On Patterns//Falling Down and Getting Hurt
I used to ask my father where the sky ended, and “when our memories leave us, where do they go?” He said “nowhere, everywhere.”
Image by Arash Fattahi
Lying in bed the other night, teetering on the cusp of sleeplessness and an insensate doze, I talked to the angels in my head; I asked them “I'll be okay, right?” One of my family friends–a self-proclaimed medium–once said my angels told her I was a Welsh princess in my past life. They’d have to answer me if I was royalty, right? Telling myself “everything will be alright because it always is,” is starting to become insufficient for me nowadays. But the angels, it seemed, had decided to take a vow of resounding silence that night. I rolled over in my frustration and attempted sleep unsuccessfully. Sometimes I wish I could take my brain out and put it in a cool glass of water for the night and return it in the morning, just for a little break. When I sleep, I’m not sure if I really rest.
The city is starting to thaw, but I wonder if I will follow its course. The spring solstice is nigh, and I think I’d like to achieve some sort of informed detachment from expectations, but I don’t know how. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the cyclical nature of life, that repetitive, undying force that ebbs and flows in syncopated beats. I’ve been spinning and weaving the threads of my experience, executing a grotesque succession of patterns that may be slightly pleasing to look at upon first glance, but for the most part, they’re rather ugly and complicated. Somewhere along the way, I think, it became past the point of rectification. It’s not as if I could unravel the disjointed collections of yarn that form the tapestry of my life and simply start anew. Sometimes my perplexing, cumbersome patterns make me feel like I’m not worthy of having good things, that maybe I’m not meant for them at all. What I really want is to stop making the same mistakes. What I really want is to stop taking chances on people I know will let me down. What I really want is to be loved like roses, as the legendary Eve Babitz says.
This week, I've been reading Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith. Judith speaks on the body’s chakra system, a collection of 7 wheel-like discs of energy that run all the way up the length of the spine. These chakras transmit energy to the body and the mind, and transmute meaning to external stimuli; they are composed of repeated patterns derived from day-to-day life. Judith states:
“Through involvement with the outside world, patterns within the chakras tend to perpetuate themselves; hence the idea of karma patterns formed through action, or the laws of cause and effect. Thus it is common to become trapped in any one of these patterns. This is called being "stuck" in a chakra. We are caught in a cycle that keeps us at a particular level. This could be a relationship, a job, a habit, but most often, simply a way of thinking. Being stuck can be a function of either overemphasis or underdevelopment of a chakra. The object of our work is to clean the chakras of old, non beneficial patterns so that their self-perpetuating actions have a positive influence, and our life energy can continue to expand to higher planes.”
“Maybe my life is just one giant stuck chakra,” I thought.
Someone from my past has emerged again, and I struggle with how to feel.
I say I know better now, but do I really? I say I'm not the same person you left, but am I really? I say I won’t withhold this time, that I’ll say whatever I feel, but will I really? I’m afraid to ask you “what’s going on?” and “what are we doing here?” Allowing myself to relinquish control and to simply exist in whatever this is makes me feel quite a bit like Icarus. I rendered futile all incessant pleas from friends not to do this, not to fall back into that old, cumbersome, disjointed pattern. I’d fly too close to the sun anyways…My will has always been too strong, but right now, I’ve decided that my curiosity is a far greater force to ignore. And maybe this means I’m giving you my power, but I’d like to think I am taking victorious, conscious breaths, that I’m moving with the intent of spontaneity, or some desperate hope for release. There must be some serious internal defect in me that I’ve chosen to let you in again. It’s as if I’ve given you the keys to a door you and I both know you don’t deserve to open.
I’ve always worried that you say things but don’t really mean them because I've been lied to before. And now that I’m in it, I’ve stopped wishing that I was different, and started wishing that you were.
I used to ask my father where the sky ended, and “when our memories leave us, where do they go?” He said “nowhere, everywhere.” In an old letter addressed to Edward Cohen, Sylvia Plath once said, “I’m so pathetically intense. I just can’t be any other way.” Surely my father had to know Sylvia and I were one and the same, that I’d have a voracious dissatisfaction with his answer. Speaking to you often felt like this. You’ve never given me what I needed.
Now I’m at a crossroads. I’m at a juncture I could not anticipate being at. Do I continue, or do I recede and sever whatever connection is rendering me stupefied yet addicted? Because truly, being with me is like being faced with a 1000 piece puzzle, and I’m not sure if you’d know where to start.
If the planets retain a conjunctive relationship with the pull of the sun, moving in a patterned, eternal orbital dance, how can I ever deign to pull my own self out? Even Plato coined this concept of eternal return, or eternal recurrence, in which time repeats itself in an infinite, unending loop; events will simply continue to unfold and repeat in the same way for eternity. Who are we to measure up to the profundity and certitude of eternity?
If you are a person that believes that the soul may inhabit multiple lives, if you believe in rebirth, if you believe in reincarnation, maybe the end is not the end, then. Maybe we are bound to simply repeat the same cataclysmic mistakes over and over again. Or, maybe we will find peace and clarity…..eventually. Anyone who has lost someone dear to them can see the merit in this line of thought. To imagine that our loved ones now course through the world as a majestic butterfly or an exotic bird surely brings us solace. They were always restless and wild. They always wanted to see the world. Sometimes the lights in my kitchen flicker in and out, and I think it’s my father coming to say hello, to tell me to stay the course, to tell me it will all be okay.
There are some schools of thought that adhere to the belief that life is all about a great remembering, a returning of sorts. Take yoga, for example. The literal meaning of yoga is “to yoke,” the pulling of one part of something to another. These things are the little “s” self, and the big “S” Self. Self is our implicit nature, the parts of us that are unchanging and act as a stable essence, while self is how we present (our appearance, our mood, etc.), qualities that may change. The practice of yoga, then, becomes a matter of pulling these two selves together so that they may converge, that they may reconcile. To connect these two selves is to remember, to recollect how you truly are.
Some barely-perceptible sliver of me likes to believe that this is true, that one day, at the end of my life, I will reach the zenith of an insurmountable mountain, and I’ll stand with my bare feet firmly planted on the earth beneath me and feel like I have just taken my first full breath of air ever. It is both the last and the first day of my life. The sky is clear and the air is crisp. The birds sing until the sun, that resplendent orange ball of light, grows tired and the light gets low. “I forgive you,” I whisper, even though I’m not sure if there was ever anything to forgive.
Mostly, though, I continue to think that I’ll just always be a major fuck-up. I’ll always be too morose, too observant, and too skeptical. I’ll never be the one.
Since you returned, I’ve been thrust back into that feeling of undying resentment deep in my chest as I wait for you to respond to my text. I wait even though I know you could never be the one. I style my hair in two space buns, turn on Who Do You Think You Are by Saint Etienne and dance around in my kitchen as I put away the groceries. “Maybe if I embody difference this time,” I tell myself, “I’ll believe that it’s true.” I’ll break the pattern. Did no really mean never?
This got me thinking of Judith’s concept of symbiotic liberation and limitation. Liberation brings excitement and novelty, energy and abounding possibility. Limitation is the mental calculus the mind does to contain those abounding desires and ideas, diluting them into something manageable, something digestible. Surely, these two forces can help us constrain our choices of whether or not to extract ourselves from patterns we fear may be maladaptive, right?
I was speaking to a similarly unlucky in love friend stuck in a perpetual pattern of disappointing, duplicitous dating. “This is why,” we always say, “I can never trust anyone, why I always have my guard up.” She’s just starting seeing this guy who is seemingly all about her, who is seemingly devoted. A unicorn? Maybe, yes. “How can I stop myself from going back to that pattern of dissecting every little thing to look for the fault line, to find that thing that’s wrong?” she asks me. “I don’t know,” I said. “At some point, we just need to believe that we can allow ourselves the space to fall, to believe that it may be different this time, even if we end up hurt.”
I always think of that one Baal Shem Tov quote: “Let me fall if I must fall; the one I will become will catch me.”
Yet, no matter how long I stare into the undulating waters of the East River for any shred of clarity, any meaning, letting the biting cold seep deep into my bones, I’ll still be too observant, too discerning. I’ll still see too much and feel even more. I’ll detect any subtle change in your behavior towards me and bestow upon it a magnitude of importance it doesn’t deserve. And before I realize it, I’ve ventured too far into the snow-capped woods. I have no lantern, no cloak, no companion. I’m stranded in the cold with all these worries and nowhere to put them. Because who would I be without all this worry to carry anyway? My dreams have never been simple and fantastical, they’ve always fallen under either disturbingly realistic or absurdly Kafkaesque. If you conducted some inscrutable survey of the inside of my mind, you’ll be faced with a hoarder’s palace, a profusion of way too many thoughts and not enough containers to put them in. I have too many things I refuse to let go of and I need access to them all the time, to dissect, to revisit, to replay.
So where does this leave us? Are we bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Do we have within us the agency to decide which patterns are healthy and which are maladaptive? Who delineates the point at which it will be different this time, the threshold that must be crossed, the evidence that must be presented to give ourselves permission to go forth? What is the burden of proof, then, that allows us to determine what patterns are serving us and which aren’t? Not to notice and disregard, but to really see and eliminate. Who tells us that it’s okay to let ourselves fall even if we get hurt?
The answer is simple, yet wildly unsatisfying: I really don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll be able to look in the mirror and not run down the list of everything I want to change about myself, everything I wish was different. Maybe one day you’ll just stop responding altogether and make my choice for me. I continue to feel that I’m not strong enough to walk away, but I hate the thought of you making that decision for me. Maybe we are all just falling down and getting hurt1.
Last night, I reached out for my angels once more. It was nearing 12 a.m., an hour I almost never live to see. But on this night, you and your maddening habits I’m always in the crossfire of, kept me awake. “Angels,” I pleaded. “I’m going to be okay, right?”
This time they answered.
“You are strong enough to walk away if that is what you choose.”
“But how will I know?” I begged.
“Your presence and your trust are not an apology; it is not a relinquishment or a ceding of your power. It is you giving yourself the autonomy to fall; It is imbuing your thoughts with sentiments of worthiness. And so it is. You will know when you know.”
We can’t anticipate how others act, what distorted and disjointed versions of reality and thought course through their own minds. But what I can say is that at the center of all these cycles and patterns, good or bad, is us. If we stray too far, we must understand that our agency is a resource we can call upon to pull us out. I always complain to my therapist in a diatribe that begins something like “but I’m the type of person who….” What’s inserted in the blanks is customarily along the lines of: “holds on to things too tightly,” “hates being out of control,” “is way too slow to forgive,” “needs all the information right of me to make an informed, rational decision.” “You don’t always have to be the person who, you know,” my therapist said the other day, “you can be any type of person who. You’re limiting yourself by ascribing one definition to yourself.” We must find it within us to recognize that yes, there are distinct tendencies we venture to, but these are by no means unchangeable. Leaning into transitions and daunting uncertainty is all we can do, because those are the places where we gain the most clarity. The cycle spins, and we continue to weave that grotesque pattern, a collection of all of the times we have fallen down and gotten hurt and repeated the same dance over again.
But for now, I’ll wear my space buns, I’ll push myself to listen to happier music, I’ll try not to take everything people say to heart. I will try to let you in, even if you end up hurting me anyway. All this to say, we can find beauty, honesty, and liberation while also embracing challenge, uncertainty, and limitation; these are multiple truths that we can hold space for at once. Maybe we are all just falling down and getting hurt. Maybe this is all saying nothing, but maybe it’s saying everything. Lean into those patterns and cycles, because you deserve to find out what happens if you let yourself fall, just this once.
credit where credit is due….ty to elliot moss for the title inspo :, )
Beautiful, Carson!