The 'this is me' exercise

I think I see myself as two ex-boyfriends and a half carton of eggs.

There was a “This is me” exercise in the book Qabalah by David Wells where it said before anything else, you should write a page about yourself. Anything you want, how you physically look or your deepest desires, your spiritual journey, anything that ‘you’ means to You.

That’s the confusing part— the way that it could be anything (it’s a choice). And we’re all changing all the time at every minute. As you write and go to move your hand from the keyboard, to touch your hair and twist it, feels insightful, to take in your hand, and makes you somehow more confident— that’s a change! You’ve changed already. And you can’t stop.

You love someone one second, and someone more the next.

I stopped writing for a while because it felt weird to talk about my exes so much online and know that people were reading it. When I used to do it, I never really thought anyone was reading it. I know that’s an understatement and I know that I check the view counts every time but I figure that nobody even gets to the end of these things. And on top of that, my internet friend Maddy asked me what I think the reason was that I was so obsessed with writing about love and relationships, and it made me feel like everybody knew something about me that I didn’t.

I’m sure it might be a problem that I can’t write about myself without writing about the people I’ve loved.

Lately it has felt like something I can’t get beyond the surface of— this identification with love as identity (self, me, You). Heather (my roommate) and I went to The Space and even there it didn’t come to me— what self is— even if I did wake up feeling more like a person the next morning. She started translating psychic messages to me and talking about people’s paths— getting these visions that were exactly the visions I was getting in the same instant. One was a gradient for her and for me it was lines but it was describing the same thing— the way that Sameera and I met and began to grow in our lives together. The lines met then swiveled around in parallel for a while.

The lines in the image above were sorta like what I was seeing, except there was only one group of two, and they moved all around, sometimes went apart, but they always came back together. It felt playful. Sometimes they overlapped the way a DNA cell bends. Sometimes they spread apart like a sliced apple you separate with a knife.

Heather told me that sometimes she notices me pulling things from other places, as if I were looking all around the room for the right thing, eyes darting, and then finding and grabbing it. Then saying it. Like plucking an apple off a tree (maybe to slice it). Apparently I do this a lot of the time. When I’m about to say something fucked up or when I’m writing. She said that she could see my path and that she knew I was headed somewhere. The Angels Told Me To Tell You That she said, half joking, soon it’d all make sense, and the deep knowing for things would return to me.

There’s deep initiative inside me to understand the invisible— I think that means getting to the underneath part of anything we can see. And getting there fast. Knowing it even if you can’t fully say it. I think that’s exactly what writing does, and why it has stuck with me for my life. One thing I figured out recently in a letter to Maddy was that Dom’s presence was like a hug. Sometimes to get to that one thing, you have to dig for a while. I had to sit and write pages just to get to that one sentiment that felt right. It takes patience. Life is like this too.

In a podcast episode about pleasure, Sotce sorta links the self to just feeling good and letting yourself sink into things. When you’re having a good day and feeling aligned you have this deep knowing for who you are. Other times you’re acting from a place of fear. Too afraid to sit and be patient, or too afraid to really let the You through. It makes me feel a lot better to think of all these things as emotions— so then you can change them so quickly and so easily. That being yourself is fluid, and it can just mean that you’re feeling good (but I also feel like me when I’m sad too)! You are free and able to be without pressure. Sometimes I think this starts by shutting off your thinking brain. Sotce said “your mind can argue with itself for your entire life.”

“Well what if this happens? Or what if this happens? No, You’re not. Yes, You are. What if I’m like this, wait, are You like that? No, you know? You can do this forever and it’s kind of entertaining because it’s like an unlimited energy. You are obviously your most worthy opponent. You know yourself better than everyone and you know everything that’s going on and you’re exactly as smart as yourself. You know everything. You really can just go on like that forever. But you can’t surrender unless you’re happy. That’s what I’ve realized.

Someone can try to pry a heart open to force that into submission, to say You Are Going To Love Me! You Are Going To Be There For Me! But unless you are just naturally in that state and able to melt and soften, it’s just not going to happen. It’s a law, it’s not an opinion. You can’t force something to be what it isn’t.

To be connected with your environment and connected with your source is the ultimate thing.”

Last night Heather and I went to The Space and we did because we didn’t really think we had to; she said What If You Are Dom? and we both got chills. We got scared, buzzed all over. I’m afraid that I know what it meant.

When I first tried getting into the Qabalah book, I drew the tree of life then gave up. I was left with the answer to the opening prompt:

“August 2nd, 7:17 pm, 2024.

I’m Brittany Deitch. I am curious and I am always seeking to see what is beyond myself, but lately, my capacity has been low. I am trying to return to myself. We all get a little bit distracted. It’s good, it’s necessary. I love my cat. She is my protector. And I try to be her’s too. In my daily life, I crave humor and community and attention and bouncing around a room with joy in my heart and lots of people to speak with. That was one of my dreams since I was young. I’ve always craved to be someone important in the world, because I thought it would make me less lonely.

I think I have always known about the Internet, somewhere deep inside me, I knew what it would become. People online have impacted my life very deeply, and that is why I feel so strongly that I need to do the same thing. When I’m in the right state, I think that I can approach my ideas that with just the right tone and words and awareness, and so I also feel drawn to sharing my experiences through writing. This morning, I put on a pretty white dress and a red string and it felt like it meant something. It’s been a confusing time for me and a lot of the world. I think that I am a writer, leader, communicator, and a friend. I am a knower. But aside from all of that, I am Brittany Deitch. That might be one of the few things that I can’t really explain. But I can always try.

I feel like my spirit and my love. I am just my existence though. And all the things that I add to the world. I tied a red string around my wrist as a promise and reminder to myself that I am conscious and able to experience the Universe. Some of the happiest I have ever been was when I’d sit at a table with people, drawing and talking so openly.”

I was looking for something to fix me by responding to the “This is me” exercise. I hadn’t been able to figure out what was wrong or why I felt so disconnected from myself.

As much as I really love him, I think my ex-boyfriend taught me how to lie to myself.

It was proven when we met for coffee the other day. Before he got there I drew a curtain over the table, as if a beautiful suburban window were born there to separate us. It’d shine with a yellow sun and green grass and a sky that would never rain. We spoke between the two sides like a translation. I brought peanuts because I quit coffee, and it induced this sort of PTSD from when I’d be starving and we’d be fighting and the only food in my room was a plastic container of nuts.

During our conversation I was constantly deciphering out what feeling was actually behind the words he would say and if it was said for a specific reason or aim. I’d put my words through that same translation, afraid to get too vulnerable. I found it awfully stimulating. Tracing back and explaining someone from the inside out— a survival tactic which formed my foundational brain, making my ex-boyfriend out to feel just like home.

After learning this more deeply with him and incorporating it into myself, I understand him more because of it. How he operates from a place where he’s really looking for comfort and closeness by a means to please but translates it through power plays. Anytime he says something vulnerable it’s so scary that he tries to cover it with saying it’s not a big deal or he doesn’t really care.

Building myself around my opposition to this led me to never really feel right anymore. I was actively fighting against intimacy and living to primarily satisfy the person I’m speaking with instead of drawing myself into the equation. Since the relationship ended I’d been saying that I don’t feel like myself when someone asked about me because I was trying to be truthful. When I’d tell people, nobody could give it to me straight. I can’t blame them, there’s just no answer to the question— can you tell me what I am? Who are we outside of our self-written context? I know what we aren’t.

We’re definitely not bands or tv shows or words or music, unless we are. We actually might be those things. If how we mostly become friends and bond is through our interests then how is there not something much deeper, beyond those things, which has a sort of energetic identity. Because through interests, I mostly meet the people who are right (we somehow were drawn to the right thing, led by something similar and invisible beneath us). If we aren’t our friends we definitely are our friends. I’m your friend. I’m my friend. The people we date— that’s your mirror. I’m sure of that. We aren’t our jobs or brothers or caretakers or whether we’re good at cooking or a girl or the Universe itself but I guess we could be. You aren’t a hero. But you are a hero to somebody probably.

My dad was about to undergo a surgical procedure and he was all drugged up about to get operated on. As the doctor is shaving him 'down there,' my dad turns to him and goes My Daughter Thinks I'm A Girl. Apparently all the doctor did was shake his head.

---

My ex decided to leave when it was time for us to leave— I never elect to leave. No matter how many times I understand that if I don’t, the other person will, I still just can never bring myself to do it. Even if I hate him a little bit, I’d rather sit there all night.

Did you know that it doesn’t actually matter who leaves? There’s not a winner and these little motions aren’t a game. I understand why I was led to believe they ever were, but they’re just not. I’ve since removed myself from the belief that love is dependent. It doesn’t have to matter if someone elects not to do it back. At least you tried, at least you even could. For a while I decided it wasn’t safe, engulfed by fear, thinking hard, ruminating on the mutualities or lack there-of. But I think the best thing you can do for yourself is love freely.

When I was little my favorite thing to write in my journal was BIG and TOOK UP THE PAGE and IT WOULD SAY

with me or mommy or Pink or Hannah Montana in the blank. And when I think about those things my heart twinkles. So I think they’re all pretty real things from back then. They have a sort of charge inside them just because I felt like I was connected to them.

It’s the same reason people love TAGABOW. Or the boy band they started in college. Unless sometimes it’s just an ego thing.

Had I decided to be confused? I got so caught up trying to figure out who I am, that I forget that I just am! There's nothing I have to do. I exist and that's enough, that's it.

So we got up to leave and earlier in the day I had decided I’d get the eggs that I just ran out of at the Whole Foods on South Street after we left Chapterhouse Cafe because maybe I’d run into Dom (it was near his house). This was what I decided in choosing to meet at Chapterhouse. But then I let go of the idea and after I told Danny I was going to stop there and I forgot until we got to the door and he offered to come in with me since I was only getting eggs so we could keep talking and he grabbed the organic half-carton eggs off the highest shelf for me since it was like 7:30 pm and the rest were gone besides one large carton of the non-organic type and I’ve been trying to eat organic, apparently it makes you happier. Self-checkout (he tried to correct me for not hitting the checkout button but I was just opening up my apple pay) and we were back on the way towards the subway, walking in really cold snow where I paused to tie my scarf over my head— then picking back up once it was secured, we’re walking at normal pace again and I see Dom’s friend Sam in a group with others on the opposite side of the street so I instinctively slow on down to yell Hi to Sam and then Cullen is there and then Dom is there and I’m standing on the edge of my side of the street, he’s looking down, then he’s looking up and saying Hi to me from his side of the street and I yell back, and we both keep on walking.

I don’t think it was like this but every time I remember it (which has been a lot of times in the 24 hours since) there’s this energy exchange, no I do think this happened, it felt like we both didn’t need to be where we were with the people we were with like we were hardly even there with them but just there so that we could see each other for one tiny second.

He was this big figure like a lighthouse and I was pulled in but still my own, as if somehow demonstrating that I was too living my own life, but it was almost like we walked across the street and we were just there with each other. Like we had hung out all night or something. I felt like it would have made sense for me to run across the street for a second and give him a quick hug and go back to walking with Danny to the subway where everyone would’ve questioned it but us two. But we both just kept on our own paths. That made me really sad.

A while ago as I discovered that The Space suddenly made itself available to me and Heather together, for the first time, it was September 3rd, 2024, I was freaking out really bad about dating. Its weirdness and how it becomes another thing— I can’t describe it now but I was having this deep observational perspective on how stuff like this starts (where the attachment begins). I was sobbing so much, that someone wanted to love me. It was how I cried when he eventually did.

Heather and I were talking about all of it. I was thinking how relationships are so weird because of how you attend to someone in your head. I was wondering if all instances of liking people are just decisions. All up to our will if they fit the mold of what we think they should be. It almost made me believe that nothing is as real as we decide to make it. That love was created in our imaginations. If sometimes we just lose our minds because someone was inside us. Then Heather said Someone Can Be Inside You, Then They Can Be Out In The World. And Then They’re Not, But There’s Dinner On The Table And The Cats Are Fed. You move apart and come back together and you can feel it, that you are being thought of even when you can’t see them. And then I wondered if I made up in my head that I made it all up in my head. Because if someone can say all that then love has to be real. Because if it wasn’t real then what would we even have to look forward to— who would we even be?