Unraveling "Uncertainty."
JESS
It’s 3 AM again, and in the way I lost days, I cannot anchor “again” to a real number.
I am now, according to Kindle, 87% done with a book I began 2 days ago. The main character has spent most of this % avoiding things that scared him, dodging every vulnerable confrontation that could have saved him, inviting harm to himself and his closest relationships. This read was supposed to be a light and mindless distraction.
I stared at the ceiling after closing the book. (I won’t share the hours of thoughts before grabbing water and a journal, but they led me here. Again.)
I reflected on the insecurity I felt earlier tonight. Doubt that crept into my worth, my validity, my value, my attractiveness (as a human), which — to be fair — should be skeptically received 4 days before one’s period. But I found the growing gnaw in my gut curious as the main character kept feeling smaller and smaller in his own world, and something clicked as I rolled “smallness” around my thoughts.
Limitations imposed by what is out of my control right now — financial security, health, all of society as we know it? — has permeated the beliefs of what I CAN control.
I realized how… small I’ve been feeling lately. I hesitate often. I seek permission for little things. I ask questions indirectly, if at all. I don’t make the first move. I delay making decisions, sometimes to the point of expiration. All habits I worked a decade to overcome.
And today, I recognized a smallness I haven’t felt in lifetimes. It is unconsciously, quietly, triggering.
What’s jarring is that every time I “shed” that smallness and act in confidence or self-care, I am immediately reminded that I can cause harm. To walk to the burger joint because I was tired of being blue, immediately followed by a conversation on The Peak. To drop a curbside visit to my parents and decide to go inside, immediately followed by days of indigestion, ulcer pangs, anxiety. Did I potentially put them at risk? Did I harm them, even if I have been indoors for weeks? To share a snapshot of something I am grateful for on instagram: will that be shitty? Do I deserve? Did I fuck up?
I think about how badly I want to go biking now, how I crave sunlight and air, how I need a long walk for mental and physical health, and how I convince myself over and over again that I cannot. It has become a daily practice, to remind myself of what I cannot. And in that process, I have spoken away the parts of myself I worked so hard to speak back into my life.
In this familiar, private part of night, I remind myself this smallness is temporary.
I remind myself, within the daily practice of “I cannot,” to also remember what “I can.”
And to just do what I can. Again, and again, and again.
