I was in communication lockdown recently. Out for six months-ish. It feels like I’ve been out of commission for a long time, but in comparison to the number of years I have been needing a reset, this seems like a blip.
For a long time, I approached the activities I love with a desperation that was beginning to scare me. Of course there is a component to blame within my relationship, family, and circumstances, but there was also me, who was not willing to look at myself and my surroundings. I always had a choice to either confront my pain or keep my head down and plod forward. I plodded. To be fair, I didn’t have any other tools. I hadn’t done enough internal work, I hadn’t looked around at my surroundings and used the muscle of radical imagine to draw something liveable for myself. I was scared to unravel the constraints of my life that impeded my autonomy because they also, insidiously, provided security. A broken marriage grows to be familiar. I found comfort in the familiar, even when it was suffocation.
One way to avoid emptiness is to steep yourself in production. For that, you have to become a master of compartmentalization. Compartmentalization is a performance: an act of being okay, but the ultimate anxiety is perception, because anyone taking a closer look will see the act. The jig will be up.
I am a master compartmentalizer. I learned this skill because I wanted to keep up with my activities of daily living. Because I worried that my entire life was meaningless without a voracious engagement in everything I decided to do. I wanted to manufacture as much meaning as possible. I could find no other reason to be alive. I knew that there was meant to be more, that people were meant to feel an intrinsic fulfillment in existing, but I couldn’t channel that feeling.
This was my first signal that something was deeply wrong. I couldn’t sit, breathe, and revel in my existence without an alarming amount of anxiety. I was afraid of sleep. I resented the fact that I had biological needs that deprived me of the opportunity to do more, more, more, but no amount of creation was enough to stave away the cloying anxiety that there had to be something more. The only way to fill the endless empty chambers inside me was to put my head down and grind, but I was beginning to feel exhausted.
I knew I was at the end of my stint when I began to feel the various aspects my life collapsing in on each other, swirling into something that I could either let wilt into a black hole or I could transform into a new galaxy. The black hole was the easy choice in some ways, but a pinprick within me piqued each time I tried to relent to the black hole. I began to recognize the pinprick as my most essential need - a deep desire to make sense of my life. The way this lack of clarity manifested in my body was a dissonance between the performance of “I’m okay” and a ringing I couldn’t turn off. It seemed to come from my heart. I was profoundly unhappy, and it didn’t make sense to me that I didn’t have happiness. I was doing all the motions associated with happiness, and yet…
It was a profound moment when I figured it out. It came to me while I was stuck in traffic in Uganda. The softest epiphany. The sun was due to set, and as I watched it go down, a primal calmness possessed me. It was a readiness to let go. To let go of security. Security was no longer liveable. I was ready to integrate my reality with the radical imagination it would take to be brave and honest with myself about my needs. I needed a divorce, to move across the country, and to rest.
I am still living into that epiphany, gutting my life, and trying to find myself in this renovation. I can’t go back, because bone-deep unhappiness cannot be unseen once seen. The renovation has no map. It feels hard to change everything. It’s hard every single day, and my body doesn’t know what to make of it. Sometimes crying feels good. Sometimes just sitting still is what I need. Sometimes, a walk. Through it all, I also feel immensely grateful. I am grateful to myself for wanting my life to make sense, for knowing that happiness has a place within it. I am grateful to certain friends who showed me immense compassion when I was a shell of need, unable to give anything back but a promise to keep trying. I feel grateful I get to have a chance at something new and better. I am grateful I didn’t let my unhappiness take my life.
I am writing this newsletter because I feel ready to start finding ways back to my beloved activities in ways that are healthy and meaningful. When I first decided to make big changes in my life, I wanted nothing more than an empty white room to sit in and think. I wanted the chance to daydream, to imagine life on my own terms. That was what my relationship deprived me of. The opportunity to live on my own terms, and instead filled me with the instincts, notions, and chatter of someone else entirely. I wanted to sit in a white room and disentangle - separate myself from all that is not myself.
Of course, I’ll never get to just sit in a room for days to sort out who I am. Reality presents the opportunity to disentangle in spurts and pieces. And I have a lot of chiseling to do. There is muck and existence and happenings, and only some of that is for me. I have to look for myself within all of it. This newsletter isn’t coming to you because I am now a healed person, or even a whole person. I am still long for the white empty room, and I don’t have that, but I am sitting in a room that full of objects that belong only to me, that are beautiful, with my cat curled up in my lap. There are blank walls with shadows dancing on them, and I will fill them one day with all the right things. It’s so easy, in my space, to tell when something doesn’t belong. I use it as a practice chamber to build out my life. I develop my listening skills, so I can hear when my gut instinct tells me something is wrong, or leads me in a new way. I am opening up to the idea that life comes in seasons, and even when I feel like post-winter soggy mulch, I am still entitled to happiness.
While I didn’t make any New Years resolutions this year (mostly because I am on the crisp edge of necessary, sustainable change already, and pushing into resolutions beyond my capacity seems a dangerous game for me to play right now), I did make one change based on wisdom from multiple sources. I am dedicatedly journaling this year, as a therapeutic and creative practice. I decided this after receiving multiple signs and encouragements to start. First, a text from my endlessly wise best friend Audrey:
And then again in a book I am reading called Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents:
And then I remembered reading The Artist’s Way at the beginning of the pandemic, in 2020, and how Julia Cameron talks about morning pages as a way to “clear your throat” for all the better thoughts and ideas to come. So far, I find journaling both a throat clearing and also a much-needed, low stakes opportunity to express myself. I need that. I need to express, express, express. So here I am, sharing with you, expressing, expressing, expressing.
With love,
Swati
But First, Writing
I published a few things at the end of last year, and would love if you were able to spend time with them.
My essay “The Things I Knew Before Me” was published in Write or Die Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize! It’s a lyric essay about queerness, family, nose rings, and But I’m a Cheerleader
I published two poems in The Rumpus for their ENOUGH column, which is to never stop the conversation around rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
I wrote a poem for Mortal Mag’s Nostalgia issue called “By the Way, It’s Winter” (scroll down and you’ll find it)
Recently Read
Bariloche by Andrés Neuman
A translated novel that tells the story of Demetrio, a trash collector in Buenos Aires, through his tesselated memories. This was a vibes-heavy book, with some of the most beautiful sentences about garbage I have ever read. Read for something gritty, lyrical, and poignant.
Down the Drain by Julia Fox
I read this on audio, which was narrated by Julia herself. Despite the darkness of her story, there was a flamboyant warmth and humor. I needed breaks from the graphic descriptions, but overall, loved the read. This is coming from someone who is cautious about celebrity memoirs.
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali
A divine poetry collection that contends with the complexities of gender, faith, and family within desire, ancestorhood, and violence. The poems were pithy yet lush, and it was a remarkable debut. I will be sharing more thoughts on this in a forthcoming review <3
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke writes back to an up-and-coming writer who is suffering from the common fate of sensitive observers of the world. I found this collection healing, and sits next to Bluets by Maggie Nelson as one I would like to reread periodically when I feel distant from my essential self.
Link Roulette
I am obsessed with this series of famous people’s favorite books. I immediately got all of Greta Gerwig’s!
Chilling read about the realistic doll mommy community, which is also a ripe concept for a short story setting!
A very lovely short story that made me feel a full spectrum of emotions
Oooo, bibliotherapy! I would practice that.
A little explainer on cringe and ick
Gorgeous gorgeous tulip fields. This image alone could get me through winter’s onslought.
Now that Strava has a DM feature, it is ripe grounds for….getting hit on based on your mile time?
A case and guide for setting boundaries in casual relationships
Yay! Welcome back!
I missed you! "Security was no longer liveable." So endlessly proud of you.