Forgive me as I speak vaguely about something going on personally for a moment. I promise you that it will become clear soon enough. Without getting into specifics just yet, let’s just say that in the past few days, I have engaged in behavior that I was worried centered around the ever-dreaded self-abandonment.
So that you better understand what I mean, here are some examples of how someone might engage that way:
drinking alcohol in the midst of pledging not to for a certain amount of time;
willingly speaking to an ex who had been sworn off for a reason;
engaging with casual, unsafe sex when purportedly practicing celibacy;
expressing rage instead of breathing and pausing first
I feel I should clarify that none of these examples are what happened to me. But despite my inclination to show and tell too much, too soon, I will leave my current circumstance private for now—while still getting to my point (I hope).
“The opposite of honoring yourself is not dishonoring yourself,” said my best friend, Erica. “The opposite of honoring yourself is neutrality.”
Since Erica uttered these words to me just a few days ago, they have been rattling around in my head unendingly. In just two sentences, my brilliant bestie turned on its head my oft-dangerous black-or-white thinking, offering me a new variable that has the potential of saving me from catastrophic spiraling.
I have a tendency to be an all-or-nothing person, a trait that has actually managed to serve me quite well. I am obsessed with follow-through, monomaniacal about projects, and almost never miss a deadline (to the shock of my editors, I handed in the manuscripts for both of my books early).
But the flip side of that is that I can be relentless and sometimes have unrealistic expectations of myself with little wiggle room.
The journey to self-imposed gentleness has been a long and winding one.
So when I “fall off the wagon” or step away from my hypervigilance long enough to break the self-imposed rules pertaining to one of a million things, I can lose sight of which way is up. To be real, I can lose sight of myself, my limits, and compassion for my humanness.
This OCD mindset for sure has its charms in a professional setting (I make an excellent manager), but when it comes to my internal life, when I screw up, I sometimes just … give up.
Here’s an example: When I was living in West Hollywood, I set a goal of walking 10,000 steps a day. (For the record, this wasn’t about “weight loss” or even fitness as much as it was just a promise I made to myself—an indication that I was taking good care of myself.) No matter what, I made my steps goal—day after day. If it was 11pm and I was at 9000, I’d jump onto the treadmill (which was in the middle of the living room in our one-bedroom) or I’d walk around the block (this became much less satisfying once Covid started since part of the appeal of WeHo was the colorful characters, mostly partyers, parading the streets—oftentimes in stunning drag—all of which stopped once the pandemic begun).
When Moore and I hopped in our RV(egan) and drove across the country to our new home, our days of driving were long—and “getting my steps” was a thing of the past.
Of course, it didn’t ever occur to me that I could do the best I could while on the road, and pick up my walking again when we arrived on the east coast. And even before it all came to a screeching stop, it didn’t cross my mind that perhaps I didn’t need to get all 10,000 steps.
Therein lies madness, I’d think to myself. Of course I need to meet my goal. There was no middle ground, not ever.
This is not a trait I am proud of, but it has played out in so many areas of my life. I keep the balls in mid-air; they rarely drop. When they do, they generally stay on the ground forever. I am the queen of follow-through. Trust me; you want me on your team.
The way I saw it, once I dropped the ball, I had self-abandoned in a finite way. Case closed. End of story. Moving on.
As you can imagine, this puts a lot of stress on me sometimes. But not in the way you might think. Rather than being stressed out about possibly dropping a ball, what simply undoes me is the paralysis that ensues when I guh’ head and drop the thing.
The other day, I dropped a ball. I stopped doing something that I directly relate to my commitment to self-care and immediately decided that it was all over.
I wept in helplessness. I berated myself for letting my guard down. My dedication to honoring myself was gone; I had self-abandoned.
Until Erica reminded me that the opposite of honoring myself is not dishonoring; it is neutrality.
She told me, as an example, that taking a bath might be a way of honoring myself, but that doesn’t mean taking a shower is dishonoring.
She compared it to praying, too (we chuckled since we’re both atheists). The opposite of praying isn’t sinning; it’s … neutrality.
This small pivot in thinking started the process of healing something deep inside me, something that got stuck so many decades ago when the only thing I felt I had control over was my hypervigilance.
If you’ve ever been to a meeting on addiction, or if you’ve ever had an eating disorder, or if you’ve ever become obsessed with your goals, then you probably understand what I am talking about. Sometimes, the easiest road is the road we’re on—the one riddled with an addictive mindset. The hardest thing is finding a different path to follow.
I never realized there was another vantage point, another way to look at things. I am going to keep that word “neutrality” front and center for a while. I am going to invite it in. I am going to let it become a part of my process.
Liberation might just exist in finding the middle ground.
Yeah, but I don’t know. That sentence sounds foreign to me, like it’s somehow not enough. Like people who believe that are not enough.
But I’m going to challenge that old way of thinking and see where it leads me.
Here’s to the boomerang effect of compassion. Here’s to being gentle. Here’s to new solutions.
xo,
jazz
P.S. I wrote an article for VegNews on why vegans need to move to Rochester. See you here soon!