What We Carry Into A Room

The early morning dew sparkles as it sits heavy on blades of grass, with the September sun just making itself known, peeking over the top of the mountain.

The air is finally showing that faint chill of Autumn.

And then everything changes.

Sometimes it's so gradual that we don't even notice until one day we look around and realize that the landscape is no longer the one we remember.

Since 2020, everything has felt different, and not just to me, but I know so many others feel this too.

People feel different. The world feels different. And, I may be assuming things, but if I'm being honest, I think most of us feel different somewhere inside ourselves, even if we don't quite have the words for it.

Some of us notice.

Some of us don't.

And now here we are, standing at another seasonal threshold. Summer giving way to fall. The light changing. The air beginning to cool. Crops and the bounty of the year are being harvested. Trees are preparing to let go of things they have spent the entire year growing.

This whole year has been one massive, uncomfortable ride for me. There have been several moments when I found myself standing at the precipice of my entire world changing.

Some changes I wanted. Some I didn't. Some I understood immediately, and others I am still trying to make sense of.

But the year continued.

Still uncomfortably so, at times.

And perhaps that is one of the things the past few years have taught me best: how to find some kind of measure of peace inside the uncomfortable. How to exist in the in-between. How to develop my own kind of intercomfort with the unknown.

Because the unknown is where we spend the majority of our lives anyway.

We just don't like to admit it.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what happens when people come together carrying completely different histories.

A family, a friendship, a relationship, a workplace, a community.

Any room really.

We walk into these spaces carrying these invisible backpacks of every kind of betrayal we've experienced, every time we were misunderstood, every time someone abandoned us, every time we were made to feel foolish for trusting someone, every time we were told emotions were too much... or not enough.

We carry the ways we learned to protect ourselves as well.

Some of us become quiet.

Some become defensive.

Some withdraw.

Some explain themselves endlessly.

Some try desperately to keep everyone happy.

Some become emotionally distant.

Some become very, very good at pretending they don't care.

And sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Go the bubbles of unspoken truths.

Pop goes the emotional dam we've spent years constructing and fortifying.

And suddenly, something that happened today has somehow managed to open the doors to something that happened so very long ago.

Ten or twenty years ago.

Or maybe even when we were children.

We think we are responding to the person or situation standing in front of us.

But sometimes we are actually responding to everyone who came before those moments.

Because I have spent a great deal of my life believing that if I could just explain myself clearly enough, understand everyone else's perspective deeply enough, anticipate how my choices affect everyone around me, and to make sure nobody ever feels hurt or excluded, then perhaps I could prevent conflict altogether.

It turns out that not only is that impossible, it's also exhausting.

Which is why it's important to learn how to have healthy conflicts.

How to properly argue, not simply for argument's sake, but to communicate.

I am, admittedly so, irrationally empathetic to a fault.

I can accidentally spend an extraordinary amount of energy imagining what someone else might be feeling or thinking. I can understand why someone reacted the way they did even when their actions hurt me. I can see the history behind someone's behavior and still recognize it isn't mine to carry or regulate.

That distinction has taken me a long time to learn.

Understanding someone does not mean I am responsible for their feelings or reactions.

Caring about how something affects another person does not mean I am required to abandon my own direction.

And protecting someone's feelings does not always mean withholding the truth.

There is also something else I've had to learn: we are allowed to have futures that other people don't know about yet.

We are allowed to have ideas, plans, dreams, business endeavors, creative projects, changes of direction, and private conversations with ourselves before we announce them to the world.

Sometimes we don't speak them out loud because something isn't 'ready.'

Because it's not ours.

Because we're being secretive.

Or sometimes it's because we are afraid of what speaking it out loud may mean for us.

I think somewhere along the way many of us learned that authenticity meant being completely transparent about every little thing.

But just maybe, perhaps, authenticity doesn't mean giving everyone unrestricted access to every corner of your life.

Perhaps authenticity means being honest with yourself about what belongs to you.

What belongs to someone else.

What is yours to explain.

What isn't.

And where your responsibility ends.

I've spent years trying to understand why emotional expression can be treated as something almost dangerous.

Express yourself.

Be yourself.

Live authentically.

Tell the truth.

And yet somehow:

Don't be too emotional.

Don't make people uncomfortable.

Don't let them know they upset you.

Don't cry.

Don't get angry.

Don't make a scene.

Don't take things personally.

Don't care too much.

Don't care too little.

Be vulnerable, but only in the ways that make everyone else comfortable.

Who made these rules?

Who decided that the most acceptable version of a human being is one who can experience ENORMOUS amounts of emotion privately while presenting an appropriately sterilized version of themselves publicly?

I understand why we protect ourselves.

I understand why emotional distance can feel safer.

I understand why people build walls.

There are things in life that happen to us that teach us to do that.

Sometimes the very things we create to protect ourselves become the things that keep hurting us.

Protection can become a prison without us noticing when the door closes.

And maybe that is why this particular subject has been such a persistent trigger for me.

For more than a decade, my professional life has revolved around people talking.

People sit in my chair and tell me things.

They tell me about their families, jobs, dreams, frustrations, triggers, the things they wish different, and they talk about the world they want to live in.

I've listened to people describe the kind of society they wish existed.

A kinder one.

A more accepting one.

A more authentic one.

A place where people could freely be themselves.

And then I look at the actual world around us.

We share beautiful pictures and carefully chosen stories. We watch films and shows designed to make us feel something. We listen to music that says things we cannot. We read books because someone else managed to put words to something we have felt our entire lives.

We consume stories, art, food, entertainment, travel, beauty...

and all of it exists to make us feel something.

And yet, so much of that feeling still happens privately.

We may cry alone with a movie.

We scream along to a song in our car.

We will tell one person what we really think and then walk back into the room pretending everything is fine.

It makes me wonder:

What happens when we continue demanding a warmer, kinder, more emotionally expressive world while simultaneously punishing one another for actually expressing the emotions required to create this world?

We want authenticity until someone's authentic feelings make us uncomfortable.

We want honesty until the truth involves us.

We want people to change, but sometimes only if they change in a direction that doesn't inconvenience us.

And I am not standing outside of this observation pointing a finger.

I've done it all too.

That is the strange thing about being human.

We are all walking around inside our own private mythology.

Our own collection of evidence.

Our own versions of what happened.

Our own reasons for having the beliefs we do.

And when those private worlds collide, it can be very easy to assume that the other person or peoples are acting irrationally, maliciously, selfishly, coldly, unfairly, or cruelly.

Sometimes they are.

But sometimes they are simply standing in the same room with a completely different history and world they live in.

That doesn't make every action acceptable.

It doesn't mean we should excuse harmful behavior.

It doesn't mean boundaries are not necessary.

It simply means there is often more happening beneath the surface than any of us can truly see.

Maybe that's why stories about communities turning against individuals have existed for so long.

Salem.

Frankenstein.

The Headless Horseman riding through a sleepy town.

The stranger arriving in a village.

The outsider.

The misunderstood creature.

The mob.

The monster.

The witch.

The person who doesn't quite fit the rules everyone else silently seemed to agree upon.

These stories say something fundamental about us:

We are deeply uncomfortable with what we cannot easily categorize.

And rather than admitting we don't know the whole story, we create one.

Rather than becoming curious, we become afraid.

And sometimes the best remedy is to pause.

To notice the old story rising up insides us.

To ask ourselves:

Am I responding to what is happening now, or to what happened then?

Am I protecting myself, or am I protecting an older version of myself that no longer exists?

What actually belongs to me here?

And what am I carrying simply because I've been carrying it for a very long time?

I don't think any of us gets to live entirely free from our past, nor should we really.

Our histories matter.

They have shaped us. They have given us wisdom, instincts, boundaries, tenderness, humor, caution, creativity, and resilience.

But our past is supposed to be a place we can revisit, not a place we have to keep living.

Maybe that's what I am learning this season.

Not to stop feeling deeply.

Not to become someone entirely new.

Not to become less emotional, empathetic, or less sensitive simply because those things sometimes have made life harder for me.

I'm learning to become a little more aware of what I'm actually carrying and responding to.

Just as the trees let go of their leaves, not because they failed, but because holding on to everything is not the same as surviving.

And so the seasons begin to shift.

Summer to Autumn.

Certainty to uncertainty.

The things we thought were permanent begin to loosen.

Old stories begin to crack.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

For now, I am standing somewhere between what has been and what comes next, what is mine to carry and the things I have simply become accustomed to carrying.

And that is enough for now.