Exposure Therapy
Exposure Therapy
Currents to reduce pain, or: thoughts after a break-up.
Hello! This is Loose Leash, a newsletter you probably forgot you subscribed to several years ago, from writer/director Alicia Lutes. In the wake of a Twitter ban and a unquenchable thirst for attention, we’re back (for now!) on a semi-irregular basis. Please stick around, things are changing (in a good way).
It put it all in stark relief: the things I did not want. The things I did not like about myself that I wanted to change, to do something about. Areas in need of action, Jackson. I wanted more, and to do that I needed more time. For me. Alone and untethered. To do things. Be more assertive, spontaneous. To be an active participant in my own life. I want things, I realized. Things I thought were above my station. Not in any sort of class sense. It’s just that you internalize—from existing in the world, and having experiences in it—a lot of rules about what you, personally (and people like you, whomever they may be), can or can not do in life, based on various factors.
For years I was so worried about all the space I took up. I spent the majority of my time trying to figure out how to be small, in terms physical, mental, and emotional. How to want less, need fewer things, think with less urgency, do less, get by with whatever I was given. Be less.
At first, I just started with lightening up my colors, toning down their brightness. I stopped performing, and singing, just generally being creative. Those were silly things that didn’t matter. Things that brought me attention. And attention is bad, especially if you want it. It doesn't matter if you're good at it: lots of people are good at things. That doesn't make you special. And it doesn't mean anything will happen for you, either. Plus, you're annoying when you do stuff out loud, so please, just stop with the dramatics.
When I left New York, it was because I knew I'd erased so much of myself that I didn't couldn't even see an outline of a person, let alone who I was. In New York, I was just a cog in a machine, hoping I could do “it” right. “It” being the quiet, mediocre person people expected me to be. It's all I thought I was good for: being the funny fat acquaintance in other peoples' narratives. A small part of me knew that it was okay to want for more, and that I should at least try and go after it, anyway. But it’s scary to reinvent yourself. To come into your power. To believe in yourself when it feels like nobody wants you to—which is how I ended up in LA, essentially.
Because every so often, I'm brave and audacious. The fire in my belly fuels occasional moments of fullness—brushes up against and glimpses the woman I could have been this whole time. It fuels me forward, but I so often lose steam. Because I remember that I'm alone because of these things about me that take up space and make me who I am. I call the flame delusion and I chastise myself for believing in it. I feel as though my wants and inner life are at odds with what the outside world expects of me.
Or at least, that's what my brain thinks is correct. It has heaps of evidence that supports the logic: the family who rejected me, the friends who told me they were only so out of pity, a world that constantly told me I was too fat and too loud and too smart and too ugly and too annoying and too much of these highly undesirable traits and qualities. That everything about me was wrong, wrong, wrong. That I deserved to be punished and humiliated for going after what I want. Because to be this way was so obviously wrong, that I must be doing the wrong things on purpose to garner pity from others.
Sure, some people were allowed to exist out loud with some of these aspects of their personality (sometimes even loved for them). But not me. Who did I think I was? It felt like I was being told, over and over again that to want for things in this life—things like love, connection, family, friendships, a career doing something I'm good at, security, community—was not allowed for me specifically. And I believed it. I was a smart girl, after all: what smart person wouldn't believe this avalanche of evidence was anything less than the right answer?
The craziest thing is that I don't think I want for anything particularly daring or audacious. I’m fairly hetero and desire financial/emotional stability doing something that doesn’t suck out my soul—these are not terribly huge asks. But I was afraid. For so long.
I think I’m finally at the point where I want to say fuck it. I’m ready to Explore. Feel. Touch. Hear. Smell. Taste. Be afraid and do it anyway. Make mistakes and learn from them. To be hurt or do the hurting and keep going. To declare my own autonomy with my actions, out in the open again. To dare to exist and take up space. To trust myself.
And yet, it feels like it is such a big ask of the world and the people around me. Because everything about me is excessive. I have a big personality, I'm tall, at times physically imposing. I'm loud, at times obnoxious and obsessive. I can be really oblivious for all my attention to detail. And deeply, deeply forgetful given the 857 things always coursing through my mind at any given moment. My life has not exactly been simple, and it changed me—from a firecracker to...jesus christ, I don't even know anymore: some sort of semi-reanimated ember from a sparkler that long ago went out? I've been told I am a "tough nut to crack." An acquired taste. I feel a lot quite intensely and all the time and sometimes people can't help but feel it. I make a lot of noise, have been told I "suck all the air out of the room," and am often cringe-worthy in my choices and all-encompassing clumsiness. If any eloquence exists within me, it can only be relayed in writing words on pages. And even then, when I write too much too personally, I always end up losing (followers, subscribers, friends, family). It feels like the universe would much prefer me to be quiet. And I’m afraid the universe is right.
I have been afraid of myself for years—afraid that everyone would see the thing that made me so repulsive to my family, so worthy of being rejected and ostracized and mocked by strangers, friends, and family alike. Afraid that the world would tell me that they were right all along to tell me to be smaller, to do and be and want less. That if I did anything that took up space and/or was imperfect, I was selfish and deserved to be shunned and rejected. I worry constantly that I’m delusional and completely out of touch with the world.
Every single decision and choice I make in life ignites these worries. And yet there's also a voice inside of me that feels like she is screaming through a gag and duct tape, tied up and thrashing against her bindings, telling me "fucking NO, Alicia! Live! DO! BE! Want for something! Be an active fucking participant in your life! Stop worrying yourself into inaction and the acceptance of crumbs!" But I worry that voice is a selfish, delusional bitch, so I usually second guess her. I second guess every single thought and impulse, and then often find myself too overwhelmed to function.
But sometimes life builds you up to a certain moment where it all gets put into the aforementioned stark relief. And this time, something turned that semi-reanimated ember into an ignited fire that has forced me to declare myself; to brush up against the world with my own needs, wants, and desires—no matter how inelegantly. I did not want to fall into an inactive stupor. I did not want to live a sedentary life. I was tired of "taking it easy" and allowing excuses and fear and easy roads and other people to dictate my life path for me. I want and need to do. And in order to do that, I need to leave.
It all came to a head in my physical therapist’s office after weeks of feeling belittled in seemingly small ways. But this time, it was different. He was mad at me for “not listening to him” (I had), and for not doing more than my mediocre insurance would allow. He made a lot of snap judgments about myself and my abilities. The smallness I felt was overwhelming. I felt like a small, chastised child, despite all the work I’ve done that my physical therapist was not acknowledging. And as I sat there—the TENS unit vibrating electric frequencies into my torn meniscus, in the hopes of alleviating pain, tears streaming down my face—I realized I could leave. I didn’t have to let this man tell me, for the second time (in an incredibly patronizing manner) that he knew better than me. I didn’t need to endure his frustrations and judgments. “Then maybe you should get a new doctor!” he had yelled at me at one point about the recommendations I’d gotten from my podiatrist. I told him this was the new doctor, the second opinion, the new attempt. But then I realized: I could also do that here. Get a new physical therapist, try again with someone who wouldn’t treat me this way. I didn’t just have to accept things. I’m allowed to be an imperfect human who lives in her truth and doesn’t have to ask permission to live a big, imperfect, autonomous life. I cried angry tears on the walk home and I haven’t been back to that man since.
I’ve started making changes. Big ones. Painful ones. Necessary ones. In the hopes of cultivating a life that I can look back at and be happy to call my own.
I have to move forward, continue stepping into and towards the fully realized human I am allowed to be. To to be an autonomous person means occasionally looking a little bit delusional or imperfect to the people who are not you. I need to prove to myself—and myself alone!—that I can not only handle actively living my life, but that I deserve to, regardless of how much space it takes up in the world. I need to build up my confidence to exist and handle being in the world. Exposure therapy to the thing that scares me most: myself, fully alive.
Here goes nothing.