cocooning

Articulating eloquently was always the goal, always the purpose when I would open my mouth. Now I’m not so sure what the point is anymore - and not in a despairing way. I’ve always craved being understood and now I feel deeply that there are only a few who I will ever truly desire to understand and be understood by. I don’t know what I have to say but there are definitely things there on the tip of my tongue and I keep holding them in. They could be anything: maybe songs, podcast episodes, film, perhaps something completely different than anything I can imagine right now. I’ve never totally felt like any one medium has my name on it. Maybe I just haven’t landed on “the thing” or maybe there will always be multiple channels for my creativity to play out. I’m unsure about a lot of things but it doesn’t mean I’m dreading waking up every day in the middle of the confusion of it all. I’m in flux and I’m okay with it. I’m letting everything catch up to me - it’s been too long that I’ve been running and pretending like I’m not terrified of staring into the mirror and befriending who I see there. I have been so controlling about how I am perceived or when or by whom. I am afraid of being consumed. I am afraid of seeming unfinished and confusing so I self sabotage and choose not to finish anything. I peer out from behind the curtain every so often but ultimately choose quiet solitude over the very gut wrenching collective. Every time.

But then I turned 29 and decided it’s time to be brave and show up for myself and do the scary things. So I now have a coach and some accountability because I actually have so much to give and there’s so much I want to be visible and I don’t want to retroactively edit and censor anymore. I want to be messy and alive more than I want to be correct and digestible. I am full of words and colours and glitter and it’s oozing out of me and I can’t keep it under wraps anymore, it has to come out. And it has to stay witnessable now, I cannot go back into the cocoon once I have emerged.

It’s a painful process, admitting defeat to the tiny little finite cocoon you’ve built for yourself. My heart aches for how badly I want to stay inside it. But this is part of the running away and everything catching up. I know I can’t run anymore. I have to say yes to whatever is next. I’ve grown too big to stay inside. And it feels like agony because I’m picturing the last time my dad picked me up as a child and neither of us knew it was the last time, or maybe we did. Or the last time you said goodbye to someone and you had no idea it was the last time. Time moves on and we grieve what we can no longer return to. There are places we can no longer visit.

I created such a comfortable, colourful, cozy world for myself in there, in my own mind, in this dreamscape where only my creations and ideas exist. But it feels kind of like the velveteen rabbit becoming real - there comes a point where the risk of painful things happening outweighs the risk of potentially staying safe and imagined forever. I feel like in letting go of control I am saying to myself that this uncomfortability and potential failure is worth far more than what I think is safety right now. I have clung to safety for so long. And familiarity. And convention. And I can’t pretend like they are enough for me anymore.

This feeling has existed for such a long time in me, but I suppose now it feels so uncomfortable how badly I want other people to see inside the cocoon. It is a desperate kind of feeling. To want others to see. It contradicts the desire to also protect and defend what is yours: your very specific type of lunacy.

But if I’ve learned anything from my favourite authors, actors, artists, activists: it’s that you’re not actually crazy. What is crazy is pretending to be something you’re not. And pretending to be smaller than you actually are.

I imagine this feeling is similar to when people describe wanting to be in love. Experiencing the desire for someone to witness their life unfolding in real time. Or like a child who wants a playmate now that they have a new Lego set. That urgent this-is-what-I-need-and-I-need-it-now feeling. I feel like a child who wants to hold the attention of any adult in the room who will let me tell them a story. But it feels scary and potentially heart breaking to do so.

I want to make everything accessible, to unravel the cocoon so passersby can investigate and find and make their own meaning in the marks on the paper thin walls. The walls which happen to feel a lot more like wings, or skin. Just as delicate but infinitely more sensitive.