I started therapy for the fourth time because I no longer enjoyed showers.
I had these questions running through my head constantly: do I want to eat a sandwich? What will happen to my loved ones if I die today? When does Survivor come back? Should I audition for Survivor? That kind of thing.
On mornings where the questions started as soon as I woke up, I would stand directly under the shower head, perhaps hoping to literally drown the questions out. This was unsuccessful. The questions kept coming. The only difference was, now I was in the shower.
It’s often hard to (a) notice and (b) admit that something about your approach to being alive isn’t working. First, you have to be moving slowly enough to notice. Then, you have to admit, rather than deny, that you noticed something. And that admission can only happen when the circumstances are right — namely, (a) when you’re deeply loved, and (b) when you believe you are deeply loved. That love is like a buoy or an anchor; it works best when you know it’s there.
I think people try to delay or even just kind of skip over the step of admission, because there is no going back from it. Once you’ve admitted to yourself that something isn’t working, there are two options:
Option One. Decide to not try to change.
Option Two. Decide to try to change.
Option One is compelling because while the thing you noticed might be a challenging, painful condition with which to live, at least it’s familiar. Those never ending questions were nothing new to me; actually, they felt like the oldest parts of me. I knew that ouroboros well; coiled comfortably around my neck, her chokehold felt a lot like a hug.
How do you know which parts of you are integral to your being, and which parts are the ones that can be moved, shifted, evolved, or shaped?
When I tell people I’m a Pisces, most people react like ohhhhhhh, as though it explains a lot about me. Like a Pisces, I often have my head in the clouds. Like a Pisces, I am very connected to my feelings. Like a Pisces, I cry frequently.
But I wasn’t supposed to be a Pisces. I wasn’t supposed to be born in February at all. I was going to be an Aries, but the placenta got in the way; literally, it was blocking my way out of the womb, so I got evacuated ahead of schedule. And then I was a Pisces.
My proposal for how we discover who we are is maddeningly casual: through trial and error. For most of my life, I didn’t even notice the ouroboros around my neck. When I did notice her, I loved her as I loved myself. I tried for many years to hold her close and treat her with tenderness, because she was me, I thought. But at a certain point, after a certain number of showers, it dawned on me that perhaps it was time to try something else.
This brings us to Option Two: Decide to try and change. This, of course, is also very scary, because it invites the unknown. When people fear trying to change, I think that deep down, they are afraid not of failing, but of succeeding. You can imagine what you’ll feel like if you try to change and fail: the same as you do now, but perhaps more deeply entrenched. Not ideal, but not totally unknown. Alternatively, you cannot imagine what you will feel like if you try to change and you succeed. If you actually do change, the result is one big question mark, a void, a cliff.
Nowadays, the ouroboros is not gone completely, no way, but it has lost its ironclad grip on me. The snake has uncoiled from around my neck; I am no longer choking. Every now and then, I feel the snake slithering, threatening to tighten just below my nape, and then it just… goes away. I bid the snake adieu, until next time — come back when I’m exhausted and overwhelmed, if you really want to get me!!!
The loosening of the snake’s grip feels strange. Sometimes, it makes me feel delusional, like — surely I should be thinking harder, working harder, being more circumspect. Surely I can’t just keep moving through life trusting myself without extreme interrogation around every choice.
But mostly it makes me feel grateful. Grateful that my mind feels quieter, grateful that I enjoy showers. I am a water sign, after all.
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