On play (and why I put things in closets)

I got a massage today.

Not the relaxing kind, apparently. The kind where your body decides to process ten years of stuff you didn't know you were holding, and then your endometriosis flares because your nervous system finally unclenched and everything underneath said hi, remember us?

So that was fun.

But something came loose today that wasn't physical. Something I've been feeling for a while without knowing what to call it.

I don't know how to play.

Not the cute, "oh I'm such a type A" way. In a real way. In a way that traces back to a childhood where play wasn't safe because nothing was safe. Where I cleaned instead of played. Where I organized things because the world was chaos.

I'm almost forty and I'm just now realizing that.

I watch my kids create things- messy, weird, purposeless things- and I’m almost bothered by it. I do it with them because I want them to have what I didn't. But if I'm honest, I don't enjoy it. I endure it. And then I start cleaning up.

I play the Sims sometimes. I design the character. I build the house. I organize every room. And then I'm done. I don't actually play. I just… set things up. Control the environment. Make it perfect. Close the laptop.

A friend of mine does junk journaling. She makes page after page of collaged, layered, beautiful things and puts them in a box. They don't get framed. They don't get sold. They don't go anywhere.

I can't wrap my brain around it. I'm so drawn to what she does and I don't understand why she does it.

Because my brain doesn't let things exist “for no reason”

I made these collages recently- she inspired them. They were out of my comfort zone and I was proud of them. But I couldn't photograph them well enough to list in my shop, so I put them in a closet.

Just… think about that for a second. The thing couldn't earn its keep so I hid it away. It didn’t deserve to take up space.

I've been coloring with my kids lately. On purpose, I color ugly. Outside the lines. Wrong colors. A purple dog. An orange sky. And my kids look at it and tell me it's beautiful and I almost believe them.

That's been more healing than I expected.

I learned that I was only allowed to take up space if I was being useful. Everything I made had to go somewhere, serve someone, justify its existence. This was reinforced by all the homes I lived in during my foster care years.

I think a lot of people carry this. Especially women. Especially mothers. Especially anyone who grew up in a home where you had to earn your worth.

We get good at producing. We build businesses and homes and routines and systems and it all looks like ambition but some of it- maybe a lot of it- is just a very sophisticated version of that kid organizing the apartment so nobody yells tonight.

I don't have this figured out. I'm not writing this from the other side.

I'm writing it from the couch with a heating pad on my stomach because my body apparently decided that today was the day to feel everything …at once.

But I'm noticing things. I'm noticing that I surrounded myself with safe people- a massage therapist (former client) who creates space for my body to let go, a friend who keeps showing me what purposeless creation looks like, kids who think my ugly coloring is art.

I built that without realizing it. A little ecosystem of soft people.

I think the next part is learning to make something that doesn't get shared publicly. Doesn't get listed. Doesn't get photographed.

...I even turned today’s experience into a blog… wtf…