love TO love.
I came a long way from the promise I made myself at 16 (while probably listening to some emo rock song) of living my life forever alone. We did well for a while, team. But it was an interesting exercise to believe love was not for me. Everyday I was writing poems about the boys I liked, reading about love, drawing their faces in my sketchbook. But literally not even looking at them. Everything was so platonically beautiful in my head, that, to this day*- its still difficult not to choose the version in my head over the real one. But that’s the problem when you’re a repressed romantic. Once reality hits, you realize not a lot about real love is THAT romantic. My first relationship felt both amazing and like a torture chamber. Not because it was necessarily bad (was pretty average, sorry if you’re reading this JC), but because learning to translate the love from my head to reality felt like someone was trying to slowly twist and pull a very heavy sword from my heart so it would get unclogged. I was so confused by how much I had to learn and how much I had to understand about this person and how much I had to grow forcefully.
But that’s the great thing about love - it makes you grow. No matter how good or bad. Not only I had to unclog my cold heavy heart through that first relationship I also realize that romantic gestures in real life made me feel nauseous and always caused a adverse physical reaction to me, so at the end of that I was convinced that love was cool but loving was not for me.
All these pre-conceptions you create for yourself are really fun, because you live by them like they are the ultimate rule until you bang your head really hard on something that proves you wrong or you suddenly cross paths with someone with the most beautiful smile you’ve seen on this earth. Life is a wild ride, and I had my fare share of tries even for someone who was literally traumatized by how hard my first love was for me and always kept running away from it.
One thing about love. It will find you, I can tell you that.
I’m still a love noob. But I can say I made some progress since puking to every romantic gesture someone did for me. I’ve experienced and lived love from the lowest of toxics to healthy and growing and fruitful experiences. One in particular taught me the real meaning of loving someone: and that’s when your heart is in a million shambles and you can’t see a life without them, but in the end of the day nothing, and I mean NOTHING makes you happier and more at peace than seeing that person pursue their own happiness. Even if that means you gotta get out of the picture. That kind of love is selfless AF, and honestly I’m just grateful I got to experience that, because I never thought i’d be capable of something like that.
I’ve also learned that because you CAN love, doesn’t mean you should be in a relationship. A good relationship is so much more than just love. It’s a perfectly timed happening in the cosmos coupled with a lot, and I mean A LOT of hard work.
So there might be a lot of people out there who think they love LOVE, like me, or that they even are very romantic. But that doesn’t mean you should necessarily be in in a relationship. I never believed people should aspire to be in a relationship. As cliche as this sounds, I think you’re better off developing a better relationship with yourself first and building a life you are proud of and that is meaningful and purposeful. Because then, if you bump into the person with the most beautiful smile on earth, you’ll know that’s a plus, a strike of luck, and not something you “need” to feel whole or feel less lonely. And your whole interaction and perception towards a potential relationship will be a thousand times healthier. You’ll chase out of pure curiosity, you’ll understand love is a choice you make, an intention and not a necessity, or a need to have company, or a rush of lust or a game of swipes.
As someone who thought she will build a life with people before, to someone who now has a panic attack every time she envisions having a relationship because she doesn’t know how to fit a boyfriend in her schedule and abnormal need for alone time, I can tell you your relationship with LOVE will be a ebb and flow through life, and its not always an upward one. But LOVE comes to you in many ways and you should be open to it to the best your capabilities even if in some instances there will only be space for self love.
Love is not a hormone high. Love is a fucking verb. Is not an aesthetic moodboard. Is a choice, is being courageous enough to let other people share your growth and being selfless enough to put their happiness over your trauma. I personally would prefer it to be a two minute high full of falsettos and a sexy bass line, but nothing is perfect, or for everyone, as beautiful as it might be.
Letter to My Inner Softie
Hi. How have you been?
I know it feels like we are strangers sometimes, or that we are very distant relatives with nothing to talk about. But we’ve known each other pretty much since forever and I think about you… I really do…and often. Every time we hang it feels like seconds. Sometimes I feel like I’m never seeing you again. And I miss having you around for a good sad R&B session.
Speaking of…did you ever get the courage to send him the playlist you made? You know which one… the one about how you fell in love with his smile? It’s called “Melting” …you couldn’t find another way to describe the moment you first saw him. You said his smile stuck to your brain, lol. I bet you gonna take that shit to your grave.
And are you ever gonna let anyone know how you never learned to sleep in the middle of the bed again? I wonder what damage it is doing to your mattress! All those expensive pillows and for what? Bro...And also! Have you told anyone how painful it is when your anxiety gives you insomnia or turns your insides upside down and makes your stomach reject all the food you ate that night? Or how much you still have nightmares about your trauma and that’s why you rather not let anyone stay the night?
Anyway, I guess you like to keep things to yourself. It’s fair, I’m used to that shit. One day I’ll stop resent you for that, maybe... And for always hanging me out to dry in crucial moments or for letting my friends think I’m borderline psychopath sometimes.
I kinda wanna sit together and discuss things though, that’s mainly why I am reaching out. I feel like it’s time for us to reach some sort of agreement. I’m pretty tired for carrying all the weight by now, I don’t wanna be in the spotlight as much. Its all boring, oh my god, so boring!
It’s time for you to grow up. We need to figure this out somehow. I need you to step it up. Things are gonna change around here. I need a vacation, something like a reset in Turks and Caicos for my brain, I’m exhausted! Plus, I don’t know if you heard but I’ve got bigger things to focus on, baby girl. It’s coming.
So can we go over some things? First of all, don’t regret anything you did in the past years. I think we both have been a little off, lol. It’s not your job to avoid the world. Your job is just to be so secure in yourself and not care if they don’t see you. Show up, unapologetic. That’s really your duty, not letting me down. From my side, I’m gonna do my best to not shut you down and take over and stop being a control freak — I know know.... I’m not the best at delegating we all know that... But if you’re patient with me I’ll be patient to you.
At the end of the day, I just really wanna see you sharing all your secret playlists, running to the city to get someone’s favorite thing. Waking up ready to give someone a spark in their eyes, sit down to plan a surprise. Buy random tickets, plan random adventures, cry more, learn to say “I love you” without feeling like you have a rock stuck in your throat (I know – ambitious!). Live the R&B song romance of your dreams. Let people kiss you in the forehead. Bake a cake – for fucks sake!
Hope you see where I’m getting with this. Please let me know when will be the best timing for us to draft a plan. I’m not good at this, but you know better than anyone, that deep down, I kinda think you don’t suck and we kinda make a cool team.
Xoxo,
Inner Baddie