I The Empress: a sultry sounding board of words by Christyn M Hall

i pity da fear

Good Morning. It is a bright and cheery day here on the West Coast of Canada. There is the fresh slapping smell of ocean salt in the air, alongside squeaks and squawks – seabirds in flight. I am squawking too, but I am not in flight. No. I am in fright. As I flit about my third floor apartment, voice raised in shrill unconcern, I stop for a pregnant pause and have but a brief interlude to think, “what the poop am I even anxious about?”. The truth, I innocently tell myself,  is that I don’t know. I don’t know why I am afraid or why my adrenal glands began pumping out adrenaline before I even awoke this morning. I just know that I have The Fear; Oh dear. It is possible that I have had (3) too many cups of coffee this morning and said coffee is solely culpable in encumbering me with death-like numbness and a panicky heart. Most likely, though, this avian behaviour of mine is simply a well-trained, hard-wired, perfectly practiced habit, performing in perpetuity. Like muscle memory. Deep down in the belly of my Inner Beast I know the TRUTH is a very different story – I know what I am afraid of. I feel the in-authenticity of avoiding my fear and flapping around in a furious flurry of feathery tantrums. The capital ‘T’ TRUTH is thus: I experience anxiety when I simply and utterly refuse to confront WHAT I REALLY WANT. (What I really want is to take flight). This is usually accompanied by the slew of excuses I have created to convince myself of why I do not deserve to fly. Alas, regardless of the essential why behind my why-ning, what remains to be seen is the cessation of my fright and the beginning of the sky-rockets-in-flight-afternoon-delights portion of my Life Program. Mmmmmmm. Sounds like a whimsical romp with Alice. Through Wonderland. Problem is, on this acid trip of an adventure (sans LSD) called Life, some of us are exposed to a much higher case of sensitivity than others. And I’m not talking about the kind that can be solved with the consistent use of Sensodyne. Nope. I’m talking about the constant fatigue of absorbing negativity and useless beliefs like an empathic sponge that never forgets. After all of the ‘Keep Your Feet on The Ground’s and the ‘Get Your Head Out of the Clouds’ that I have heard, it is somewhat difficult to believe that wings have sprouted magically under my armpits and are ready to take me flying.

In many ways I am very much a baby bird – blind, hungry (and wholly lacking in hollowed bones). Something scares me? I close my eyes and squawk until something comes by with a placation. So far in my life, this has been self-administered in the form of chocolate, picking a huge fight and/or the Mother of all fear-avoiding tactics: a migraine. You may be wondering now, “How does it feel to be aware of this, Christyn?” Well, let me tell you. For all that I fight, avoid and delay facing my fears, I loathe NOT facing them (thereby effectively ending up with my face in the john puking up liver juice). (By the way, If having to taste your own bile isn’t the physical manifestation of self-loathing, then what, I ask you my friends, is?). So here we are, then. The fear and the loathing. I have (with deep and gut wrenching {literally}acidity) HATED myself for getting migraine headaches. (This approach, I feel, can be likened to berating and face punching your best friend when they have a vomitty migraine headache. Would you do that? No, you would not, because that would make you a terrible, horrible no-good very-bad best friend and you would probably get a vomitty Karmic migraine for it). (Can I just write everything in brackets?) I have also spent many hours hating the art that I create, the words that I write and the look of my own face. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about these things as they are and will be a continuous part of my life foreverheremoreinafter. (Yes, that is a word – and now a few words on made-up words: My dear friend Shauna Eve once spoke aloud a word that her parents did not yet know. Naively thinking they knew better, they proclaimed in unison, “That’s not a word, darling”. Shauna, being smart, jolly, fey and insouciant (like all great little girls) replied, “Well, of course it is, sillies. I just made it up”. So there). After all of this – sqwaking, squeaking and flapping, trying to take flight but only taking fright – when I’m quiet and exhausted once again, drained from exertion and empty, finally, what I’m reallly dying to know is, in the sometimes interesting and often ugly face of fear, what’s a girl to do?

Let us take pause here and remember the wise words of Candice Bergen’s character to her daughter in an excerpt from “The Women”: “Don’t be bitter, Mary. It leads to Botox”. I think we would ALL do well to heed Ms. Bergen’s advice. Bitterness. Bitterness is a symptom of fear and fear is what stops us from soldering courageously into the heart of our most sumptuous dreams (Hmmm, well, I would actually (and contradictorily) further that description by saying that bitterness is what comes of fear when one constantly and consistently ignores the message that the fear is trying to tell: that the fiery essence of fear IS the child-like soldier that courageously pushes us towards our most sumptuous dreams. Figure that one out). Bitterness will drag you down beyond the water line, fill your lungs with turbid liquid and choke your spirited essence until your dreams are naught but a festering blister of dark, immeasurable pain. Bitterness will make you say things like, “I CAN’T FOLLOW MY DREAMS (write a blog/go swimming/sire children/watch those Twilight movies/believe in fairies/have chocolate pudding for breakfast/cut your hair into a mohawk/change your life/author a sex column/become a painter/business owner/florist/gay man) I HAVE TO KEEP MY FEET ON THE GROUND!” and Bitterness will be right, if you let it. (By the way, that quote was pulled from Bastion in The Neverending Story, for those of you who are a bit out of touch with very important 80′s films). Bitterness is the leftover ash in the pot you personally burnt your own dreams in. Ouch. (Do I sound bitter?). The moral of this little side-note is thus: If you don’t want to be stuck in the face with Botox (or be stuck with the Botox face, for that matter), don’t burn your dreams, don’t bury your inner-child in the dust and certainly, when all seems bleak, black, smudged and ruined, when the searing tip of a botulized needle is calling your name seductively in warm, whispering, romantic tones and it seems as though Bitterness has bit your heart and shan’t give it up…don’t panic. Help is on the way. Probably.

You see, we are all subjected to many forms of dream-death. The people around us are forever feeding us little snippets of their own fears and possible jealousies, or simple misunderstandings and misinterpretations. We all build excuses and lists of pesky “shoulds” in our minds. We let them run wild and free until they come to us one day, in boring brown suits, and tell us in monochromatic language that we are to do only what we Should Do and never what we Dream of Doing. And, foolishly,  we listen. We listen and we, as Carrie Bradshaw eloquently prattles, “should all over ourselves”.  We listen because we want to be good and do good and make sure that the least amount of other good people get hurt. No wonder there are migraines and panic attacks. What if I told you that by participating in so much Shoulding, you are slowy and painfully killing yourself? (And, really, by YourSelf, I mean MySelf). What is the point of that? We are all going to die one day, we don’t need to help ourselves along that path. Let that sink in. We will die. We have a limited time on Earth in which to accomplish our dreams and goals and then we leave, off to the next adventure, whatever that may be. So – show of hands – who wants to let the slow decay of fear turn to bitterness? Who wants to ignite their most whimsical notions of Life in a steel pot and lick the bitter ash of leftover regret? Who wants to walk hand-in-hand with their friend Bitterness to the Botox Doctor?  No one. Not when it’s put into scary and shocking words like that. If someone were yelling at me like that, I’d just go along with whatever they were saying to avoid any further spit from their frothing mouths landing on my face.

Yep, I’m going to cut back on the java.

Yet, I think I may have just found some clarity. In a glass of water. I watched it ebb and flow, bend, tilt and vanish as I drank it down. It filled me with a lightness and smooth bliss the likes of which only water can. When I stayed on Koh Phangan island, Thailand, I travelled by water taxi to reach a beach so secluded and quiet, only the flitterings of butterfly wings disturbed my sleep at night. Well, okay that’s not quite true. There were pigs, roosters, full moon party participants, high on shroom-shakes, and a traveling-mate/sibling who drop kicked like Van Damme when dreaming, but such a magical place deserves to be remembered for its finest details, non? I would swim out to the edge of the bay, where the coddled waters of Had Kuat met the wide and unpredictable tides of the greater sea, and there I would float, ears under water, face lifted to the sun, rocked tenderly, lovingly by the crystalline waves. Maybe an hour would go by, maybe a bit longer, until, filled with bliss and the nutrient dense rays of Apollo’s gift, I would lazily paddle my way back to shore. In these languorous moments I found myself filled with lightness and peace – as though the Ocean HerSelf, listening to my dreams and desires, took them unto her watery breast and said, “I shall keep these safe for you”.  And so, I was empty. And here, perhaps, the story concludes. For what’s a girl to do in the face of that incessant and slippery fiend named fear? Drink a glass of water. Drink it down and when you are done, go straight to a clean, fresh, piece of paper. On this paper, write (in eyeliner, sharpie, the leftover chocolate pudding you had for breakfast, or I suppose even a pen would do). Whatever you use, write these words, “What I Want”. And then, with the Devil’s Breath of Fear that starts to bubble up inside your guts, write down what you want, until you are empty. Write down the scariest, most profound and ridiculous desires you have ever dared to have and write them down in pudding. (Actually, maybe sharpie is best, because if you are anything like me, you’ll be tempted to lick the pudding off of the paper and then, (OOPS!), you just ate your dreams). Look at the list. If it makes you angry, maybe you fancy a shout? If it makes you nauseous, maybe you fancy a Gravol (or 2)? If it makes you feel ridiculous and stupid or taunts you to  flap your wings and sqwak , “I CAN’T FOLLOW MY DREAMS, I HAVE TO KEEP MY FEET ON THE GROUND” then just you remember this: in the Neverending Story, our sweet and vulnerable 7 year old hero named Bastion saves an ENTIRE UNIVERSE called Fanatasia. And how does he do this? He faces each one of his fears about following dreams and somehow musters the courage to un-believe the nonsense called “keeping your feet on the ground”.  He runs to the open window and  boldly, mustering his mighty lung and heart power, screams into the stormy face of fear, “I WILL FOLLOW MY DREAMS!”.  So, if writing your deepest desires inspires in you anything like anxiety, fear, instant excuse making, perhaps bloating or gas (what did you expect from licking old pudding off an old piece of processed tree?) then, pat yourself on the back. You have met your courageous child-like empress who will take your hand, veer you away from The Fate of Bitterness=Botox and instead, with shaky, defining steps, lead you dangerously, fabulously towards the lofty light of Life in the Clouds (where there just may be a pink luck dragon waiting to fly you to the moon…). You may write a scary, petulant blog entry, or save a universe, or, potentially, if you included, “eating more chocolate pudding” on your list of dreams, your little soldier might walk you straight to the fridge where the both of you will indulge in a spectacular display of what can only and ever be referred to as the accomplistablishment of a dream.

Yes, darlings, of course that is a word… I just made it up.

xoxoxoxoxox

christyn