Around my birthday in August this year (late August, actually, my b-day’s on the 7th), I shook off the nerves and sent a request via Streamily for an autograph from Samantha Béart. Sam knows my story well enough, and I asked my usual “what’s the best life advice you’ve ever been given” as well as “you know me well enough, if there’s anything else, feel free to add!” I didn’t quite expect them to speak to my soul with their answer, but they did. That, and I feel like this story is a sort of nod from the Universe, reminding me that everything is under control, and it hears me loud and clear. That, and this is a textbook example of the parable of the two arrows as a positive tale.
At first, I thought Sam might have been trolling me. “Is Sam crazy? My best decisions got me to this point — like, can you not see I’m a hot mess because of my own decisions? Surely this is a farce.” Never mind how much I’d achieved already. But therapy has been kicking my ass up one cheek and down the other, due to the intensity of the sessions, my refusal to back down from it, and how utterly exhausted I’ve been, coupled with a bipolar diagnosis (not new, just validated and addressed) and a much needed mood stabilizer. On top of that, I’ve been doing it sober since April 15th. I felt the same way about my heart as well. How am I supposed to really trust something that has been hurt so many times that I dared not open it up to anyone….not even, as I’d eventually learn, with myself.
Also, never mind that I didn’t expect it to hit me as hard as it did upon reading it. My goal was to accept and be grateful for the exchange, with the understanding that it was transactional. Hell of a first arrow!
It was in early November of this year that I was reunited with a friend from Colorado who I had not spoken to in decades. I think the last time we spoke was quite literally 30 years ago when I was fresh out of high school and spending my first free winter season on the slopes of the Purgatory (which rebranded to Durango Mountain Resort and back to Purgatory again in that time). I was an avid snowboarder, and he was a self-described ski bum who literally lived on the mountain and worked at the place, and was also my first official Buddhist practitioner to call a friend. We reconnected through another ski friend that I knew through a dj at the local jazz station, who I ended up talking to in DMs on Instagram after they learned about my mom’s passing (which was back in 2022) and wanted to check up with me.
We got to talking about my life since my time in Durango, my move to Denver, my transition, my uncle’s passing, the ten years of hell, and how I got out of it, and of course Sam came up, but sometimes I can’t catch myself from going on about how their statement on the podcast launched me into the chaotic life I’m in now: chaotic, but much better than before I heard it. When I told him about the autograph and how I’d been pondering the meaning of it, he said “They’re right, you know.” Second arrow. Of course I wanted to argue with him about it. Because apparently this is a thing I do when I am defensive. But he said something rather profound. “Your mind is too loud. You do have all the answers, this is the same for everyone, no matter where they are, or who they are, or what they have going on. Everyone innately has the solutions to everything they need to solve within them. But doubt, insecurity, overdependence on others, heightened defenses…those things are so loud that they will drown you out.”
When he said that, I really did want to be defensive, but as quickly as the notion came, so did my mind fill up with the same doubt and insecurity that he spoke of. So I asked him “how do you combat this?”
He said it fairly simply: “Stop fighting. When things get loud, get quiet. When it gets quiet, get quieter.” I know I’ve heard that before, but I couldn’t remember where. He went on to explain that fighting can also be loud. If you believe you have to fix something that isn’t yours to fix, or doesn’t need to be fixed, you’ll fight harder…well, you will. Most people give up. But not you, you’re too stubborn to stop and see the forest beyond the trees.
Now…the majority of those quotes are paraphrased, but the intention is still there. He explained further that when your brain is filled with such negative emotions toward yourself or others, you don’t have room to see the whole picture. It’s like when you’re upset with a person or situation so much that you can’t see the entire forest anymore, because you’re focused on the one seed that was planted and the negative feelings that grew like briars from it. Internally, you become so focused on the seed and the negative feelings that grew from it that it’s all you can see about yourself, when the truth is all of the negative is just a seed. And when you have an entire forest’s worth of seeds that have grown over time, it’s especially important to be quiet, because silence kills the briars and negatives.
Learning to master the art of being quiet also helps to let folks go. It’s always best to meet people where they are instead of relying on them for the validation — the same validation you would have if you weren’t so focused on the negative things that lead you to rely on external validation to begin with. It’s a big ol’ circle, because not receiving the external validation further reinforces the negative feelings and emotions, and the whole thing just grows — all from seeds set upon the mind by other people and situations. And the only way to starve it is to be quieter than the noise that it makes. And once it gets quiet, get even quieter.
We talked about what detachment truly is — which I’m not quite adept at it. I’m not speaking about getting attached to people (which I really don’t), but I mean I literally avoid people for the most part. I am an introvert at the end of the day, and if I’m really reaching for someone, it’s because I really like them and something happened or someone said something that gave me the inclination that there was a serious problem, at which time my whole life gets paused while I do everything in my power to fix the problem. That is a textbook example of trying to be louder than the negative emotions and feelings.
If I chose to be quiet, I’d eventually hear the source — the seed — and separate it from the true nature of the forest where which the event is happening internally, and I’d also be able to see what is truly going on. The challenge, then, was to identify where things were difficult to see due to these bad seeds, and be quieter in those areas. I tried to start as soon as we talked about it, but I had a manic blackout around that time, which led to new meds, and I ended up being too tired to do anything with intention. On the first of December, I finally decided to go for broke, deciding to stop talking where I felt the seeds were strongest.
In the time since then, I’ve gone through stages of grief a few times. With my coach and friend both paying attention, we tracked my moods, things I started hearing from within, and any other changes or revelations. And we’ve been doing that. I’m still not second-nature with it, but making a practice of being quiet has lowered my blood pressure a bit. The grief is long-stored, and it’s been overwhelming, but silence is what is helping it run its course. It sounds sad, but it really isn’t. It’s part of the process of healing. I never got to truly grieve my uncle. I never got to really grieve my mom. And I have a life’s worth of stuff to grieve. I’ve never gotten the chance to really feel alive. But grief is a part of letting go of everything…and everyone. I have to do that before I can really be myself around folks, and be able to meet them where they are (don’t take that literally). Soon, I hope to find myself trusting my intuition once again. This is a side effect, after all.
And for what it’s worth, I think the medication is actually helping me learn to quiet my mind and even sleep better. Mood stabilizers be mood stabilizin’, I suppose.
