late to the emergency
A memoire vignette on being everyone's person, and learning to become your own.
My therapist asked me in a session the other day if I had ever given any thought to who I wanted to become, besides the conduit to the greatness of my loved ones. And no she didn’t phrase it like that, but I am a writer, and I know what the fuck she meant, lol.
The gag tho, is IDK the answer to the question. I don’t spend time on that version of events. The version where it’s just me, with no one else’s needs in the frame. The question almost doesn’t parse. It feels like being asked what I’d order, if I’d never heard of a menu.
But okay. Let me try.
I want to become someone who is late enough to other people’s emergencies that I’ve had enough time to check in with myself first. Late enough to know whether I’m coming because I want to or because something in me doesn’t believe I’m allowed to stay home.
I want to stop feeling the shape of other people’s needs before I feel my own. I want to walk into a room without my body doing math. Tallying who’s okay, who isn’t, and what’s being asked of me without being asked. I want to stop being so good at that. I want it to cost me something to do it, instead of costing me something not to.
Someone as competent at her own life as I am at other people’s. Not a crisis manager. Someone who does the work she chose, full out, no hedging.
Someone loving and well loved. I know that’s not supposed to be in this answer. The prompt has a “without anyone else” energy to it and I’m not sure love qualifies. But I’m leaving it in, because a self that doesn’t include love isn’t a self I recognize. And I want a love I’m at the center of, instead of in service to.
I want to become someone who tells the truth about what hurts without immediately explaining why it makes sense that it hurts, without contextualizing the hurt so thoroughly that by the end everyone “understands” and feels sorry for my circumstances, and I’ve disappeared entirely. I do that. I make myself disappear inside my own pain so other people can stay comfortable in it with me.
I want to take up more space than that.
Someone whose thoughts land. Whose ideas are received. A culture worker. A Soulworker. Someone who sustains herself on her own terms, through the work that is actually hers.
Someone beautiful. Or at least put together. Present in her body in a way that doesn’t feel like negotiation.
Someone who writes. Who keeps writing. Not toward anything in particular. Just because it’s the one thing that has ever felt like mine.
I’ll read this to my therapist next week and see what she says. LOL.
Have you ever felt yourself disappearing inside the needs of others? How are you practicing being 'late' to emergencies that aren't yours?
Love y’all. Mean it. If you love me back, Buy Me A Book!
I didn't stop being that person until I literally lost my mind. The world shut down, my life went to shit, and I had to rely on others for once. And my village showed up and showed out. I wonder how many of us could experience that? Not necessarily being knocked down in the manner that I was, but to willingly give up the reins and hold space for our village to show up... or not?
girl, yes! this resonated so deeply. ✨
i’m learning who i am and what i want my life to look like. while i’ll always be there for my loved ones, it’s time to prioritize myself and lead a life that i’m proud of.