to show
the world
all of me,
i have to
tell them
about you.
i cannot speak
in half-truths
anymore.
i cannot
live
half-way.
Truth is infuriating.
Rage-inducing, at times.
How does the saying go? The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off?
Well, I’m fucking pissed.
I’ve been pissed for a long time. I was just exceptionally good at ignoring it.
Until now.
I recently read this stunning essay by Ailey Jolie, that restructured me on a cellular level. It was a boon and a balm, chalked full of absolute bangers like, “the body doesn’t keep score. It keeps the story,” and “things don’t get stuck. They take shape.”
Oof.
I have felt broken for such a long, long time.
It feels like an inescapable narrative when you experience twisted abuse from an authority figure you love. There is no end to the confusion and shame and anger when a child is harmed by an adult, especially when the adult is family.
The depths of coping, the breadth of enduring, the lengths of withstanding one goes to to survive – to survive the hiding, to survive the pretending, to survive the surviving – is both miraculous and heartbreaking.
A child cannot help feeling broken under horrid circumstances. My little brain decided that must be why it happened. It was the only conclusion I could come to in order to restore a level of sense to my chaotic life. To my chaotic beginning.
So, I’ve spent decades fixing. I’ve spent money, time, energy on an exhaustive quest to repair my fractures. To fill the gaps I was forced to create. To mend the rips and the tears done by another. I did it all on the premise that I was not whole, and could not be whole, until I was fixed.
Oof.
But this confining narrative has slowly unfurled. The restraints I required so young have loosened, to the point where I need only step out of them. Shake them off. The year of the wood snake was my journey into unraveling. My prison had become my identity, yet something whispered over and over again: you are not this cage.
That is what the essay, and Ailey Jolie’s wisdom, really encapsulates for me. My body, and my current state of being, is not a problem. It’s not meant to be fixed. My body, and my being, do not “hold” my trauma, therefore it can’t simply be released.
I am shaped by my trauma. I built my architecture around the wounds inflicted upon me. My mind and my body developed this structure to survive. Not only because of years of abuse, but “…in response to conditions that were never named as harmful because they were just called being a woman.”
Seriously, go read the essay. It’s incredible.
And I know that I’m beginning a massive restructuring. I’ve sensed it coming for a few years, and now I’m well and truly in it.
For the astrology folks out there: Saturn AND Neptune entered Aries, which happens to be my sun sign, and sits in my fourth house.
The fourth house rules foundations, home, security, traditions, lineage, ancestry. It’s not simply about the land, the place, or the structure we take shelter in. It’s not just about the home, the family, and the ancestors we come from.
It’s also about the body.
After reading that essay, something clicked. I’ve read so many astrology reports about this moment, all of them alluding to major renovations. Maybe, they’ve said, it will be a big move. Maybe, they’ve said, it will be a great shift in the management of my home.
Mostly, they’ve touched on foundations.
That word has followed me around for years, popping in and out of my periphery. I’ve seen it, but it’s foggy. A distant blur I can’t quite make out. I understand the concept, but draw a blank when applying it to myself.
It feels too big, too vague, too much.
And I can’t shift my foundations if I can’t identify what they are. It’s like looking at a map upside down, or staring at a compass that won’t settle. I’ve had no orientation. I’ve been stuck in place, floating in ether.
Until that essay.
The ground beneath me still feels far from solid, but I’ve found a rope to grab onto. A tether. Something to reach for and follow while I float in this liminality.
After reading it, I immediately went to my tarot deck. I’ve been restless for … well, ever, but particularly so in the last year. Especially in the last month. I’ve wanted to move, to act, but the universe keeps inviting me to pause, to rest.
It’s excruciating.
But I’d finally found a tether, and now I needed an anchor. So I went to my cards.
Guess what I pulled?
The Four of Swords.
Iykyk. If you don’t, here’ the cliff-notes: rest.
The fours in tarot are about structuring, stabilizing, and – as I’ve learned from Lindsay Mack – pausing.
Pausing is essential.
When we’re creating or building, when we’re in the flow of it all, pausing comes naturally. We stop to view our progress, we step back to zoom out, or we walk away to double check something.
We pause to readjust our position or our condition (a.k.a going to the bathroom, eating, drinking water, which is difficult for us neurodivergent folks, but eventually we do it.)
We pause all the time. Automatically.
Doing it with intention, however, is a different beast. That is what I feel the Four of Swords is inviting us to do. It asks: how can you choose to rest, to pause, right now? What is available to you in this moment?
An interpretation I particularly like is Meg Jones Wall’s from Finding the Fool:
“…the four of swords is about taking space for insight and protecting our perceptions of all that has happened. When we push past our own hurt or exhaustion and force ourselves to endure for the sake of pride, it can cause real harm, prohibiting us from processing our experiences fully and learning from our mistakes.”
If you replace the word “mistake” for “shape,” it brings us back to the wisdom of Ailey Jolie:
“A woman who understands the shape she was asked to take – who can feel it, contextualize it, question it – has access to something no release technique can offer. She knows she wasn’t broken. She knows that her body was and is accurate. And that changes everything that comes next.”
And, let me tell you, it really, really does.
But I was so pissed and so confused about pulling the Four of Swords. I swore and I hissed and I clenched until eventually I was like “fuck it, I’ll just go for a bath.”
That in and of itself is a huge, huge privilege, and I am so so lucky that I,
a) have a bath to soak in,
b) have a physical book to read,
c) have a partner who can watch the baby while I indulge in both.
I honour and give thanks to all these things and I honour the anger, the guilt, and the resistance that accompanies the invitation to rest. Rest is not easy. My body was not built for it. I was not shaped by it – most bodies are not.
Not only because I’m a woman, and I learned very young that I’m expected to provide free labour for men (with little to no reciprocity) while simultaneously deferring labour to members of the global majority – because I am white.
Not only because I’m neurodivergent, and I’ve been shamed and punished for being unable to perform tasks in the way, and at the pace, of society’s expectation while simultaneously being rewarded and protected for my mediocrity – because I am white.
Not only because I was abused for several years, and my nervous system developed hyper-vigilance which has kept me in fight/flight/freeze/faun responses while simultaneously repeating wounds and violence onto others with less severe consequence(s) – because I am white.
But also because capitalism tells me my worth is attached to my productivity. That I can only be worthy, deserving and rewarded when I am doing. Never by being.
All of the above makes up my internal scaffolding. And it is but a mere glimpse into the shape of me.
I am both grateful and wrathful at knowing this.
So, I went and had my bath. I started a stunning new book. It was lovely. But something felt off. My mind wouldn’t shut the fuck up. My body wouldn’t stop fidgeting. I was both exhausted AND wired.
So I put the book down, I sat up, I paused, and I felt into my body.
I sensed the tightness in my jaw and the soreness in my neck – my chronically sore neck.
I wondered why it was always so sore. I got curious. I remember reading once that a stiff neck symbolized an inability to view different perspectives, so I leaned into the pain of my upper traps and asked: what would you like me to know?
And my body spoke.
It told me it was unsafe to look around. Just look ahead. Stare up at the ceiling. Ignore everything else. Don’t look, don’t see. Just ignore. You have to ignore. Ignore to survive. Just look up.
Well.
I broke into tears.
It was a lot. It is a lot.
But this truth lives inside me. It was once a very true and very real reality for me, and it rests in my body. It shapes it.
And, yes, this pisses me off.
It enrages me that someone harmed me so deeply that I’ve had to sever myself from that truth. It enrages me that the harmful systems currently in place made me sever myself from that truth.
It pisses me off that it was so hard for me to re-access it, and it pisses me off that it hurts so much now that I have.
It’s infuriating. It’s devastating. It’s freeing. And it’s elating.
It’s a lot. And it’s true.
The truth rests in my body.
And I am finally letting myself learn and understand its shape.
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