Rough Drafts
A Series of Pieces Written in The Wild
#9
“I’m glad to get to know this version of you too” the post on Instagram read. How sad it feels to know a post from a stranger can validate me more than some people have in my 35 years of existence. That’s not to say I don’t have people in my life who do like continuing to get to know me alongside me. But it strikes me as jarring. And then I think about art, and books, and the TV show I watch over and over and it’s the same thing. It’s escapism, yes, but it’s also speaking to a part or many parts of myself that feel validated, touched, amused, camaraderie. And that’s not a terrible thing.
It can feel one-sided though or am I thinking of people now? I guess with art it can grow with you and you can learn more about yourself and the piece the older you get, the more experiences that make your belt feel a bit snug. And relationships can feel that way too, but they don’t always stay. Sometimes they don’t give an answer for their absence and it can be hard to know what to do with that space. I think about that space a lot and what to do about it or within and it usually gets filled with outside advice and thoughts and nonsense very quickly.
I lose the ability to hear what I may want to do or what I know to do from experience over the loudness of other people’s “rightness.” Or sense of rightness. I’m thinking a lot about Oaxaca right now. How I learned to do this Wild Writing there in a small circle with amazing women. It felt so bonding and beautiful and then after we wrote and shared and cried we ate and wandered and laughed surrounded by the brightly-colored buildings and atop the cobbled streets. I haven’t been to Mexico since then. I haven’t spoken to most of the women on that retreat since then. So much has happened in the space in between. Would they like the person I’ve become the way they seemed to like the person I was then?
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know. Or if it’s any of my business or why I want to know. I listened to Julia Cameron in an interview talk about “big mirrors”: people that see you and like you for the space you take up but more so who are supportive of seeing you grow. Something along those lines. Implying to me that those mirrors feel that way about themselves and you as a big mirror to them too. Growth and coming into the next phase of one’s being should not be a threat.
