I this post on Instagram that said: Let September be good to you.
And then underneath it, in much smaller letters: You don’t have to earn it.
That part hit me like a ton of bricks. Because that is another thing I have had to unlearn. The idea that if I want something good, I have to earn it first...love, care, appreciation, ease, pleasure, rest, tenderness.
There was always this sense that I had to do something for it. Be useful. Be impressive. Be understanding. Be patient. Be accommodating. Be whatever the moment required. And I think what is hitting me now is that this was never some universal truth about life.
It was just what I was around, it was ambient.
One of my post-Cap d'Agde reflections is that I think I have reached this point where I finally have enough counterevidence.
Enough evidence that something else is possible. Enough evidence to look back at some of what I have been offered and say: this is actually untenable for me.
And with that has come a lot of anger, at the fact that I had to live inside certain environments for so long and then spend years trying to understand what was wrong with me.
I keep looping on this. The fact that I did not seek out deprivation, I did not go looking for ungenerous people. I did not deliberately choose environments where love felt transactional, where care was conditional, where my joy made people uncomfortable, where affection had to be negotiated, where being competent or independent somehow became something other people needed to diminish.
That was just the water.
And when something is the water, you do not always ask, why is the water like this?
You ask, how do I survive in it?
How do I move through this?
How do I make this work?
What do I need to change?
What am I missing?
What am I doing wrong?
I do think there was always a part of me that knew some of the stories being told were wrong. I was never completely willing to contort myself just to make other people comfortable. But that does not mean those environments did not shape me. Because they did.
And I mourn that.
I mourn the fact that I did not get better counterevidence earlier.
Because counterevidence changes your decisions.
If I had known earlier, in a deep and lived way, that there were people who could encounter my joy generously, that there were environments where I did not have to constantly explain myself, that my body could simply exist, that care did not have to be bought with labor, that pleasure did not have to be justified, that my independence did not automatically make me difficult or threatening, I would have made different decisions. I damn sure would have left some things sooner or I might never have entered others. I would have trusted my own discomfort faster, I would have known that some of what I was enduring was not just “how people are.” That realization is painful because it comes with the knowledge that better actually existed. I just did not have enough access to it. And there is grief in that.
There is grief in realizing how much time you spent adapting to things that should never have required adaptation.
There is grief in realizing how much of your body and your selfhood got shaped around scarcity.
And I am angry about that.
I think Cap intensified all of this for me, the trip is still unfolding. Yes, there was nudity and sex and freedom and experimentation and all of that. But I think what mattered most is that it gave me embodied counterevidence. It was not theoretical.
I got to experience my body differently.
I moved through space differently.
I said yes when I wanted to say yes.
I said no when I wanted to say no.
I left when I was done.
I followed curiosity.
I let my body exist in public without constantly negotiating what it meant.
There was something about the ordinariness of that that has shifted me. Just being in my body.
And I think some part of me went:
Oh.
The world can actually feel different.
That is hard to unlearn once you have felt it.
Once you know there are places and people where you do not have to brace all the time, you stop respecting the environments that demand constant bracing.
That may be the biggest shift for me.
I do not think I simply have stronger boundaries now.
I think I have lost respect for deprivation.
I no longer think scarcity has some deep wisdom to teach me.
I no longer automatically assume that if someone cannot be generous with me, then maybe I am expecting too much.
If someone cannot encounter my joy generously, that tells me something about them.
If care is always transactional, that tells me something.
If I have to constantly prove my worth in order to be treated well, that tells me something.
I have counterevidence now.
And that changes things.
Which is why those little words under that September post hit so hard:
You don’t have to earn it.
I do not have to earn a good September.
I do not have to work hard enough first.
I do not have to suffer enough first.
I do not have to be useful enough.
I do not have to turn every good thing into proof of my growth.
I do not have to justify rest.
I do not have to justify pleasure.
I do not have to justify France.
I do not have to justify wanting to be loved well.
I do not have to earn tenderness.
And I think there is a difference between saying:
I deserved better.
And saying:
Better should never have been something I had to qualify for.
Because even “I deserved better” can sometimes still carry the old logic underneath it. I was good enough, so I should have received good things. But some things should not have required me to be exceptional. Some things should not have required proof, some things should not have required an audition.
Maybe that is what I want for September. Not another self-improvement project or another month where I am trying to become more healed, more disciplined, more evolved, more deserving.
Maybe I just want September to be good to me.
I do not have to earn that, maybe good things can just arrive.
And maybe the anger can be here too.
Because I am still angry.
I am angry that I had to learn so much of this late.
I am angry that I spent so much time looking at myself when sometimes the environment really was the problem.
I am angry that so much deprivation was presented as normal.
And I am angry that I cannot get the time back.
But I do have the counterevidence now.
I know more now.
I know what I will not normalize anymore.
I know what I will not call inevitable anymore.
I know what I will not explain away anymore.
I cannot change what I did not know then.
But I can make different decisions now.
Maybe that is enough for today.
Let September be good to you.
You don’t have to earn it.