love school with sumi: life is a mixed bag
Life is a mixed bag. You are learning how to live with the mixed bagness of life. The following is a page from my life on this.
A week before the FUTURE SELF FASHION SHOW – a community fashion show and the biggest sumistreet event to date (!) – a tree fell on my car and totaled it. Thankfully no one was physically hurt, just highly inconvenienced. I had a lot to do leading up to the event, so this added more pressure and stress to my plans.
In a way I can appreciate, the upcoming show meant I needed to focus my energy. How much time could I spend throwing myself a pity party about the stress of the car, versus figuring out how to navigate this obstacle in the midst of curating the show? I decided to keep moving towards what mattered most to me: the fashion show. My mom happened to be going out of town that same week, so I was able to borrow her car for the event, while I figured out insurance and buying a new car. It feels kinda mundane to write about it now, but, at the time, it seemed like a real kindness from the universe.
Then, on the Venus cazimi in Leo, on a 'world is burning' hot Sunday in August, and after 6 months of planning, the FUTURE SELF FASHION SHOW happened! Gosh, it feels impossible to write about the unabashed joy and happiness I experienced that day. I wonder if this is what some folks feel like on their wedding day. It brings me so much satisfaction that I could feel that with my community – a transcendent love. During the event, I went to a corner of the room solo, seeking a quiet moment. Alone, I could more fully feel myself just radiating with happiness. It was like happiness vibrations were running all through me. I remember thinking, “I am feeling ecstatic. This is what ecstatic feels like.” My heart felt so open, for everyone there. And in return, I felt this miraculous openness and love from the room. I saw my friends reveal themselves in ways I’d rarely encountered before (though I sense this “future self” was right underneath the surface all along). You coulda put me in a t-shirt that said HIGH ON LIFE. I was just absolutely vibing in every sense of the word.*
Two days later, I got COVID, along with 10 other people who attended the party. I wrote about it a bit here and what I wish I had done differently (namely, require masks at an indoor event). The day I started to feel sick, a 20 minute baby tornado swept through Durham, taking down lots of trees and powerlines. Thousands of folks lost power, some for several days after the storm. I lost power after a tree fell on my neighbor’s house. After the storm, I took my dog out to pee. As we walked by a fallen tree limb, we both started getting stung by bees – we had walked over a hive that had been in the tree. After swatting bees off my dog and self, losing my house key in the kerfuffle – then finding it – I got home. I waited anxiously to see if my dog was allergic to bees (she wasn’t) and I felt a relief that a bad thing had not turned into a worse thing. Then another small kindness came through: my mom’s house had power, she was still out of town, and I could quarantine there.
Having COVID was terrible – and the long term impacts of the virus on my health are unknown. But there was some miraculous camaraderie in the despair. My first time with COVID was happening alongside a handful of my closest friends. We were staying connected, sharing resources, and care tips over group chat.
I didn’t have a thermometer to keep a pulse on my fever. My executive functioning to figure out getting one was at an all time low– I turn into a baby Eeyore when I’m sick. My mom – who seems to befriend every neighbor on site – asked her neighbor to drop one off. (This was also the same neighbor who helped me replace my mom’s car key battery when it started to die, the day before the fashion show.)
My fridge was in a sad state of affairs for quarantine – an overabundance of party cheese and no oat milk. But texts poured in from friends offering to bring over dinner and groceries throughout the two weeks.
After the party and during quarantine, I began having COVID-related conflict with people in my life. Simultaneously, I called on a loving support system to process my anger, and help me find what centered accountability and self-forgiveness look like in this moment.
So this has been my party line for the past month: Life is a mixed bag. And my emotions have been a mixed bag, too. One of the best days of my life, previewed by a falling tree, and followed by a literal storm, community sickness, and ruptured relationships.
In therapy, I brought up that I was writing about this mixed bagness. My therapist said, “often when there is an expansion, it’s followed by contraction. And we can choose to shape to the pain, or we can shape to the possibilities.”
I have a really old story – a core wound – that lives in me. It says, ‘when I’m happy, bad things happen.’ This sequence of events could have easily shaped to the pain of that story. But by gawd I am doing my best to not let that happen.
Over dinner, I processed out loud with my friends. What is this mixed bag life moment trying to teach me? I could have had the experience of having an amazing event with pure lalala ecstatic energy– with no hardship or hard feelings afterward. But as my therapist reminded me, “we very rarely have the privilege of experiencing only one emotion. It’s human that all of that [different emotions] is in the mix.”
And I think the gift, however annoying (read: scary) it may be, is learning how to live with the mixed bagness of life, while not shrinking my spirit and self-worth in the face of whatever pain that might bring to the surface.
Birthing this big project that I’m so proud of and now facing the aftermath is stretching me. If I choose to shape to the possibility of that stretching, I can say: I am learning what it’s like to put yourself out there creatively, realize your wild vision, and simultaneously tolerate the discomfort that comes from it.
I will keep creating, and I will keep building my tolerance for this mixed bag of emotions which comes from birthing anything that means everything to you. I will try my best to not shrink away from receiving feedback that supports me to do better. I will feel my joy, happiness, anger, disappointment, and practice true vulnerability. When I’m not feeling super blah about it, I can see the richness in it. Even that’s a mixed bag, I suppose.
*I’m not a seasoned event planner. I associate planning large events with STRESS – so much that I tend to dissociate during most of the event. I think the game changer for the show was the theme. Planning this event meant that every aspect of it was infused with the wisdom of my older, wiser self. She gave me important instructions: to embrace imperfection and recognize love, presence, and radical play as the main goal. There was no “getting it wrong” here. A balm for my anxiety. It was rare for me, but it’s a lesson I’m carrying forward: I can access happiness by relaxing. And relaxing allows me to feel most connected to whatever it is that I do.