posts – commituals

Why I Didn’t Post That

28/05/2022 / Clarissa

I took a class to fulfil a science credit in college called Earth and the Cosmos. The curriculum covered our planet, the bodies we see in the sky, and beyond. During one of these 8AM sessions, I experienced overview effect: the realisation that Earth is small and I am smaller. The professor called this out directly. I assume he had learned over the years to notice the creeping looks of dread across the faces of tired undergrads. I had not yet developed a caffeine dependence and this man making me have an existential crisis to start my day wasn’t welcome. It was important.

I bet everyone who reads this next sentence will feel exactly how I do. I have a complicated relationship with social media. Now, this next sentence will be more polarising. I kind of hate social media. Sure, I’ve found interesting people, places, and things through it, but ultimately, I get that same feeling I got in class. It all feels so insignificant on this side of the telescope.

Historically, me being on socials is largely out of pressure. Platitudes like “you look sketchy if you don’t have a Facebook” have been the only reasons I’ve stayed on certain sites as long as I have. But just having an account isn’t enough. Being on the apps comes with a whole set of evolving expectations. I’m Texan, so I should express my outrage at whatever Greg Abbott or Ted Cruz has done this time. I’m a woman, so I should spread the word about the latest atrocities against women’s basic rights. I’m anti-gun, so I should be outspoken about gun violence and grieve publicly when yet another preventable mass shooting takes place.

By the time a mass shooting in Texas came around, it must’ve been my time to shine, right? To indulge in momentary cynicism, it felt inevitable; of course this was going to happen, it keeps happening. This writing could have been all about the complexities of growing up in Texas, leaving, then watching it change yet regress all at once. I don’t want to write about that though, not right now, anyway. Anything I could say about this situation would not offer any closure, insight, or change.

There was a time when I would post those things. I admit, there was some catharsis in being publicly outraged. What exactly did it do, though? My audience is small and deliberately limited to people I know or trust; it’s not as if I am spreading my gospel of mutual understanding. It showed people who most likely already know where I’m coming from or agree with me something reaffirming, something that further reinforced what they knew or felt.

I’m not at all implying bringing awareness or visibility to things is pointless, but rather that some things are already apparent, especially to people who look, act, or think like I do. When I take a step back, I realise that this is exactly what I don’t like about socials: I have my bubble and meticulous algorithms are only making it easier to stay inside it. By recommending I follow people who check those boxes (e.g. white, English-speaking, goth-leaning), I’m only getting more comfortable staying exactly where I am, pleading my case to a court that has already ruled in my favor.

You won’t see me post about those things anymore. It’s never because I don’t care or I’m not paying attention, it’s because neither you nor myself are going to get anything out of it beyond being caught in the fallout of the same traumatic events. I would like my relationships with all of you to be built on more varied foundations than commiseration.

Ideally, I would have a solution to neatly tie this up with, but I don’t. I don’t know what to do. So many nights I’ve spent trying to apply my usual problem solving techniques and only coming up with means to treat the symptoms. I’m also grappling with the reality that not all problems are mine to solve, so maybe this just isn’t one. There have been so many times in my adult life I have felt completely powerless, and yet it has never been so simple. I absolutely wield power and I’m getting better at recognising the circumstances in which I can apply it.

I think that’s where I go from here. How can I harness my lightning-like frustration and channel it into the things I do well? Where can I apply it with the highest payoff? It sure as hell isn’t Instagram. It’s somewhere I haven’t found yet. As for my IG, I hope everyone likes pictures of neighborhood cats and garden snails.

Light vs. Dark

12/02/2022 / Clarissa

I had a thought this morning as I was going about my Saturday errands: is it possible for someone to live in the light without being familiar with the dark? I don’t have an answer to it yet. I think about those white women “spiritual” types who preach love and light without doing any work to correct or so much acknowledge the brutality within themselves and their bloodlines. When I look at someone and truly see the sun within them, they are typically people who know all too well the horrors of the world. They do not shy away from them, they do not deny them, they do refuse to let them win.

This thought came up again as I lazily scrolled through Instagram, stopping on a post from Safe in Austin Rescue Ranch. They do beautiful things for animals and people alike. I also applaud that the stories they share expose the darker side of the world we live in. So many people ask, “how could someone do this?” Jamie Wallace-Griner, the founder, does not. She’s heard the stories, seen the frailties, and pushes on. She cannot undo what was done, but she can remind them over and over again that safety is now all they will know for the rest of their days.

It was reading one of those stories that pushed me over the edge today. I felt violent. I wanted to make the offending parties suffer. Truly suffer. I had to restrain myself. When I feel this way, I have to ask myself, “what do I really want to do about this?” My rage needs a place, a direction. I refuse to hold it. I can either take this energy and exact vengeance or I can do what Jamie does: offer serenity.

What do we do in the battle of good vs evil? Paint it in shades of grey? Accept that some people are awful and move on? Workshop punishments until we find one that sticks? I don’t know that I’m satisfied with any of that. I could shrug this situation off, I know, it does not impact me directly, but that’s a mistake people like me have made too often. I can choose to involve myself this time.

I take inventory of what I can offer. I send Safe in Austin a monetary donation so they can keep doing what they do best. I write this because one of my gifts is conveying life at its rawest, and maybe it will spur someone to involve themselves too. I scour pages and pages of local volunteer listings, eventually selecting an opportunity to pack and provide birthday boxes for children from underserved families. I accept that what I can offer will never feel like it’s enough to me, but to someone else, it will feel like everything. That’s more than enough of a reason to keep doing it.

I’m not writing any of this out of guilt or to prove to you that I’m a “good person.” I’m a complicated mélange of mistakes, unrepentant sinners, and misplaced optimism who’s trying to do a little better each day just like anyone else. I needed to get the thoughts (ones I know many of you also have) out of my head and somewhere visible. My anger and sadness beg to be altered at a subatomic level; shattered and molded into something contributory. If I chose instead to designate myself the reaper of those who sow harm, what would that make me? However just it would seem in the eyes of the societal jury, it would still be cruel, and I am not confident cruelty ends cruelty. I will leave it for someone (or something) who can more securely wield that scythe.

Whatever role we play, whatever we designate tolerable, we have a choice to make. For some, it’s exacted through the will of higher powers, for others, through a more utilitarian lens. A core value I keep returning to is “leave something nicer than you found it.” If that’s all I’m able to accomplish through my bumbling attempts at breaking cycles, I will try to know peace when I’m done.

The Knocking

19/01/2022 / Clarissa

Every few months, it seems, the knocking comes. Always quiet at first, growing into thunderous pounding. You’d think I’d know by now that it’s only happening in my dreams, but there’s always just enough doubt to make me wake up and ensure no one is at my door at 4AM.

I’ve often wondered what I would do if someone was. In my mind, there are two reasons they would be there: they need help or they’re trying to make me think they do so I let them in and permit the horrors they had in mind to commence. I think that in either case, my fear of the latter will always keep me from answering the door.

Even in dreams, I’m a realist. I never try to find the source of the knocking. It’s simply a thing that is there, a rattling of pipes, a creaky floorboard, a cupboard that never closes all the way. All I know is it’s somewhere between 2 and 5 in the morning, and whatever is beyond the dreamscape or between the walls isn’t worth the risk.

It happened again last night. The difference this time is that I’m thinking about it. I’m writing about it. What if the knocking is there because someone or something is trying to tell me something? I hope it’s not about my car’s extended warranty, I haven’t had a car in 7 years, and besides, that’s not what I mean.

Today, if I had to venture a guess, I would suppose it’s a guide with something I need to hear. There’s a full moon out. I’m experiencing some clarity when it comes to my calling. (Do note I said some. I still feel utterly clueless.) The world feels fresh with possibility somehow.

I brew some mugwort tea and leave some of the same green herb burning at my bedside. I keep my bedroom clean and comfortable for nights like this, when I’m planning to venture into the unknown. Mugwort is said to help with dream messages. Though I’m not certain I can lucid dream, I’m willing to try. Tonight, I will seek out the thing that is begging to be let in.

The knocking wasn’t there. Only an endless party I had control over. Dreams are rarely interesting to anyone who isn’t having them, so I will spare the details, apart from one.

I was in a small boat in a large indoor pond. One fish in particular had a tall dorsal fin; others often mistook him for a shark. This fish took a liking to me and let me dress him. I dressed him like a naval admiral from the 1800s.

If I try to make sense of it, I think I’m applying too much rationale to something that isn’t supposed to be rational. I put clothes on a fish, I didn’t turn a misunderstood figure into a leader.

I will try again tonight, I’m not discouraged or deterred. The knocking tends to come at a time in my life when a change is needed. Does that itself mean something? Is there really nothing behind it?

Last night, I was standing at the door before the first knock. I flung it open, already knowing who was there. It was a new lover, someone who lived across the street from the giant house my dream self occupied.

I don’t know how to feel about this. I went to bed, warm cup of lavender, chamomile, and mugwort tea in hand. I said out loud, “tonight, I will find out what’s knocking.” In a sense, I got my answer, but it’s not exactly satisfying.

I admit I’m troubled by a notification from the Pattern app I got about a week ago. It let me know that now is an ideal time to meet my perfect romantic partner. Now until January 22nd, that is. The 22nd is this Saturday.

That’s far too much pressure to put on something that doesn’t come naturally to me. When people ask why I’m single, I always say I have too much to do. I do mean that, it feels like I have so many other things to do, (meaning, so many other things I’d rather do,) and a relationship would be a distraction.

That’s the thing about being married to power and control though, life will always be teaching me to let go. Whether or not I answer that door, the knocking will be there, stubborn and persistent as I am. The only way to stop it is to do the easiest possible thing: open my eyes.

What Do I Want to Do?

03/01/2022 / Clarissa

I think it’s time to change careers. That old feeling of dread is back. The one where if I have to think about looking at my inbox or opening Slack, I might just toss my laptop into the canal. I’m fresh off two weeks of time off and today is my first day due back at work. I’m writing this after spending my morning “preparing” the apartment. I sprayed this lovely cinnamon and clove spray everywhere to give an energizing vibe, lit candles, popped on a chill playlist, and tossed a bit of obsidian in my pocket, bracing for the deluge.

I’m going to say the thing a person in tech is never supposed to say: I don’t care about tech. I ceased to care some time ago. There was a time when coding for fun and learning new stacks was exciting for me, but that’s no longer the case. I still jump in to help my team when they’re having trouble coding here and there, and I’m still upsettingly good at it, but the passion I had is long gone. This is exactly how I’ve felt each time I’ve broken up with someone, if that makes sense. Whatever we had was great, it’s just not there anymore and I don’t see a future where I’m happy and we’re still together.

The effort I’ve put into this career is insurmountable. I’ve been coding since I was 16. At 33, I’ve now spent over half of my life doing this. I chose web development as my career path largely because it was stable. My other pursuits of being a journalist, actress, or nun didn’t seem wise or feasible when I was young. Plus, I didn’t hate it. I liked the “a-ha” moment that came from hours of me trying to learn how to build something and then suddenly seeing it work. I’ve always been self-taught, and I like it that way.

That leads to a root that I want to dig down into for a moment. I love the learning journey. If I didn’t have to work for a living, I would easily just be in university forever, learning new things. My idea of a perfect work day is me shutting myself into a dark room, undisturbed for hours, devouring knowledge and not emerging until I have made a discovery. When left to my own devices, I can accomplish some pretty impressive things. I miss that feeling.

The question becomes: what do I want to do next? My answer is terrifying: I want to be a healer. I say it’s scary because what does it even mean? I know it doesn’t come with health insurance and a 401K. I’m coming from a place of immense privilege in having a highly stable in-demand career and I recognize how dismissive and selfish it looks to want to walk away from that. My hope is that another young woman will rise up to take my place. Balance in everything, right? Besides, there is so much more I’m good at than attending hours of meetings and sending follow-up reminders.

People have always felt safe with me, and I, in turn, always want to dig deeper. I know I can help people uncover parts of themselves that they’re struggling to find; that wound that doesn’t heal in each of us. I don’t think of myself so much a therapist as I do a mirror. I help people see themselves, sometimes for the first time. With my natural ability to guard myself against being drained by another person’s emotions, I’m practically built for this. I met someone at a party recently and I could sense hurt in her. We somehow started digging into that hurt and I could see the physical change in her that only comes from knowing someone is really seeing and hearing you. I left the interaction invigorated, and I believe she did as well. That didn’t feel like hard work for me.

My other gift is being able to relate to just about anyone. There is no way for me to put myself exactly in someone else’s life, but I am able to demonstrate that I understand where they’re coming from. It’s a beautiful thing, being understood. That’s a connection I think a lot of people are missing in their lives; someone who just gets it. It can be hard to get that from someone you know if they’ve already categorized you and left no room for that idea of who you are to change. With someone new, there isn’t the burden of preconceived notions, only freedom to be whoever you are that day. I like to grant people that freedom, because it’s something I want for myself too.

So, how do I turn that into my “job?” I have no idea. It’s far from a traditional path. I’ve opened myself up to flow in the hopes that I end up where I’m supposed to be. I’m doing the things that make sense. I’m writing every single day. Writing feels like the path forward at the moment. I’m sharing things about myself that I usually wouldn’t and my vulnerability continues to be rewarded, so surely there is something there. Was writing this very thing exactly what I needed to do right now? Opening up about my career crisis and just saying the scary, impossible-seeming thing that I want?

In the spirit of saying the scary, impossible things: I want to be a healer. I want to use my influence to help people see the best in themselves. I want to make my own schedule. I want ample room for joy. I want security and stability. Can I really have it all? I suppose we’ll see.

Two Speeds

31/12/2020 / Clarissa

I joke a lot about this, but I genuinely feel this statement describes me perfectly: I’m either an unstoppable force or an immovable object. There are weeks when I’m full steam ahead, crushing every task at hand, and others where I’m glued to a couch. I could also compare this to the conflict between my Taurus sun and Virgo moon. My Taurus sun is an indulgent bastard (and I love her for it) whereas my Virgo moon is a chronic perfectionist who pushes that Dionysian bitch to scrub the grout every once in awhile. (My Pisces rising just wants everyone to vibe, you know?)

The absolute worst thing about my two speeds is that neither is good for me long-term. In college, I leaned into my taskmaster side for a semester. I had a lot of work to do for my classes, so I segmented my days into blocks of time to accomplish everything I needed to.

This was great for managing my time and is absolutely the reason I got everything done on time that semester, but I took it too far. Rather than using this technique to account for breaks or reasonable workloads for myself, I viewed every waking hour as critical to spend “productively.” I was having panic attacks every day. This wasn’t something I could keep up, as rewarding as it was for me to feel accomplished. On the other hand, there have been plenty of times when I felt unmotivated and immovable for days, weeks, or months and it was to my own detriment.

This theme comes up constantly for me, especially over the course of work-related burnout I experienced for three consecutive years in my career. How do I find a happy medium between these two speeds; can I find a “medium” speed?

I honestly don’t believe there is a middle ground for me. That sounds defeatist, but I beg to differ. What if, rather than viewing my two speeds as a handicap, I find a way to harness it and use it to my advantage? What if for every day I give it 1000%, I take one day to be a slug? How would that work?

Let’s do an exercise here, using my week ahead as an example. Here’s everything I need to do next week (simplified):

work out a minimum of 4 times
trim the rose bushes
weekly/daily chores
grocery shop
work (duh)
meal prep
journaling
make a coffee scrub
work on video project
meet with my dietician

That looks reasonable, right? There’s a side of me that’s screaming “YOU CAN DO MORE THAN THAT!!”, and I’m going to acknowledge her and add in a buffer for those extra things that will give me that I AM THE QUEEN OF TASK MOUNTAIN feeling. For balance, I’m adding some blocks for winding down or just going slow. Using my time blocking technique, let’s see what this all looks like:

The color coding doesn’t make sense to me either.

Having “lazy hours” built into this system makes everything look so much more manageable. With this week’s plan, I’ll go really hard on Friday and have plenty of time Saturday and Sunday to do absolutely nothing if I want to. I’ve also added in optional workout or “get shit done” time blocks to account for any shifting priorities or overachiever urges that come up. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s creative problem solving!

Good Grief

30/11/2020 / Clarissa

Content warning: the content below regards the death of a pet

A tarot card, labelled as “Five of Vessels,” which is also known as the Five of Cups.

Early this year, I did a tarot spread for myself. One card for each month to indicate what each month’s theme would be. The card I drew for November was the Five of Vessels (also known as the Five of Cups), symbolizing loss, grief, and focusing on the negative. I felt in my gut that this meant I would lose my dog, Lola, in November. I never told anyone this until now. I wanted more than anything to be wrong.

Even earlier in the year, I found out Lola had cancer and proceeded to meet with an oncologist to find a treatment plan that would work for her. She was a spritely 11-year-old French bulldog, (the breed, on average, lives between 10–14 years,) and had shown no signs of slowing down. I agreed to chemotherapy over the course of the summer months, telling the doctor that I did not care how long I would have left with her, only that I wanted that time to be high quality for her.

She responded so well to the treatment and never once experienced a negative side effect. We enjoyed the warm months together and the pandemic gave her the opportunity to spend every moment by my side. Her separation anxiety became quite bad, but she adored being my shadow. She completed treatment, but not without the acknowledgement that another type of cancer revealed itself toward the end. The expectation was that neither of these cancers would become an issue until the end of her life and we agreed to meet every few months to check their progression.

A happy-looking black French bulldog with a red bandage wrapped around a front leg. — Lola after completing her final chemo treatment.

Three months later, in November, what looked like allergies became an indicator of something bigger. Her regular vet found a new tumor. I agreed to have it surgically removed in addition to the removal of a few bad teeth and set up an appointment with her oncologist to do our check-in as planned. Had her cancer flared up again? What exactly were we dealing with?

I will never have those answers. Over the course of 13 days and 4 vet visits, Lola experienced a sudden and dramatic change. As if with the flick of a switch, she became lethargic and weak. There were no signs of organ or neurological issues and none of the signs that the oncologist had told me to look for. On paper, she was a perfectly healthy dog. One vet even told me that there were no physical signs she was nearing end of life. For reasons I can’t explain, I felt otherwise. There were days when she looked like she was improving followed by another progressively worse day.

Lola passed away in her sleep, right by my side, wrapped comfortably in her favorite blankets at 4:30AM on November 25th, 2020. I had fallen asleep and woken up very suddenly to find she was gone. I was gutted and yet a bit relieved. I felt in my heart that she was ready to go, even without any physical signs that the end was near. She had been so strong through so much, I think she was just tired and had done everything she set out to do. I will always be grateful that she got to be by my side and comfortable until the very end.

Adjusting to life without her has been incredibly hard. No more of her sneezing in my face in the morning to let me know she was ready to start the day. No more hearing her trot to the kitchen every time someone opened the fridge. No more needing to pull her up onto the couch next to me every time I sit down. There is nothing that could have ever prepared me for how total and all-encompassing her absence feels.

I feel that I’ve spent all of 2020 grieving. Grieving for time I will never get back, for the normal that will never exist again, and for the mistakes I continue to make. I know that it’s important and ok to feel those things, I am well past the point of feeling bad about crying, for fuck’s sake. For everything I have let go this year, I have found space for something new. Every piece a layer that reveals a truth once given time to shed.

As with every heartbreak I’ve felt, I know a part of me is permanently gone with the loss of Lola. But I am not ruled by my grief, it is just part of who I am. I already see a change; I have not filled the empty space with alcohol, food, or denial of my sadness. I am simply trusting I will know soon what belongs there.

I Can’t Even Eat Right

18/06/2020 / Clarissa

Note: the following touches on disordered eating.

I knew I was fat when I was around seven years old. A well-meaning child in my grade approached me one morning and went through my lunchbox. I was packing my own lunch at that age, so it was kind of a hodgepodge of things: a sandwich, cheese sticks, pretzels, whatever was easy for me to grab and put in a bag. She picked things up one by one and said things like, “you need to stop eating these so you’ll lose weight.”

Looking back, I find that scenario kind of funny in how ridiculous it is. Most of my classmates wouldn’t give me the time of day, (I was a socially inept kid, but that’s a story for another time,) and she was awfully bold to come sit with me for a week straight to critique my food choices. I knew nothing about food aside from what I liked and didn’t, so I didn’t understand what she was talking about at all. The fact that I apparently was so fat that she needed to say or do something gave me a lot of strange and unnameable feelings.

I don’t remember if I told my parents about this or not, but they too started to drop hints that I was fat. They stopped buying certain foods I liked at the grocery store, calling things healthy or unhealthy, and eventually scheduled an appointment for me with a dietician when I was around 12.

Eagerly, I went to the appointment with my dad. I was hopeful that my fat problem would be a thing of the past. I remember telling the dietician what I liked to eat and him very quickly telling me I couldn’t eat them anymore. I can still recall most of the rules too:
– no fruit except for 1/4 cup of blueberries once a day
– no bread, pasta, corn, or potatoes (basically no carbs)
– no sugar
– a list of supplements to take daily

Ultimately, I was put on an unsustainably rigid diet. I was just a pre-teen and reliant on my parents to grocery shop for me. At first, my mom and dad were very diligent about the plan; they read every label, tried to make meals that I could eat for the whole family, and made sure to keep my supplements stocked.

My diet (spoiler alert) ended up being far too restrictive. The meals that my parents could reasonably throw together on a school night were not things that I was “allowed” to eat. I made things for myself when I could. I remember one particular Saturday when we were all eating sandwiches and I had to make a tragic-looking lettuce wrap; I felt more than ever that this whole thing was my fault and my inability to lose weight represented my failure as a person. I understand now that I had been given an insurmountable task to complete and insufficient tools to work through it.

Over the course of the next 20 years, I still applied those rules to myself. I followed the keto diet a couple of times, restricted my intake to as low as 200 calories a day, and considered every kind of carb and sugar pure evil. I lost weight a few times, but it never stayed off. I still felt like a failure. I can’t even eat right! In frustration, I started binge-eating. The stress of my ongoing defeat and my day-to-day life caused me to experience my highest weight gain ever.

I made a commitment to myself this year to take my health seriously. I got a physical, and miraculously, everything came back normal. My doctor very gently advised I lose weight (no shit, doc), and recommended a very experienced dietician in my area. I researched her and she seemed legit, but I made a promise to not work with her if she made me feel the same way my previous one had.

She is nothing like him. She is encouraging of the good food choices that I make and recommends coping techniques to stop binges before they start. She’s a self-confessed research junkie and shared recent findings in the nutritional field that she thought I would find interesting. She proved to me that keto is just “pissing yourself to happiness” in the matter of two minutes.

I knew this was right for me as soon as we got off our video call. (Wow, that’s going to sound weird once quarantine is a thing of the past.) I felt good. I felt empowered. I did my food log homework for three days and realized that I usually do make good choices and I need to recognize that weight loss for me will be a marathon and not a sprint. Through analyzing my food logs, she highlighted what I’m doing right and proposed a few small adjustments to make sure I was getting enough key nutrients. For example: checking the calcium content of my almond milk and making sure it’s enough, adding an extra serving of chia seeds to my yogurt, etc. All very doable stuff!

After our most recent meeting, I realized just how bad that previous dietician screwed me over. She noticed that I don’t eat much fruit and asked if I liked it. I LOVE fruit! I told her that I had it in my head that it was bad for me and explained that another dietician had told me that when I was young. She looked enraged. She said, “I am so sorry that happened to you,” and it hit me. I needed to hear someone acknowledge how damaging that experience had been. It had caused me to have bad or disordered eating well into adulthood.

I feel compelled to grieve for the years I’ve lost to thinking and feeling so negatively about myself because I couldn’t stick to the diet I was given as a pre-teen. I wish I had done this years ago, but I didn’t, and I can’t hold onto that regret. What I can do is feel and release the sadness I have for my younger self, then refuse to let that troubled part of me dictate my present actions.

Today, I saw beautifully in-season strawberries being sold as a buy one, get one free deal at the store. I joyfully put two containers in my cart, knowing I could eat them, enjoy them, and reap the benefits of their vitamins. For the first time, I feel like I can truly love food and eat it consciously. I still have to unlearn a few things, but I know I can do it, and that’s more than I could have said a few years ago.

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