The Pearls Will Come...

Mech suits, grit and embodiment.

It’s September. It’s now over three months since my life exploded in the most spectacular fashion. A quarter of a year has passed, and just this week I feel like I’ve landed back in my body with a great big thud. And I am tired and bruised and feeling it all. And my darlings, this feels like fucking hell and such an enormous progress all at once.

I feel like I’m out of the shock, out of the stress state that followed and the problem solving and now that a new normal is forming, and a settled feeling is right in my view, I can be back in my body. It’s safe here again.  

The sensation of landing back in my body has been weird and sludgy and i’m grateful I can note the difference, and now I have this image of myself in a mech suit. Like, Iron Man but without the billionaire genius and immense privilege and with far more pink glitter. Something like this…

Image Description: A cartoon anime pink haired mech suit on a pink robot like boat in a city scape: an illustrated version of Crisis-Mode-Claire or Battle Claire.

I’m going to call this powerhouse, problem solving, metal-made-machine Crisis Mode Claire.  She swoops in in the crisis, handling shit, thriving on sugar, adrenaline and chaos.

Back in May I remember voice noting one of my bests and saying, “I feel more like myself right now than I have in a long time,” and that felt alarming and yet not surprising at all, because I was just rocking around in my metal mech suit as my normal self for many years. Battle Claire was just regular Claire, competent but dysregulated as fuck. But then at the end of 2020 I started privileging rest, peace, slowing down, embodiment and softening. And then the mech suit got taken off and put away because that shit was fucking heavy and hot. Instead, I got to rock around in a white linen frock, because when I think about my most authentic, peaceful self, she’s always barefoot in a white linen frock in some kind of wild field of flowers. A startling image when you look in my colourfully chaotic wardrobe and know how much incidental mess I make on said colourful clothing. But, soft Claire knows two fundamental truths:

1.       It doesn’t matter if I spill something on my pretty white dress because I am competent and capable to deal with any mess.

2.       Your true form is the most powerful.

Image Description: A field of beautiful wild flowers in greens, yellows, lilacs and red, with mountain peaks in the background.

But in May I was made to feel so unsafe by the actions of others and the chaos of circumstances that I popped on my mech suit, and I got shit done.

I broke up a big love after a betrayal.

I had honest conversations with a parent.

I asserted boundaries.

I cleaned up the house I shared with my ex, and had my heart broken in multiple times.

I moved to a new house. Where i’ve had two lovely housemates in a matter of weeks.

I navigated the fear and medical logistics of both a breast and cervical cancer scares. And of last week all results are now back, and gratefully I am okay.

I got surprise fired via email and have problem solved the financial gap this left.

I have kept an anxious, 7.5 kilo allergy riddled, hilarious pug comfortable and alive.

I’ve said what I needed to say.

I got divorced and got to apologise to my ex-husband for my part in our end, a conversation that only the gift of time apart and lots of therapy could’ve gifted me.

I got free.

I asked for help. A lot.

I felt my feelings.

I spoke truthfully about my capacity to the people around me.

I bought a drill. I’ve built furniture.

I talked on the phone a lot to organise new connections in my new house, which as an ADHD lass this is an executive function hellscape.

And, I have rested when I’ve needed to.

As I type this list I realise that I must’ve made some suitable adjustments to my mech suit that have integrated some of the new learnings. Or maybe not. Maybe I was just taking it on-and-off instead of living in it 24-7.

I’m thinking a lot about the strategies we use to keep ourselves safe. I’ve learnt that my go-to strategy is to fawn, and that new information has been revelatory. Especially when I realise how many fighters I’m around. And, so i’m thinking about safety and discomfort a lot. My mantra of late has been, say the true thing. Because the priority is peace, and no longer just keeping it.

And actual peace is potentially uncomfortable. It means saying the true thing, and doing the true thing, even if it disappoints others. It means practicing it everywhere, every day so it stops feeling so uncomfortable. So, I’ll need my mech suit less and less, and maybe i’ll just down grade to a bow and arrow and a pair of really good boots.

Here’s to doing hard things.

Here’s to not just surviving but thriving.

Here’s to recognising growth.

Here’s to the discomfort of not abandoning myself.

Here’s to recognition that I have agency over the suffering I allow myself. And the knowing that I don’t want to suffer in the spaces that will only ever be hypothetical. Sometimes we’ll never know why people did the things they did, or said the things they did, aside from knowing that it felt like the most sensible and safest choice for them at the time. That they were just doing the best they could with the resources they had at the time. And the only thing I have any control over in that is if I choose to opt in or not. I opt out of the chaos. I opt out of the masochism of needing to know why. I embrace not knowing why. I embrace my peace.

Here’s to not knowing and that being okay.

I don’t know if these ponderings are pearls yet, my darlings, this is still definitely the grit, but something is churning, they’re being made. The pearls will come, and my goodness, they’ll be fucking beautiful.

---

---

Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live, love and work on without acknowledging the liberation of Palestine and honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else.