A recurring theme in my story is me not having boundaries. This means I have historically had trouble saying no, that I sort of fall into relationships rather than choose them, that I drift through life like an un-opinionated jellyfish. Not so much a people pleaser as a blank slate. An agreeable blank slate.
Write on me, I seem to say. Draw all over my life and I will remain silent because not losing you is more important than my self respect, dignity, or happiness. The ways I’ve agreed to be treated, oh man. I’ve crumpled myself to unrecognizable many, many times.
Listening to an old Tim Ferriss podcast with Lori Gottleib on my walk one day- she talked a lot about story. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are-our life stories. For me, it’s the “I don’t have boundaries so people will stay” story. The “I’m afraid if I have needs you’ll reject me” story. I know these stories well, I tell them well. I have memorized all the parts, I can play them all. I reject them well, I willpower over them well- and let them right back in again really well too.
It made me think. What is MY current story? Since I am writing my own story, what would I edit out? I am , after all, the author and the editor. And my life is a living work, meaning that whatever changes I make I can unmake them.
I can un-know myself by looking for my biggest blind spots. I can unlearn the things I think I know by letting go of what I’ve been certain about. There are so many little things that tell our stories. They survive on taking them as truth when they are just ways of doing things established perhaps decades ago. I get afraid and freeze in conflict because I have done that most of my life. I don’t ask for help because I believe that I’ll be seen as too needy. I numb my emotions because my story has been I’m too sensitive.
I’ve discovered many outdated stories that I don’t even believe in. Like my commitments to not failing, or not looking stupid, or not making mistakes, or that if I make a mistake or don’t know something I lose my credibility forever.
If I unlearn my story, un-know myself, what will change? Instead of adding another layer of wallpaper peel it all back instead. Peel back until there is just me, and my skin, and my mind- ready to begin again. Be a blank slate…but in a healthy way. In a way that writes a story, over and over again. We are by nature evolutionary, and yet the thing it seems like we try for is to get to some kind of robotic level of sameness as if that’s what builds security, a proper life story.
I’m here to tell you it doesn’t. Trying so hard for the comfort of sameness crushes life. I imagine if trees tried to make the exact same leaves every spring, or if the weather was the same every single day. If we had to eat the same things, or never talk to new people, or read that same one book over and over.
Sameness is the enemy of comfort. It is the pseudo-solution that we are sold as success but is actually the thing that crushes us! The thing to work for is comfort in uncertainty, regulation in dynamism. If I am practicing being able to regulate myself in the rolling and roiling events of my daily life then I can be more complexly adapted and capable. I am working towards an actual livable situation rather than holding out for an existence.
When people shrug and say “It’s just the way I am” and I want to shake them awake. When we try so hard to stay the same we miss out on all the people we were intended to be.
My story for so long has been me living in limbo- caught between the confident capable woman I am and the story in my head that I am still a scared little girl, with no rights. I have been in the liminal space of identity, trapped in fear because I have been conditioned to stay ashore with the devil I know. I have clung to that pier, refused to swim out into the open water into my next evolution, afraid of unlearning the port of what I already know. No more.
I need to not know who I am. To be a stranger to myself so I can have another story to tell, to write and write on my life like I have all the time in the world. I do not want to stay the same, I want to evolve and grow and LIVE. Be alive. I reject the idea that sameness is safety. I embrace the idea that I am alive, living, moving, evolving, and that in this motion is the story of my life. Unlearning gives me more room to know, know who I am today, and who I want to be tomorrow.