What Whitney Wants To Say #18

Hey… hey… how y’all doing? (if you know your meme history, you know what the vibe of this will be). It’s been a while huh? Or at least since I slowed down and sat with the intention to write a WWWTS. To be honest I haven’t had much to say at all. I’ve spent the last few weeks in a kind of stunned silence. I had really believed that I couldn’t end up here but every week it seems, my life has changed completely. Honestly, it’s been difficult to orient myself around so much change. While admittedly most of it has been truly awful, this weekend I watched one of my wildest dreams come true and I couldn’t be more proud of myself. Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of emotional ping-ponging as of late.

The meme in question is a clip from Little Women: Atlanta. An iconic vocal stim if I’ve ever seen one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity. What does it mean to define yourself? I suppose you are who you say you are because you say it, but clearly that isn’t enough for most people. In our society you can’t just…be. When you meet people, they typically ask you what you do for work (at least in America anyway). This becomes your identity. People’s initial understanding of you is oriented around your profession. This person is a nurse so I know I can trust them, and so on. But what if you don’t have one? What if you have no way of being initially classified? You don’t cease to exist but you lose a means of people being able to relate and understand you. Now you’re this rouge, untrustworthy entity and that makes people uncomfortable. It isolates you. As far as our society goes, you don’t exist, at least not in the way you should. Even worse, it’s in this isolation and misery that you’re supposed to look for another job. Not just to feed and house yourself, but so you can exist to the wider world again. So you can feel normal. Needless to say the desperation all of this creates is not necessarily conducive to the job search. This cultural attitude towards employment keeps us tethered to jobs we would likely be better off without, as if the fear of starvation or lack of healthcare wasn’t enough. Employment feels like something we all do under duress and I wonder if given the option, how many of us would choose to opt out altogether.

I’ve also been thinking about the brain or really the mind. Often our mind is working in tandem with our bodies to tell us things we don’t regularly notice. Like when you’re in a horrible mood and you’re feeling like you’ll never amount to anything, until you realize you haven’t eaten anything that day. You were so busy you didn’t notice your stomach so your brain had to step in. It’s really fascinating stuff and makes me wish I’d taken a psych class in college. I realized my brain had been screaming at me, maybe for years and I hadn’t noticed. For the last few years I’ve had really bad night terrors. Like “waking up out of your sleep pouring sweat” bad. I had experienced them before but only when I was under immense emotional stress. But I was confused, mainly because I thought I was doing alright. Everything is great, no? I realized that I haven’t had a single night terror, barely even a nightmare since the breakup. Not a one. I know my brain was sick of me. You can really trick yourself into believing everything is fine and this is the best it can get. Since I lost my job (in the moments where I haven’t been upset or angry at the loss) I am actually really calm. More serene than I’ve been in a while. The migraines are gone. I think my brain would fight me if it could. I wouldn’t blame it.

Also I try to keep it fun and light when talking about astrology. Very, “what does Seventeen magazine say is going to happen this month” type vibes. But I think there may be some credence to this whole Saturn return thing. My Saturn has been returning with a capital “R”. I’m learning through it though and I’m looking forward to the peace and elevation of 30 that I was promised. Or at least a reprieve? Anyway I re-downloaded Co-Star so there’s that.

I’m going to make a concerted effort to return to this space as often as possible. Too many people have told me they value my writing this week for me not to and that encouragement has really lit a fire under me. Plus I miss talking about what I’ve been watching. I saw so many movies and shows last month and the fact that I spoke about NONE of them haunts me to my core. Thank you for waiting!