I'm a Goddamn Force of Nature
Four months of this newsletter, can you even believe? Eventually I'll stop marking each new month like this, but it still feels noteworthy right now because I am notoriously bad at sticking with projects if they fail to provide me with my required dose of dopamine, and yet, here I am. I'm very proud of the work I've done here so far and I hope to do many more months of it, and thank you, thank you, thank you as always for being here and reading what I write every week. Or however often you read. I don't expect anyone reads every single one of these.
I've been thinking a lot lately about energy. Not only in the physical sense, although that too, but in the emotional. I have a bad habit of pouring and pouring into people who are happy to receive what I give them but who don't really care, and who are definitely not pouring into me the same way. I convince myself that one day, if I'm persistent and diligent enough, they'll see me and appreciate what I've offered and then they'll love me the way I need to be loved, and when it doesn't happen, because of course it was never going to, I become resentful and frustrated and wonder why I keep repeating this cycle over and over again. So much space in therapy has gone to unpacking this with very little result.
Someone said to me recently that relationships don't always have to be reciprocal, that there can be value and fulfillment in giving more to someone than they're giving to you as long as you understand what the relationship is and don't expect it to change. Maybe that's true, but it doesn't feel true to me. I'm tired of shattering myself against the rocks of other people's indifference. I'm tired of convincing myself to give thanks for scraps when I deserve a feast. I'm tired of shrinking myself to try to fit the mold of someone who can be loved. I'm not doing it anymore. From now on, I'm stepping back and I'm watching how people treat me and respond to me and I'm adjusting my output accordingly. It might make me sad and I might feel a little bit emptier, and it might not even be an entirely fair thing to do because God knows I've been the person giving less before and it wasn't because I didn't care, but it's all I feel able to do at this point. Love me or don't, but don't give me this mediocre, half-assed version of caring and expect me to be grateful. There are people in my life who are giving me their full, unadulterated hearts and communicating to me in my love language, which is equal parts quality time and words of affirmation, that I matter to them, and that's what I deserve and that's all I'm accepting moving forward.
Not from everyone, obviously. Some friends exist more on the surface of things and that's fine and there's value in those relationships too. This applies more to the people I desperately want to be more than that, deeper than that. I can't single-handedly force them there and why would I want to try? I'm fucking great and I'm going where I feel like that's acknowledged.
I just rewatched Ginger Snaps, one of my favorite horror movies of all time, which is where the title of this post comes from, and this time around I related to Ginger in a way I never have before. I'm not saying she was right or that the things she did were good, but I am saying that when she said, "I get this ache, and at first I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces," I felt that. I, too, want to tear everything to fucking pieces. This world is not built for girls and women who are hungry, who are ravenous for life and love and success and happiness and absolutely everything it owes us. It's not built for those of us who are all teeth and spark and dangerous desire. There is no room for our hearts or our egos or our power, and there's also no room for our fear or our need or our sadness. Even now, in 2024, we're told to be smaller, quieter, simpler. Less. Always less. I'm not past the struggle of feeling like I'm too much and not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable with it, but I'm past the point where I feel like those thoughts are valid or grounded in anything real.
I want so much, and it's okay to want it all. It's okay to keep pushing and keep fighting and keep trying. It's okay to be a lot. It's okay to be hungry. And while it's not necessarily ideal to try to satiate that hunger with other people, it's also not possible to do it alone. The trick, I think, is to find the people whose hunger aligns with yours and to feed off of each other to get the things you need, and to stop scavenging from people who simply aren't capable of or interested in fulfilling you and then wondering why you're still starving.
This is why I love Ginger Snaps. It's heavy-handed, yes, lycanthropy as a metaphor for burgeoning womanhood and menstruation and coming into your own sexuality, and at this point it's a little overdone. But it hits so hard and it's so funny, and Ginger and Bridget are so relatable. I am both Bridget, anxiously lurking in the shadows, hoping to go unnoticed and wanting nothing more than to exist forever with only her sister for company, and Ginger, becoming aware of how powerful she is and how much she wants, how deep her hunger goes, how many ways she can wield it. Inside you there are two wolves, etc etc.
A few days ago I read Every Time You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris and it connects perfectly with all of this. It's a gorgeous book about girls who are fiercely angry and hungry and driven and desperate, who hurt each other and themselves in pursuit of more and better, who love so brightly and furiously that it blots out everything except their need to keep moving. It's about creating and destroying and learning that you don't have to do one to do the other. It's prickly and difficult and unlikable and I absolutely loved it, and it made me think about what I want and if my current methods are getting me any closer to it. The answer, on almost all fronts, is no. And so what to do about that?
I write a lot about what I deserve and learning to love myself, and I stand by every word of it, but it's much harder to live out that truth. I've spent most of my life taking up as little space as possible, sitting back and wishing for things to come to me and mourning them when they don't. I've been soft and I've been quiet and I still want to be those things to some extent. Softness is one of my most prized qualities, and one I'll always defend because people conflate it with weakness and it isn't that. But I've sanded down all my edges in the process. I've figured out how to be the least offensive version of myself, the version that upsets the fewest people possible, the version that keeps everyone comfortable. And what has it gotten me? It took me until age 35 to learn what it feels like to truly desire and to learn that desire doesn't have to be scary. It doesn't have to be dangerous. Or it can be dangerous, but it doesn't have to be something to avoid. Because here's what else I've learned. I can be dangerous too, and I can use that to propel me forward instead of allowing it to freeze me in place.
Sometimes you have to tear everything to fucking pieces in order to build something new in its place. I'm angry that I've been overlooked and underappreciated and that I've allowed that to dictate how I view myself, and anger can be cleansing. Maybe I'll have to lose some things along the way, but maybe those things were never for me anyway. Maybe there are better things that are. Maybe, one day, I'll have succeeded in making a banquet of my life and, after consuming it, I'll finally be full.