Coiled up tight with blood and tissue, the stagnation of my uterus for an extra five days symptomatically reflects the state of my body in general over the past four weeks.
Tense, agitated, unwilling to relax, refusing to let go.
Difficult and stressful for quite a lot of the time, I've been moving through this month with elevated consciousness and self-awareness. Curious observation for the sake of learning tows a delicate line with vigilance as a matter of safety, though, and sustained levels of heightened arousal can be quite taxing on a body.
Apparently, it can make your systems clam up and shut down. It can disrupt your sleep and invoke layered dreams that process anticipatory realities. It can compel you to walk uncharted miles and sit, seemingly stuck, in moments that become hours of freeze.
It can prevent you from writing while at the same time dominate and colonize your precious notebook pages.
Like a vortex, such energy is powerful in its ability to consume and deplete - time, energy, emotional capacity - yet it's magnetic, engaging, activating, and self-perpetuating.
The charisma of chaos and seductive charm of havoc are toxic often because they can so easily overwhelm conversations, connections, and exploit loving, caring relationships. The more channels we have through which we connect to the creative and meaningful aspects of life simply means there are also more vehicles of our everyday experiences to be hijacked.
At least that's how it's been for me recently.
For the past four weeks, I've been dwelling within - and diving deeper into - unsettling psychological, social, romantic, professional, and emotional territory in an attempt to sustain and explore the space of an embodied 'no.'
Surely, this sounds unhealthy, maybe even destructive or borderline masochistic. I know. But it also takes a developed degree of courage, confidence, and control to knowingly wade into interactions and situations that consistently leave one feeling a palpable sense of dis-ease.
As Nietzsche would suggest, this indicates a certain level of robust strength, vitality, and healthiness. From that place, we can interact with ourselves, others, and existing systems differently, which may lead to unusual insights and unlikely possibilities for future ways of being.
It's a method for free spirits to choose their own down-going.
When I know that what is happening occurs as so because I am also, willingly, turning into it, fear lessens. Potential for harm may be present, but I am capable of dictating the terms for how I will observe it and from what distance.
The opportunity arises, then, to get closer, to become a little more intimate.
This is not to suggest that, at some point, what feels bad starts to feel good or even a little less bad. The embodied 'no' I'm referring to is not the message of a mistaken fool; it's the wisdom of a sage that always already has access to what is most true.
Here, the 'no' does not change. It's our capacity to challenge why and for how long we are willing to learn by being in relationship with it that becomes intriguing.
This is one reason why I'm not a huge fan of the popular notion that we should "get comfortable with being uncomfortable." When pitched in the context of a learning process, I appreciate the generalizing and optimistic stance that learning new things can feel disruptive and unsettling, but there are too many instances where discomfort and aversion to certain situations arise because real risk, threat, or potential for harm exist.
In other words, feeling uncomfortable is not always just a matter of bumping up against our own ignorance.
If we are willing to take seriously the likelihood that there are also times when one is made to feel uncomfortable, which signals a power dynamic or situation where one could really get hurt, I'm an advocate for better understanding when and why we experience discomfort in light of such potential harms so we can better respond to and prevent them.
Eyes wide open, I put one foot in front of the other, and chose to walk right into 'no' situations, and then take them to the next level by advancing another step.
I could have stopped early on at the first red flag, or five, or ten. It wasn't that I didn't want to believe or heed the warnings. It was that I didn't want to avoid them. I wanted to study what it felt like so I could trace the nuanced conditions that generated them.
This month showed me how 'no' often feels like a veil exists. It makes you question what you think you saw and felt, much like when you wonder if the person who caught your eye was waving at you, or if it was merely some arbitrary movement in the periphery of your own meaning-making playing tricks.
'No' feels like the interruptive distraction that shifts focus onto your own mental gymnastics. An otherwise smooth process where your brain makes it all make sense gets snagged, hung up, on a 'no' that breaks character by causing a minor glitch. The fourth-wall crumbles and our ease is hampered by long gaps in our own sense of suspended disbelief.
A 'no' can look like a held glance or a pregnant blink that communicates nothing, or, at least nothing complete. Such shaded ambiguity can make your stomach feel responsible for catching the pieces like soured apples falling off a sinewy tree.
Regarding this kind a journey through this type of emotional landscape, it can be tempting to dodge accountability. "I didn't intend for this to happen!" But maybe the Universe and my Subconscious are best friends who arrive at the party I'm hosting, and as generous guests, they are willing and ready to teach me a few more valuable lessons. I am willing to accept that somehow, perhaps, I brought us together by drafting the invitation for us to meet.
Over the past several years, I've developed a stronger commitment to listen to my body. The most popular cliché suggests to "trust your gut." In particular, over the past year, the lesson entered my life in a new way as the call "to move towards comfort." It has taken me this long and more to begin to understand what such phrases mean because, despite what some may presume about sensitive and emotionally complex creatures like me, I don't base my knowing simply off feeling.
I synthesize, analyze, track, detail, document, corroborate, and assess. Some might say I overthink. Some may worry I feel too much. It's possible I'm just a really slow learner, but sometimes, I get the sense that our most fundamental human experiences deserve a lifetime of continuous elaboration toward internalization.
And what I know is that I haven't developed a fully embodied experience of trust yet. I'm still curious. Which is why I'm working on it, but not without the privilege of delving further because of the support I get from all my loving relationships.
Fortunately, the good news about being this type of student means there is always a choice to respect legitimate limits.
At some point, you exercise your choice to say 'no' to the No and step out. In this case, saying "enough is enough" is appropriate when you are unwilling to exhaust the generosity of your community or compromise your actual capacity to grow and expand your window of tolerance.
It's been an exasperating start to the new year, for sure, but with a new moon at hand, the potency of this past month's characterization of 'no' has tilled fertile soil for cultivating more intimate relationships that carry the movement toward saying 'yes.'
The lower right side of my abdomen has been subtly cramping since Friday night. It's Tuesday evening. And as I write, my body begins to bleed a red sigh of relief.