I'm Fine, I'm Not Fine, You Can Hug Me When I'm Not Messy

This week was about dead cats, ugly tears, and new layers of shadow work.

I had to put one of my cats down.

It’s been three years of long illness and slow decline. I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with it, and I’ve grieved the moment a hundred times before it even arrived.

And yet… I was still a mess.

I’ve gotten better at welcoming Grief in each time she knocks. I understand that the trick is to run right into her, to let her crack me open, to feel all the things and let them move through.

And yet, I feel like I want to do that alone. Or do I feel I have to do it alone?

I’ve had several friends express their support, reach out, check in, or offer to be there with me when I took Gracie to the vet for the last time.

Part of me needed to grieve alone.

And then I also realized: I may be able to let Grief in, but I’m not sure I can let them in all the way. Like, you can come in for happy hour, but then you have to leave so I can keep drinking alone.

You can hug me, but when I’m not so messy. I can accept your love, but only if I’m in "little grief" mode, where it’s a few neat tears and one tissue. Big Grief mode? The ugly, shattering, totally vulnerable and cracked-open place of completely falling apart? That’s too messy for public consumption.

I think it’s a life theme for me: If I’m together enough, then I’m—ready to receive love? Able to? Deserving of? Worthy of it?

I know I’m not the only one here. We want to run into or catch up with our ex when we look hot and have our shit together. (I even got a catch-up email from an ex once, strategically timed to brag about the new, awesome condo he had bought, the “LTR” he was in, and how great his "Boston 2.0" life finally was. I guess maybe he didn’t know me well enough to know I can read between and right through those lines?)

When someone asks, “What do you do?” if the answer is complex, not that impressive, confused, or “unemployed," we don’t want to answer. Or we make up something that sounds more palatable.

We don’t want to go out and be seen without our zits covered up, or at least our brows done.

We don’t want to post on Instagram unless it’s the fun, glossy, vacation pictures, I’m-having-so-much-fun-in-my-awesome-life stuff.

Our wild emotions? Too-loud-ness? Our tears? Our rage? Our pathetic parts? We’d rather keep those hidden.

I’ve always had the poise thing down.

Straight A student? Check.

Accomplished at all her extracurriculars? Check.

Calm under stress as a teacher in the classroom? Check.

People-pleaser? Check check.

I can appear cool as a cucumber in almost any situation of duress. “That Jessica, she’s always cool, calm, and collected.”

I’m also a good actress.

I even sat in therapy and talked about my childhood trauma and abandonment, and the therapist said, “You’re telling me about all this hard stuff, but you have a remarkably calm smile on your face while doing it.”

Poise is a shield.

It protects us from the messy parts being out in the open.

Bravado is a shield. Perfectionism is a shield. Know-it-all is a shield. Hiding is a shield. Addictions are shields. Workaholism is a shield. Numbing is a shield. Stoicism and toughness are shields. Projecting is a shield.

But at some point, as Brené Brown says, you realize that shield is a 20-ton piece of armor you are lugging around and can’t put down.

Here was little miss Jessica, award-winning Good Girl, nice to a fault, sometimes a little Ice Queen, which conveniently keeps people from seeing or hurting the tender parts underneath, doesn’t it?

And then came the work of the last few years. So much integration of the parts of me I deemed unacceptable. But I still have my moments:

Don’t touch me when I’m sweaty.

Don’t look at me when I’m not presentable.

Don’t see my poop-y, fart-y, bloody, ugly, snotty, teary, or broke moments.

Of course, this is a layer of shadow work, some of the hardest work there is, but essential if we are to embody our authentic selves and give and receive real and meaningful love. I’ve done a fair amount of shadow work these last years, but there are always layers, aren’t there?

This week I asked myself: What is this deeper program about?

I can only be seen when I’m “together.”

My messy, vulnerable parts must be revolting.

If I’ve “lost it,” I’m not lovable.

I’m valuable only when I’m palatable.

The whole of me—good, bad, ugly—might not all be worthy of love.

And then I remembered a story:

Six years ago, at the end of a relationship, I was standing in the middle of Boston Logan airport, falling apart. My boyfriend at the time and I had been on vacation, and we had a major fight. Even though intellectually I didn’t realize it was over, my body did—and I fell apart. I was terribly anxiously attached, my codependent self and abandoned inner child terrified of being left. Something came down like a curtain in him, and he just decided he was done. But since he wasn’t going to break up with me in the middle of a California road trip, he just kind of went cold. We took a red-eye back home, him taking the window seat and sleeping the whole way, me in the middle seat unable to sleep a single wink. By the time we arrived, my emotions mixed with lack of sleep had rendered me pretty well destroyed, and I stood there in the parking lot, surrounding by people, crying with my face and hair a complete destroyed mess. It felt a little like having your clothes ripped off you while standing in a public space. I desperately needed comfort, but he just stood there, his selfish assholery on display in a way I somehow hadn’t quite seen before in my own haze of dysfunctional attachment. Even if you were breaking up with someone, if they were a crying emotional wreck, wouldn’t you at least comfort them?

It was an incredibly vulnerable moment, and instead of being seen and comforted and loved — I was left. I was rejected and abandoned (officially a few days later). Hello, childhood-abandonment-parent-who-left reactivation. The moment left a painful mark.

I’ve had plenty of mess in my life the past five years since: moving to a new place and knowing no one, diving into a lot of messy healing work and trauma healing, another relationship that ended in him suddenly leaving (thank god I was in better place for that one), multiple years of chronic gut issues that left me not wanting to be around anyone much of the time, more career mistakes and failures than you can count, financial struggles, friendships dissolving, spending most of the pandemic pretty alone. To be honest, at first I didn’t really want to talk about it, didn’t want to be honest with more than a few people about how much felt so vulnerable. And that’s human. We all feel that in some ways, sometimes. And yet, the solution isn’t to wall it off and keep it hidden behind a fortress that says, “I’m great! Things are awesome!” It isn’t to shove it under the rug.

The answer is integration: bringing every single wonderful and sucky and vulnerable and messy part of ourselves to the table, sitting everyone down for tea, and learning to say, “I see you, I love you, I understand you."

It begins within—seeing ourselves, accepting all of ourselves, loving all of ourselves.

And that includes the messy days, when I’m cracking open with grief over putting my little Gracie to sleep, and even though I’ve been processing the impending loss for two years, I’m still crying more tears than I thought one girl could have in her body.

If I can love me when I’m messy, maybe I can let you love me too.

Art by Muhammed Salah