#5: I made a decision
a closet tour, thoughts on trust, breaking a promise, and keeping one
Hello.
The closet in my office is small, and when I turn my head to the right, I can see the two collages I’ve hung up, alongside an old Fred Segal hat lined with red silk, and soft olive green fabric on the outside. It reminds me of something Taylor Swift would wear, and I like to think I would, too. Then there’s a Baggu bag with squash on it, a silk neck scarf the color of summer sunshine, and a wall hanging that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the office.
Below the wall things is a pink floral foot stool dedicated to my favorite coffee table books, a rolling shelf stacked with framed art I haven’t found a home for yet, soon-to-be-used journals, a painting of Mendocino, box of watercolor supplies, a special journal that I will only write very important things in (which I realize is too much pressure), and last but not least, a wand. Specifically, Harry Potter’s wand, because you never know when it might be useful.
The closet in my office is small and full and useful. I enjoy having a closet all to myself. A closet that I can fill with things other than clothes. Oh, I almost forgot about my work bag, film camera, and camcorder. They all live there, too.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to tell you about a recent decision that I’ve made. Before this decision there was the cold, white backdrop, and the full stomachs and the hair-braiding and the game-playing and the long, slippery walks over ice and snow. My decision stems from these moments—all packed into a week that went by too quickly, but I don’t think I will tell you about them. Something about not wanting to give them away too soon.
Anyways, the decision I’ve made is this: I am going to trust myself. This statement feels equal parts too big and too small and I usually haven’t a clue how to approach it without either setting myself on fire, or putting the fire out completely. But, and this is a big but: if you give yourself small things to trust yourself with, over time, the trust will start to build and build and soon you are making decisions that used to hold all the power, but are now so much smaller. So much less terrifying.
And soon, the thing you said you can’t do, is the thing you already did.
The trust areas that I’ve been especially focusing on are work-life-balance, writing, and relationships. Then, of course, there is the over-arching one: trusting yourself as a whole. But I do not recommend starting with that one. You may find it leading you further and further away from where you’d like to go.
Having been recently diagnosed with Bipolar, learning to trust feels like learning to speak a new language, and since I have always had a difficult time learning languages, this holds especially true, so I try my best to focus on one area at a time.
The house smells of bone-broth and I can feel the cold coming from the window above my head, and earlier, I thought about how hard it was going to be to write this, and watched YouTube videos instead of trying. But now that I’m here, declaring this decision to all of you, I am much less terrified than I thought I’d be: a decision can be like a promise, a placeholder for when you lose track of your surroundings and the world gets a little fuzzy and you have to go to that place in your mind where the promise waits and you can be reminded of why you made the decision in the first place.
You just have to be sure that this promise isn’t for anyone but yourself.
My decision to write this felt like a promise. A promise to trust. To keep coming back here to make sense of things. It is limitless and freeing and altogether intimidating, which is why I’ve hastily declined any past offer to write consistently. To write for me.
And then there’s the part where you actually have to live all these promises out. Where the day swarms around you and you forget what you’re doing and the panic slips under your skin and the most you can do is breathe and breathe and inhale and exhale. This is why I don’t want to over-complicate it. This is why I want you to remember that a decision, if it doesn’t feel right, can be unmade. This isn’t always true, but in this story, trust is between you and you and the rules that you make and unmake until you find the right fit.
I know I know, a promise is not typically something you’re suppose to break. But what if breaking a promise until you get to the one that feels right, is ok? We can be so hard on ourselves most of the time, I think we should allow for this small flexibility.
I sit upright, facing the window in my office, watching the gray world grow brighter and the books on my windowsill fade and fade until I have to squint to see the titles on their spines. They are all books I plan to read. Or books I just like to have around. There’s a lot that I could piece a part from this calendar year. A lot I could criticize. But I’ve made a decision to trust myself, and if I were to go down that road, I would be breaking that promise, and this promise, after many, many broken ones, is one I would like to keep. In fact, it feels easy to keep and the tug to criticize and piece a part is only a distant tug—something that can be ignored.
It was the day after Christmas. Is sat on the far side of the blue couch. I was un-showered and hot and bothered by myself. I looked down at my toes and felt the sensation of sinking and getting smaller and smaller and hearing less and less joy, as if something muffled against my ears. I kept sitting there, and then I got up and took a shower. Nothing was going to fix this, I thought. I can resist and resist and this sadness will still be there and I will be more frustrated than I was before. I slipped on a fresh pair of socks and left the bathroom weighted and sad and angry that I was sad, but also with the freedom to feel this way.
This was when I made the decision to trust myself. To trust that even when I’m slipping into sadness, I will come back out of it again.
After my shower, I go to the kitchen and tap on my mom’s shoulder. I tell her about my decision. I tell her that I am sad but that it’s ok because I don’t have to try to be anything else right now. My thoughts then flood together and form a pattern that spans way, way back: I have been here so many times before, and now I have this incredible tool to help me when I end up here again. I no longer have to give those feelings a name-tag of good or bad. They can be themselves without me hovering over them and asking them to be different to what they are.
And now it’s January 31, 2021. There’s snow on the ground, I’ve only had one cup of coffee, there’s talk of getting outside today, and there’s also a tightness in my throat that tells me I have more to say. I swallow and tell myself that yes, of course you do! But you don’t have to rush.
You can trust that those words will be there when you get back.
With love,
Chloe
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