Last night, in a battle between what I needed and what others expected of me, I did something scary, unusual, selfish, and long overdue:

I chose myself.

And maybe, now that I know the world won't come to a halt, I can figure out how to do it more often.

Some days,
my midlife crisis
comes to life in the permanent markings
of crisp black and blue ink,
flowing between the finely-dotted lines
of the five-by-seven pages
in my craft-paper notebook.

Each letter that appears
is the legacy of a pen that I stole
from a former version of myself,
back before I knew the words
I was writing were never my own.

My love: Speaking your truth is not the same as feeling your truth.

You have found your voice and your confidence to say things out loud that others may not want to hear. But have you stopped to notice what that feels like on the inside? So many of your words and actions are in pursuit of a greater good, that you forget that you, yourself, are your GREATEST good.

I consider myself to be an incredibly loyal friend. If you’re in my circle, I’m always here for you. I will reach out and ask how you’re doing when something seems off. I will text you just to say hello, in case you need a smile. I will bake you cookies without being asked, show up for your tennis matches, or help you with a presentation at 6:30am. I will be your therapist, your partner-in-crime, your dinner date, or your professional collaborator.

If you are my friend, I have your back.

So what hurts me the most…and has happened a few times lately…is when it feels like other people don’t have mine.

Can you claim a trauma as your own if you also inflicted it on someone else?

Does it make a difference if you didn’t want to do it? If you tried to soften the impact as much as possible, knowing that it was still going to destroy the other person, anyway?

A little scattered

A little self-doubting

A little ashamed that I keep falling into the same fucking patterns

A little feeling invisible

A little wanting to disappear

Last week, I picked back up where I left-off with my eternal favorite podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things.” Through what I can only attribute to the universe doing me a solid, the first episode I listened to was with one of my other favorites, Liz Gilbert. She was talking about her recent Substack project, Letters from Love.

After writing my own first two letters, I was tempted to share them with you here. They are beautiful and poetic and comforting. They are messy and raw and unfocused, too. They are, as Liz espoused they would be, unconditional.

And all of that is why I won’t be sharing them after all.

I move too fast for most people.

I don’t know why this realization just manifested itself with a giant “WHOMP” this morning, as it’s something I’ve known pretty much forever.

Many therapists and coaches have told me I need to slow down.
My best friend has told me that my pace makes HER tired.
My husband often reminds me that sitting on the couch watching TV isn’t a waste of time.

I sometimes exhaust myself with my speed. And I am pretty confident that I also exhaust others with my speed, too. Even if I never explicitly ask them to match it (which I am very intentional not to), I feel like my expectations are written between the lines. And even bigger than that…I feel like sometimes it pushes people away.

As a blanket fact, I don't do New Years resolutions.

Using an arbitrary calendar change to map out the next 12 months of my life has never seemed like a necessary (or even mildly intriguing) activity for me. I have enough anxiety on a daily basis that creating an entire annual practice around it would probably push me over some imaginary edge.

What sometimes happens, though, during the week between Christmas and New Years, is that I have more time to be reflective, and introspective, than at any other time of year. This winter was no exception.

I came to my therapy session last week in a particularly tattered, heavy place. I was prepared to explore it, though—I had worked through some of the prompts my therapist gave me the week before, trying to help me feel into my feelings of loss, and confusion, and desire, and too-muchness, and also, not-enoughness. The prompts were simple on the surface: try to identify the different parts of myself who feel at odds with each other right now. Who are they? What do they look like? How do they feel? What do they believe? What do they need? Where do they live in my body?

Two distinct parts came to the surface relatively easily. But the third…she only became visible when I let the others fall away.

I started listening to “More Than a Body” again yesterday. One of the main themes is about how sexualization and ridicule from outside sources (media, peers, etc.) often start for girls as soon as they hit puberty. They get cat-called, or stared-at, or in many cases, experience far more traumatic instances of objectification (abuse, rape). All of those experiences leave some pretty deep scars that can take decades to unravel, if they’re ever unraveled at all.

It made me think about what scars I might still be carrying.

I was never cat-called. Or stared-at. Or experienced any sexual trauma (at least that my consciousness is aware of). I didn’t learn to objectify my body as a sexual thing that other people (mostly hetero males) wanted. Rather, I learned that my body was a thing that no one wanted.

The other day, during a deep, extended text chat with a friend, they casually referred to me as a “woman” in the context of of our conversation about culture and behavioral norms. The word instantly registered on my radar as feeling awkward. There’s no logical reason for this. I am a 41-year-old adult who identifies as a cisgender female, so why should there be anything weird, or unusual, or incorrect about someone else describing me as what I am? And yet…that word felt anything but comfortable….because at 41, I don’t know if I have never truly seen myself that way. And it was both terrifying, and astonishingly liberating, to find out that someone else does.

What does it mean to be a “good person?”

I’ve always thought about it as putting others’ feelings, needs, and wants first—not exclusively to the detriment of my own, but in the sense of making decisions based on what’s going to be the most beneficial, or least harmful, for everyone. Finding, and being OK, with the middle ground, if it means not hurting anyone along the way.

What if the flipside of not hurting others might in some way be hurting me? Or holding me back from exploring something I want, because I’m afraid of the consequences? How much of how I define “good” is shaped by cultural norms and expectations, vs. my own intuition and beliefs?

I’m finding myself clinging to, infatuated with, my own unexpectedness. It’s juicy and bold and an incredible high. The more I taste it, the more I want.

At the same time, I’m also clinging to the rage and fury. I’d like to let that side go, but the bitterness is just as hard to shake.

How can pleasure and pain both captivate me in the same way? Is it the actual feeling tones that I’m drawn to, or just that I’m feeling anything this intensely at all?

I had a significantly large emotional meltdown on Monday. One of the biggest / deepest / most all-encompassing moments of falling apart that I’ve had in a while. To be honest, it was probably overdue. As much as I try to practice all of the things I help others with, I still do a lot of holding myself together with tape and glue. I encourage people to come talk to me when they’re struggling, but I can’t do the same for myself because somewhere I believe that my struggles are less important. And would only be a burden.

I have always been someone who calculates living in units of time.
Time since. Time until.

Sometimes the counting is quiet, passive.
It fades into the background and lets my breathing take over.
I imagine that’s my meditation practice at work.
14,504 total minutes, according to one of my apps.

Even then, I am still counting.

You know what sucks?

Knowing what you need to do, but being afraid to do it because of how it might be interpreted, or how it’ll be held against you…

You know what doesn’t suck? Me.

As I sit here and write this, I have been a creative in advertising for 20 years. It has not only been my profession and my livelihood, but also my pride and my identity. When I ask myself if I still feel personally fulfilled or rewarded by the work, though—if doing “amazing creative” is still my North Star—the answer is a very clear, and very honest…

No.

It would seem that in the words of Marcus Buckingham, that I have lost my love.

I haven’t written anything in over a month. No, that’s not true. I just haven’t written anything HERE in over a month. I’ve actually been doing a lot of other writing. And thinking. And connecting.

It’s been a beautiful few weeks, letting go of some of my “shoulds,” and learning how to ride the ebbs and flows of my energy so that I’m not burning myself out. That’s new territory in itself.

Feeling like I’m too much, and at the same time, like I’m never enough, is the place where I constantly live.

"OK, Amy,” I think to myself. “You heard the feedback. You need to take it to heart and low for a while, because being who you are is uncomfortable for everyone else. Now, what else can I do to prove that who I am is valuable and worthy?"

This middle ground between these two poles isn't actually ground at all, though. It’s paralysis. Suspension.

It’s a constant internal dance of trying to be measured with everything I do or say, so that I don't tip the scales too far one way or the other. Except I always tip the scales, anyway.