Gut Feelings #3
Much growth, many lessons, etc etc
This is Gut Feelings. A periodical journal entry about writing. They are reflections and thoughts on writing and life and thus are minimally edited and highly personal.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last fortnight in reflection. Thinking about the year, this one that is almost over. I normally wouldn’t do this on a consistent basis but when I do, I let my mind float, skimming the surface of the years milestones, dipping in for further reminiscence where I want to. I don’t laboriously fill out a diary day by day, ending it with a profound recap essay on the 31st of December before cracking open a fresh one on January 1st to continue to habit. I’m more of a chaotic scribbler/dot pointer across several notebooks that I have strewn about the house and keeper of a billion random iPhone notes. My digital record keeping feels similarly unorganised. It’s only when I’m working on something particular or a project, that I’m like a clipboard-holding Karen meticulously ticking boxes.
But when my brain and my toddler allow, I do sit and think about what has happened. November feels like a good time to do it before the festive mess of December really kicks into gear and everyone’s mind slowly unravels as the to-do lists exponentially expand. As a parent, it can be easy to default to measuring time in the growth of your child. It’s so easy for me to flick back amongst the truly obscene number of photos and videos of my son on my phone and glue my eyeballs to the screen, sighing and scrolling through the months. But it’s not all about him.
I’ve been acknowledging how far I’ve come within myself this year. I know you can say that every year but I do think our reflections of our yearly journey often come with external markers of success tied to them (e.g. getting a promotion, going on a holiday, completing a renovation). They’re great and I’ve had many of those too. But what I’m actually thinking about and recognising is the shift within me. The work I’ve put into myself, doing some really confronting shit to grow as a person. It might sound incredibly egoic and woo-woo (which it is) but it’s undoubtably changed me, made me better. Made me take action on things I would have ordinarily avoided, hoping they would disappear on their own (they don’t).
As part of this reflection, I started sifting through old pieces of writing. Some of them, I had previously posted and some of them were tucked away, completely forgotten. I read most of them again start to finish, reacquainting current me with a past version of myself; me two weeks ago, seven months ago, one year. I read essays I’d written about the time I was bleeding and broken while in the circus, my incredible grandmother and her long battle with Alzheimer’s, a morning sex scene.
I found myself experiencing a similar emotion each time I read them, the discomfort transmuting from my mind to my awkward, collapsed. posture. I was giving myself the ick. Reading my own words back to myself was uncomfortable. I wanted to edit every single piece to varying degrees, but I refrained, tucking my hands underneath my arms to resist temptation. I told my husband about it and he said, “Doesn’t that just show you how much you’ve grown as a person and a writer?” And it does. It really does.
There’s only one piece I don’t feel the urge to change. A short little stream of consciousness that poured out of me one night, months ago. I read it again as a reminder and as motivation to keep going. To keep changing and testing and trying. To discover new parts of myself, to nurture what I want to keep, to prune away what I don’t.
Maybe not so icky after all.
You Gotta Prune to Bloom (June, 2023)
I can't stop thinking about this. You have to experience the pain of the prune, the discomfort. Each slice, snip, snap of a branch/leaf/tendril/fragment that isn’t serving you any more. It could be something within yourself - judging others, feeling insecure in your body, a fear of rejection, an exhausting need to please. Or it could be things in your life that can no longer be held - friendships that lack intimacy, relationships that hurt you, jobs leaving you unfulfilled, false peace in a family. Or it could be all of them and none of them and more of them. The first hardest part is the knowing and the next hardest part is the cutting. This is the most painful but the most necessary - some will be a sting and some an amputation. But cut, you must. You know, therefore you cut. The distance between the two is the variable part.
Second/minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years? Before you make a slice. Some will never slice. But the thing about the pruning is, the more you do, the more you bloom. It will feel like the bloom will never come, like you’ve gone too far, cut too much. That you will become unrecognisable. But you gotta sit in the silence, the discomfort, the chaos of all those fallen leaves around you. Watch them fall away until you realise how much lighter you are, relieved even. Feel the sun on the very core of you, your essence, the thing that is you. Do you even know who you are underneath it all? Say hello. And wait. It might take a while. Sting v amputation - who knows how long? But how long will turn into how beautiful I am, how raw. And how raw and beautiful will turn into how many new buds I have! To how many blooms can I count? Well that depends on the prune. The blooms push out into the world, an extension of the rawness of you. What are they? They are love, they are grace, they are new friends, they are delicious conversations, they are great sex, they are hysterical laughter, they are the happiness in the quiet moments, they are freedom, they are expression. They are you. They might not bloom forever, some might wilt away, or become rotten and thus the pruning begins anew. But that’s the point. The prune. So you gotta prune to bloom.
The Good Shit
Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
Green Dot is the debut novel by Australian writer, Madeleine Gray, and it is a banger. This book (just released in August!!) has been receiving so much love and hype overseas and I believe is already being adapted for TV. Green Dot tells the story of Hera Stephen, a lost young woman who has an affair with an older, married coworker. It’s like nothing I’ve ever read before and Hera’s voice is so unique and shines so clearly throughout the book. I can’t remember reading something before this that had made me actually laughing out loud so often. I’m still chuckling thinking about some of the more unhinged moments in the book. It’s Australian without it being too Australian (and therefore isolating to non-Australians) and while the dialogue was clunky in parts and reading it often felt like watching a car crash in slow motion, it was highly entertaining. It will absolutely make you boil with frustration and give you the ick but that’s what makes it so good, so audacious for a debut. It’s the perfect summer read for the beach or on Boxing Day when you’re in the post-feasting delirium of Christmas. Please read and come chat to me about it!!
Ghost Story by Wondery & Pineapple Street Studios
My cousin recommended this podcast to me and honestly, I was skeptical. But after just one episode of Ghost Story, I was hooked on the Agatha Christie/family history/crazy coincidence vibes of this series. The podcast is hosted by Tristan Redman, a British journalist, who discovers that his wife’s great-grandmother lived, and was murdered in, the house next door to where he lived as a teenager. And that Tristan, along with later occupants of his own house, experienced strange things while living there. This might sound a bit weird and scary but it’s not, I promise you. Among other things, it’s a fascinating tale of a family who has to reckon with the unsavoury past of their family and what that means for them today.
Thank you for reading this issue of The Middle! If you liked it, please share using the button below. It helps other people find my wild stories and some really good recommendations. Thank you so much for your support, Sian x