Tony and I are sitting beside each other at the same desk on a virtual call with our therapist. I’ve just said how worried I am that our relationship will end if I pursue what makes me happy, something that would uproot our lives and force him to leave a city and community he loves. My therapist shakes his head and responds “But you haven’t considered what yours and Tony’s love is capable of, what it can evolve into, once you make that choice”.
I felt an immediate relief, then a shift in my brain, like a door opening. If just the possibility of something unknowable and amorphous, like what love could become, was able to trump my pessimism… aren’t most outcomes in life unknowable? If I can’t predict the outcome of my relationship, something I know more intimately than anything else, can I really predict anything at all?
My pessimism has been a character flaw and a security blanket for most my life. I thought if I diligently anticipated bad outcomes then I couldn’t be caught off guard. With two good decades under my belt of thinking like this, I’m certain I’ve succeeded not because of it, but in spite of it, and the truth is it’s been outright painful.
It started after being hit by a car during an intense training session on my bike. It was my fault, I ran a trail stop sign on a quiet road outside the city. It’s only a little funny, for being so painful, but the truth is there was a sequence of stop signs and I was tired of coming to a full stop, only to crank it back up to 40 km/hr. As my luck had it the driver was speeding, boom, a right angle collision that broke my bike in half and threw my exhausted body across the road. For five years day and night, I’ve had a nerve pain deep in my right hip that crawls down the right side of my leg. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours working with a small army of health providers: 2 physiotherapists, 2 chiropractors, 3 acupuncturists, 1 Doctor of Chinese Medicine, 1 sports medicine doctor, 2 therapists, and 1 personal trainer. Since this assault on healing I’ve made some progress, but not as much as I’d hoped.
I’ve learned a lot about pain since this happened to me. Pain is constructed by the brain in a diffuse process, meaning there is no one single pain center. One part is your cerebral cortex which is responsible for thoughts. The other part is pain is the pre-frontal cortex, which regulates what you focus on. The third is your limbic system, your brain’s emotion center. All the sensory signals from your body filter through that limbic system before being recognized as pain. Negative and depressed thinking amplify my hip pain, which already has a miserable baseline.
Necessity is the mother of invention so here I am with a pain so strong it’s caused me to drop every last bit of pessimism and negative thinking inside my body. I’m repeating positive thoughts, I’m writing positive mantras. There is not a single optimism tactic I will not adopt. I can believe my pain will never heal, or I can believe I have no idea what my body is capable of.
Like most women, my physical appearance has been a continuous development project. Too fat, too thin, too tall, bad skin, thin hair, wrong hair, god I’m already bored writing this sentence. I’ve told myself objectively that there is something unfortunately unideal with how I look since the age of 10, and if I could change a few things then I would probably be attractive. It never worked. When I felt the peace in assuming ignorance and accepting the unknowability of life, I thought of a quote from writer Dolly Alderton:
“What if you chose to decide that you have a certain quality that makes you attractive? What if you allow this to be true? What if you didn’t analyze why that may or may not be – whether it’s because of the size or shape or colour of any of your physical features. How would it feel to just accept that something makes you inexplicably sexy, and adorable? How would it feel to go about your life without thinking about it again?
In a recent solo session, I told my therapist how I imagined it would feel to go through life genuinely loving and believing in yourself. Incredible, I said, with a massive smile. Ignorance is bliss.
A few recommendations
An absolutely fascinating podcast episode on Acquired about the business of Taylor Swift. They give her the credit she is due, calling her the “Steve Jobs of the music industry”.
If I have to see another influencer wearing yet another brand new outfit and calling it style I will throw my phone in the ocean. I want to see! worn! clothes! Real closets, for real life baby. Preferably from someone with a mild interest in making our planet habitable for the next century. It seems Christina who writes Habiter feels the same, please lurk her chic friend’s wardrobes.
I love these pancakes. Yes, I understand cottage cheese can be strange, but it’s undetectable in this recipe and the protein is off the charts.
Thanks for reading, as always.
Caitlin
I am so very proud to call you my baby!! You are such a beautiful woman inside and out!! I love your authenticity and yet humble at the same time! You inspire me to love myself/others as we are!! ❤️
So happy to see a new post by you, Caitlin! I love the quote and the idea of simply choosing to love ourselves and let that be that with no more questioning.