Illumination: Part One

It’s Not all Unicorns and Rainbows

Lightning bolts of clarity often strike at the most unusual times. I was picking up Finn and a few of his fifth-grade friends from school a couple of years ago. I asked how everyone’s day was. His friend, let’s call him Bob, said, Some kids will tell you their day was all unicorns and rainbows. I am not one of those kids. I fell immediately in love. Who actually says that? The truth. Seriously?

He is obviously more evolved than I am. I try to present nothing but unicorns and rainbows. Sure, my unicorns are often a bit dodgy, have matted down hair and sketchy attitudes. And my rainbows alternate between nuclear neon and faded furniture cushions. But I sure as hell try.

I don’t share the morning debates we have over whether the butt end of a banana is actually edible. Or my hope that dying my hair platinum will change the trajectory of my future. I don’t reveal that I wake up with crushing anxiety I am already behind. Or hit a three o’clock wall that throws my whole personal well-being into question.

Nobody wants to know about that. Do they?

It’s a bit unnerving to think some fifth grader has it more together than I do. I wanted to freeze frame the carpool and have a quick aside with him about what led him to this extreme level of comfort with personal truth. But, looking into the rearview mirror, I simply asked, why. 

He responded matter-of-factly. I had a strong reaction to something some kids said and had to spend the afternoon by myself. His face held no affect. He didn’t blow me off. Or lie. Or soften the edges. I almost burst into tears.

I’m sorry, I said. It’s okay, he said, it happens.

It was a shit day. We all have them. He was a different kind of kid. So was I. So are a lot of kids. And they grow up into different kinds of adults. We process the world around us differently. Higher highs. Lower lows. More extreme. More sensitive. More intense, intuitive and imaginative. Less integrated.

We all live on the spectrum of different.

Some of us are just born closer to the edges.

Inside that two-minute micro-blip with a boy I never saw again, is a suitcase of insights I’m still trying to unpack. Most people would write it off to comical, and a little odd. They would shrug it off and move on to bigger things like how to clean up the oceans or train for a triathlon or produce the next Fleabag.

Something that leads somewhere.

But I am a closeted anthropologist of the cosmic phenomena of inner space, the vast milky way of individual identity. Problem is, identity is a double-bind dilemma.

Everyone wants to be seen for who they truly are.

And no one wants to be seen for who they truly are. The good parts– sure. The charmingly quirky, quietly kind parts– of course. The harmlessly irreverent and obsessively ambitious parts– maybe in slightly lower doses. The parts that struggle through circumstantial crisis– absolutely.

But what about the inner parts. The dark parts. The hot parts. The bent out of shape parts. The parts that don’t feel safe to share. The parts we hide because we are afraid– afraid to be fully seen. Afraid of what will people think. How will they respond, or worse, not respond. And where will that leave us. I have curated a very particular kind of me.

It is all true me but a version of me– the me I think you will find funny, smart, edgy, easy to be around, different but not too out there, flawed but not in ways you can’t imagine. Me– without my shadow parts.

However, I have been wondering lately, after climbing out of some extremely dark places, again, if maybe it’s actually ‘those parts’ that makes me – fully me. Maybe without them I am merely a theoretical constellation of some preconceived notion of who I think I should be. Some accumulated assortment of attributes I have decided, based on life experiences, is most likely to be loved, valued and respected.

I don’t think my fifth-grade mentor, Bob, would be a big fan of this approach. I think he would liken this type of identity retouching to the My Little Pony, Starbucks Frappuccino, blow-up pool toy unicorn trends. I think if Bob was to select a spirit animal, it would be closer to a wildebeest or hippo– something with some grit, gusto and guff.

Or actually, knowing Bob for even the spec of time I did, he probably would have selected some kind of obscure extinct Japanese Komodo dragon with wicked Samari like powers that destroy predators telepathically. Or something like that.

Point is, I think maybe illumination is not about filtering out the darkness, but about lifting it into the light. My hope is that maybe by shining a light on some of my darkness, I can begin integrating it instead of ostracizing it.

Simply showing up is full of complexities for me.

I experience simultaneous multi-dimensional processing overload.

There are usually, at least seven of me in attendance, in any new social or professional situation.

One who leaps onto the stage with a smile full of infinite possibility, alight with confidence, charm and wisdom. One who is hiding distrustfully behind the door, hibernating in a cocoon of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. One who is on an undercover reconnaissance mission to detect the potentiality for toxic behavior, insincere gestures and energy leeching.

One who is exploring the potentiality for truth, beauty, connection or at the very least a mutually beneficial sharing of resources. One who is tracking the conversational thread while simultaneously processing all the above observations in addition to sifting through the exponentially expanding catalogue of relevant tangents, anecdotes and associative creative ideas.

One who has already tabulated the odds of this being either an amazing opportunity or a complete waste of time and is correspondingly sinking in or crafting discreet exit strategies while managing the spiking anxiety that it will never end. And One who is fighting fiercely to conceal the self-doubt, crushing despair and paralyzing fear of not being truly seen or heard.

I am wildly creative. Excruciatingly self-critical. Generously imaginative. Obsessively self-regulating. Strategically driven. Unbearably paradoxical. Full of skyrocketing hope and plummeting despair.

It is exhausting. And exhilarating. Empowering. And paralyzing.

Perhaps it is the spherical vision remnants of my past life as a dragonfly.

Or the side effects of ADHD, RSD or PTSD. Or the highly tumultuous inner life of childhood. Regardless, I have learned to sail the highly fragmented sea of my moment to moment being. I have learned to channel my challenges creatively. Find humor. Breathe deeply. Reach out when I’d rather isolate. Exercise no matter what.

I have learned to navigate around myself, despite myself. But it often burns me out– leaves me flattened.

This begins a cycle of bouncing between despair, sadness, rage, restriction, resentment, guilt, shame and ultimately a form of surrender that gravitates to defeat on its way to acceptance. Inside this cycle, which can last between minutes and days, is the corresponding hitlist of what to do and how to try to do it better than before.

Sometimes, I can realign on the fly. Get my mojo back. Bee-bop back into the buzz of life like a Queen Bee.

Other times, it takes longer. Sometimes I go dark. I cannot be reached.

It feels as if I have been besieged by a violent storm that rips me apart, strips away my sanity and demolishes every remnant of joy. It feels like a living nightmare. But there is no outside evidence. It feels like metaphysical annihilation. But the illusion is status quo. It grips me like a crippling virus.

And then it lets me go. What is it? I do not know. It has been given many labels. All of them provide insight. None of them make an ounce of difference in the moment. It is a mystery.

But aren’t mysteries meant to be solved. I grew up reading Nancy Drew. It’s not always easy. Sometimes, there are clues that take you down the wrong path. Sometimes suspects that look suspicious turn out to be totally benign. Sometimes there are no reliable witnesses, evidence that seems indisputable disappears under your nose and you feel like you’ve read the same book five hundred times. Even when the mystery finally gets solved it feels like merely another well-disguised illusion.

I’ve decided this:

Mystery is the genuine state of things.

Illusion is the highly addictive false belief of misguided desire.

Our defense against the dark forest of dream devastation. Our cultural drug du jour. There are people selling. There are people buying. And there is a parallel universe of people trading in truth.

I try to be a truth-trader but I think I toggle a lot between the two. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. Especially when desire is strong. Evidence has a way of stacking up in favor of personal bias. And when you are a creator, part of the gift is seeing what’s not there. What an idea could be.

The tricky part is also seeing who’s co-creating it and how they show up. Not who we want them to be/ wish they were/ project them as being but who they legitimately are. And if it’s just us– where do we fall down/ stop short/ fall off. I start off every project excited about the mystery, where it will take me, what will unfold.

I begin every project from a position of YES, I CAN do ANYTHING.

I am not afraid of big-ass obstacles– no matter how they show up.

But right beneath that persevering positivity is a wicked strong undercurrent of I can’t, I shouldn’t and It won’t. The compound negative contractions of my fear that no matter what I create, it will ever be enough. They weigh on my enthusiasm like lead blankets– reminding me that self-imposed limitations are safer than inevitable rejection.

It is a shape-shifting current of impossibility.

But it never looks like giving up. It presents as respectable problem-solving, responsible decision-making. I shouldn’t spend the money right now, so I’ll wait. I’ll lose creative control, so I shouldn’t pursue that company. No one will ever call me back without a warm introduction, so why bother.

I can’t figure out how to monetize it, so no one will be interested. We don’t have a big A-list celebrity attached, so no one will give us the time of day. I need to get Finn through this homework. I need to get Leo through his concussion. I need to write-up this new creative idea. I need to help Joe with his myriad of initiatives. I need to grocery-shop, do laundry, clean the kitchen, drive all over creation.

I want to show up without excuses. Without reasons why not. Unafraid of what may not work. Undeterred by fear. I want to get out of my head. Show up with my heart. Play in the sandbox of mystery. Set my inner wildebeest free. Be brave enough to be seen. Let go of illusion. 

Live by illumination.