Last night I had a good cry. In the tub. I made the water almost excruciatingly hot and got in. I guess I wanted to recreate a womb. I needed a kind of comfort that has been heretofore absent from my experience. A kind of rest and ease and safety that I have somehow forfeited for… I don’t know.
A good cry can sound, to a passing ear, like laughter. Laying there with my face half in- half out of the water, I wondered if it sounded like I was laughing. Then more serious questions arose: Was I going to swallow the salty water and choke? Would that set off an asthma attack I couldn’t chemically stop because there was no inhaler in my bathroom? Shouldn’t I just sit my ass up in the tub so water couldn’t get in my mouth and nose in the first place? Why was I even in the tub curled in the fetal position crying like a child? Wouldn’t I be better served sitting downstairs in half lotus sipping tea and journaling? Was this really necessary?
When I decided that wholeness was my ultimate goal, self-care wasn’t a buzzword in the cultural zeitgeist. I had to wait a few decades for that. In the interim, someone somewhere decided it would be a great idea to convince people that healing was an easy process. That all you needed was a special blend of herbs and spices, soft music, beautifully fragranced candles, cucumbers for your eyes, and towels for your head and body after you step out of a refreshing bath with an effervescent bath bomb. What no one was willing to highlight was the ugly part, because we all hate the ugly parts. We don’t like pain. We don’t like the nasty underbelly. We want the victory without the hassle of battle. We want the ugliness rectified and buttoned up easy with no mention of how it got ugly or how it will get cleaned up. I want to be especially haughty with this bit: there is no healing without the poetic beauty of pain. Physical wounds hurt as they heal, sometimes as much as they did when they were first inflicted…so it is with emotional wounds.
So why was I in the tub crying like a child? A few reasons, all complicated and simple and multitudinous in their expression. The most expedient way I can articulate it is, I was sad. I’d had a realization earlier that evening that triggered a years old unhealed (read: unaddressed) wound. A deep one. It wasn’t necessarily 40- year-old Nikki who was hurting, but 40- year-old Nikki caught the blow.
It is imperative that I pause here and make abundantly clear that I am not a mental health professional nor a spiritual coach. I am a person writing about their experience with their own healing journey. What I discuss here is my interpretation of things that I’ve experienced and observed about my own healing journey. I don’t know your life.
One thing I have struggled with my entire life is forgiving myself for my “mistakes”. I am much better at identifying and articulating the lessons I learn when I make mistakes, and I’m grateful for that, but the last little bit, the most necessary part (IMHO), is forgiving myself after I realize that my actions precipitated the “mistake”. This has been more challenging in the last decade or so because in that time, I’ve gained more love and appreciation for myself than I had in the years before. I’d stopped hating myself full tilt, and created a better relationship with me. So when (never if) I make a decision that dishonors me, and leads to some sort of disappointment or unpleasant circumstances, I feel guilty because I care that much about myself. And this sounds, on its face, very much like the murmurings of a narcissist (maybe?). An overly self important individual (possibly?). I assure you it’s not. I believe you should love yourself enough to care about how your decisions affect you on a soul level. Especially if you have gotten to a place where you are creating the kind of life you want to live.
Last night, the trigger was a feeling that I had let my people down. And by my people, I mean the people who love me and want to see me thrive, myself included. It hurt. To help you understand how I got from the moment of the initial triggering to coughing up saltwater in my bathtub, I want you to think about when a baby gets inoculated. They’re chilling, then somebody grabs a meaty part of their body and gives them a shot. There’s a brief bit of confusion and then, rightfully, screams and tears. It took about 45 minutes from the end of the conversation wherein I was triggered to the super hot water bath.
I don’t like disappointing people. What I hate more than that? Feeling like I disappointed someone. I am much more comfortable exceeding expectations and going overboard than falling short. I hold myself to a standard that makes me laugh sometimes because it can be ridiculous, but if I don’t meet the fringes of that standard, call the usher because I’m about to fall out. Several younger versions of me decided that it was better to overachieve because the looks on people’s faces when I couldn’t meet their expectations hurt too much. So even when it wasn’t conducive to what Nikki needed, Nikki delivered. People pleasing is what I’m describing here, y’all. If I showed you my awards and trophies from my childhood, you would understand. I had to excel. I had to make everyone proud and assured that I could do “it”.
The other part, the part that I think put me on fetal position autopilot, is this thing I don’t touch in my healing work. Well, not really. The impact of being orphaned on how I relate to others. I talk about it, but last night I felt it. I saw it. No matter how much love you feel from the people who act as surrogates for your parents, you still feel… abandoned, thrown away, discarded, an obligation. So it becomes vital that you prove you’re worthy to be loved, to be cared for, to be “kept around”. Because your cover is gone. The image that pops up when I think about it a house with no roof. There’s a foundation and walls and all the other, but there’s no protection from the elements. Parents provide that protection. Even if you have no one else, you have them. I didn’t. At least not in the physical. Add to that being told that I wasn’t wanted, shouldn’t have been born, and a litany of other things by a woman who just missed her daughter, and here I am.
I released a lot into the water last night. I got out emotionally raw and am, at press time, a kind of tired I haven’t been in a long time. But I feel lighter. Like maybe I finally learned the fullness of the lessons these past 3 years were trying to teach me. My boundaries are important. My love, independence, and safety are holy. My intuition can and should be trusted. My yes and no are sacred. I belong to myself, and as such, am duty bound to do what needs to be done in service of my Self. I went into a situation with the intention to love and be loved. Other things happened and I dishonored the sanctity of my life. And that’s okay. It’s not “okay” as in it’s not a big deal, but it is “okay” in the sense that I am human, and make mistakes. And sometimes, I need to learn big lessons in big ways. The biggest lesson I learned last night was that no matter how I may have felt before, I am loved. I am cared for. I have support. I don’t have to please anyone other than myself. I’m okay. That’s something worth crying happy tears over. Let me go run a bath.
