finding floral cowboy boots, (Turner) Joy, and intuition in Nashville
“Do you feel like there’s something different about the air here?”
“What?”
“Like do you feel like the air feels different here in Nashville than in New York? I think about how the air feels different to me anywhere I go. Or is there something else that you can let go of here that you can’t let go of in New York?,” my friend Turner Joy asked as she drove us to the Nashville Farmer’s Market last Sunday on the second day of my vacation there.
I had been trying to dissect exactly why I had chosen to go on vacation as a comfort after my long and arduous restraining order process, and, as often is the case when you find yourself spitting out sentences you haven’t quite worked out in your head before going down the winding staircase of attempting to fit feelings into structured language and tumbling down the steps on your way, I found myself tripping over words trying to answer her—and to myself.
“I guess… everything about me and my life and who I am has been wrapped up in this process for the last eight months. And it feels so nice to be somewhere where no one, well except for you, knows that about me. I don’t really have to talk to anyone about it. I’m just another person enjoying vacation. And so, I guess… maybe… I can separate that part of myself and reclaim myself? Maybe?”
Reclamation. It’s a powerful word and concept. So far in 2019, it has been the main theme of my life. It pops up again and again—the universe daring me to reach my hands out and take back parts of myself I did not think belonged to me anymore. To revisit and reclaim places I’d visited and had a fight with an ex-partner that soured the experience. To revisit and reclaim restaurants I’d been broken up with in. To revisit and reclaim old foods that had scared me or that had been a particularly difficult aspect of an eating disorder. To revisit and reclaim words like “dyke” that were once used as slurs against me but that now I jokingly and adoringly call myself, in the most loving way. To revisit and reclaim things I’d once had trouble writing about but am now finding ways to use language that fit me. To revisit and reclaim the way I budget and spend money, especially on myself. To revisit and reclaim myself for myself, period.
We all need a little reclaiming of ourselves sometimes, because life is ever-shifting, and we are not the same people we were a year ago, or five years ago, or ten, or even ten days ago, transformed by our experiences, and the foods we’ve tried, and the new people we’ve met—so why not revisit the things we loved and lost and find them again, this time, as someone new?
Me in Nashville reclaiming iced coffee for myself!
But then the question is, why go somewhere else to reclaim myself and a space that had been made into something ugly and difficult to deal with?
The truth is I didn’t realize that the last eight months had made New York, my home, such a space of trauma for me, until the words left my mouth in Turner Joy’s car. I hadn’t thought about how, until the end of 2018, it had been the one place I’d lived that felt like mine, that had been separate and untouched by toxicity—it had always felt like a space to heal and grow for me, and that sense of stability and peace had been scrubbed from me. I hadn’t thought about any of that. I just knew I needed a vacation. A break. A few days unmarked by calendar invites, both personal and professional, and waking up so goddamn early every day to work, and having so little time that belonged to me, just to me and my quiet breaths.
The thing about travel is that when you go somewhere new, you see yourself in a different way than you’ve ever been able to before—not even just metaphorically, and in your own head, but physically—at least, that’s the case for me. You find new parts of yourself because you’re put in new situations. You react to things in a different way than you would somewhere you’re familiar with. You try new foods. You hear things talked about in a new way by locals. You see yourself and your own small world from the outside, if only for a moment.
The other thing that traveling to new places has always taught me is that everything is connected. You are as much yourself in a new city as you are in the place you were born, or the place you moved to for college, or for that new job, or the new boyfriend, girlfriend, partner. The signs that you are you are everywhere, even if they’re things about yourself you’d forgotten, or buried away like a time capsule.
I found so many signs in Nashville that reminded me of who I am and made me feel deeply myself. At the food hall at the farmer’s market on Sunday, a man performing a country version of Hey Jude, a song that got me through my childhood and has great meaning and weight to me. At an art stand at the farmer’s market, a man selling rainbow watercolor art reminiscent of the art I painted when I lived in Italy growing up, with affirmations about self-love so sweet and important to me, that I bought to hang on my wall in my room.
A grapefruit candle. A book about the history of Southern cooking. A hand-carved wooden elephant earring, with the kind of elephant that you only see in the specific place I was in India growing up. Then, at a coffee shop I visited, my favorite kinds of candies (cherry cordials), my favorite kind of chocolate, and from the Country Music Hall of Fame, a small Kikkerland music box of Here Comes the Sun that I always wanted as a child but never got.
At the clothing store where I bought a new silk robe, the price tag was $18, my lucky number deeply rooted in many spaces in my life. At Hattie B’s where they had my favorite grapefruit beer, 18 came up again as my order number. At the cafe where I got a turmeric latte, my favorite Alt-J album played while I ate my gravy biscuits. At the George Jones rooftop when the live music on Monday night included the singer softly strumming Country Roads by John Denver and Mrs. Robinson by Simon and Garfunkel, two songs near and dear to my growth as a person and my childhood. At the Grand Ole Opry where I heard the exact music I needed to hear at the John Prine show.
Reminders to me that there is some deeper thread connecting all of our past, present, and future selves in the universe and that “life is old, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.” That all of me was there in Nashville, that all of me is right here, always, and I’d just needed the quiet and space to listen and to see her.
More signs appeared at the nail salon where I went to get a manicure when I spontaneously decided that’s what I needed, an older black woman in her sixties who has worked in education all her life and who has recommitted to traveling and finding what she needs in life after the recent death of her mother.
We spoke for over an hour about everything from racism to self-care to how careful you have to be as a teacher, because of how much power you have to shape people and help them grow, to our favorite things to do on vacation, to the books we’ve read and Broadway shows we want to go to. “You’re a people person, too, I can tell. Making friends everywhere you go. I see you, boo,” she told me.
All of this a whisper that, in fact, I have always been myself. I am growing into myself. I am going the right way even if I am making it up as I go along.
That is to say, you have been you wherever you are. And you will be you wherever you go. It’s simply a matter of seeing yourself, or allowing the world to show you who you are, and saying I accept this.
But besides receiving signs from the universe in Nashville that made me feel like myself, I also purposefully did things that reaffirmed my self-worth and what I deserve. And reminded myself that who I am and what I love is something I create and not something the universe merely guides you to or appears to you as.
Because I was alone on vacation, for the most part (when I wasn’t enjoying the company of my friend Turner Joy, who lives in Nashville and who I’ve been mutuals on Twitter with for a while and who had agreed to meet up with me while I was there… I know, I know, she could’ve been, like, a murderer or something. But she wasn’t. Unless she’s a murderer with fluffy pink hair and a smile that looks like Dream a Little Dream of Me by the Mamas and Papas sounds… look, I never promised I wouldn’t be corny about my friends here), I was forced to sit with myself in a way I’m often not, and in a way that usually makes me pretty uncomfortable, quite honestly.
I’ve always loved solitude, and I deeply love spending time with myself, but only when it’s chosen—not when it’s my only option because there is no one to spend time with. This was a bittersweet yet much needed form of both. During the five days I was there, I gave myself both the space and the grace to figure out exactly what I felt like doing for myself at any given moment, and in turn, surprised myself with my ability to accept whatever it was and go with it.
While there, I was hit in the face (metaphorically, I mean, my face is fine right now albeit slightly sunburned) time and time again with how many things and people there are to love in the world, but most importantly, that I am also one of those people and I deserve love as much as the people I want to give my love to. And it forced me to live outside of and away from the cozy cave of heartbreak and pain I’ve been holding myself in for the last eight months.
To me, heartbreak embodied feels like a mashup of Heartbreak Hotel and Oh, Darling! by the Beatles, because I have a weird form of Synesthesia, so this feeling… it’s pretty specific to me. And when I feel it, sometimes it take up my whole body, as if I am a teabag being dunked in hot water, losing all of myself, absorbed by something stronger than me, which I think we’ve all experienced at least once. The mashup I feel goes something like this:
Well now, if your baby leaves you
And you have a sad tale to tell
Just take a walk down Lonely Street
To Heartbreak Hotel
When you told me you didn't need me anymore
Well you know I nearly broke down and cried
And you will be, you will be, you will be lonely, baby
You'll be so lonely
You'll be so lonely, you could die
Oh! Darling, if you leave me
I'll never make it alone
Believe me when I beg you
I'll never do you no harm, no harm
When you told me you didn't need me anymore
Well you know I nearly broke down and cried
I have experienced heartbreak, at least in the more grand break-up sense at least, twice in the last year, both a cacophony of loss playing on repeat in my bones, stretching every other small sadness I experienced out into something larger and more difficult that loomed over my life. But also, I realize now, so informed by everything else going on inside of me and externally in my world—the heartbreak of the 24/7 news cycle and the awful things going on in the outside world, much of which impacts my work, as well as me and my friends and everyone and everything I care about and love, only made the heartbreaks I felt in my personal life worse, and made them feel much more dramatic and harder burdens to bare than I actually need to make them.
While I’m still good friends with both of these people, and in fact they’re still some of my favorite people in my life, heartbreak is not a rain shower. It does not happen and then stop. It’s more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that reverberate through your whole being even two months, six months, a year, nine years after the “end.”
So getting over the ideas I have had about what love was, or could or would or should be, is always the most difficult thing for me to learn to do in these circumstances.
There’s a poem I love from Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, which I’ve seen them perform live many times, and that still sums up the way I feel about finding and losing love:
Maybe love is only there for a month.
Maybe love is there for every firework, every birthday party, every hospital visit.Maybe love stays.
Maybe love can't.
Maybe love shouldn't.Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to.
And love leaves exactly when love must.When love arrives say,
“Welcome, make yourself comfortable.”If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her.
Turn off the music, listen to the quiet.Whisper, “Thank you for stopping by.”
Each heartbreak was unique but each left me feeling like maybe I would never feel love again and would never know the sweetness of falling for someone who wants me just as much as I want them, knows me intimately, sees me for everything I am and am not and still wants to walk through my door at the end of the day, hang their hat on the hook of the door and collapse onto the bed, fading into me as they recount their day and lay their lips gently on my collarbone, counting the beauty marks on my left shoulder that look like a constellation.
Will I ever experience that or find it again? When will I know the passion and peace of waking up next to someone in the morning and biking to the farmers market, or cooking a meal for someone who wants to thank me in the form of physical envelopment like I am a precious postcard from a long-lost love ready to be cradled post-opening?
After that last breakup, I struggled to get over this person, because they felt so unique and so what I wanted and what I needed from a partner—someone who plays guitar and could serenade me, someone who is equal parts silly and passionate, someone who could both listen to my ramblings about the world but could just as easily serve it back to me, and more. I ignored their flaws and red flags and the ways we may not work together at the time or how invested I became in a relationship with them too quickly because in my head, the qualities, passions, characteristics and hobbies checked all the boxes of what my dream person might look like.
I couldn’t seem to get it through my thick skull that there might be anyone else I could possibly find who could lasso my heart like that and make me so excited about someone’s mere existence, so when it ended, I felt gut-wrenched and confused. Most importantly, I felt so out of touch with my intuition.
Being on vacation last week was a wake-up call for me in that I fell in love again truly for the first time since I had strong feelings for another person last year, and I fell in love nearly every hour of every day I was in Nashville.
I fell in love with my friend Turner Joy, who I’ve only known through Twitter until now, in the way that I love to fall in love with all of the people in my life—learning exactly how only they uniquely think about things and react to thinks in the world. How they like their coffee. How they treat baristas. What direction their feet face when they speak to you. How they drive a car. What their favorite foods are to cook. What lines they laugh at during a movie, and what makes them go “mmmm” quietly to themselves. What their favorite time of day is. How they respond to conflict. What they like in their burritos (very important).
Turner Joy reminded me time and time again during the four days I spent time with her that there is so much vulnerability and openness in the world. There is so much of the world waiting for me to say yes to it, and waiting for me to say no.
While spending time with Turner Joy, I said yes to many things. To kinds of tacos I’d never tried before. To splitting chicken and waffles and eggs benedict at brunch. To talking about generational trauma while swimming in a pool. To talking about heartbreak and self-worth in my hotel room. To conversations about spreadsheets and bullet journaling and finding yourself in situations in your life you never thought you’d be in. But Turner Joy, who after hearing about my life and all of the projects and friendships and tasks I’ve taken onto my plate, so graciously asked me how I was saying no to others and saying yes to myself more in my life.
Which was a harsh (in a loving way) question I needed to hear. A reminder that I can be so in love with everything that I say yes to everyone and everything else except for myself. After all, what space does that leave for me? (Yes, Jamal, I know you’re reading this and throwing your hands in the air saying THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING! Hello. I hear you. You are valid. And I’m trying!)
It was a reminder of how much love there is in the world, and how much love there is inside of me. But also how much love I also deserve to give to myself. Which very often must mean setting boundaries and listening to the tiny but important voice inside me that tells me what I am comfortable with or what I am simply choosing to accept.
Y’all… can we believe how angelic and female-Harry-Styles-like she is? Absolutely wild to me that I have so many wonderful people like Turner Joy in my life! (Truly, joy is no misnomer for her.)
And so during my time in Nashville, I figured out how to say yes to myself more often. I fell in love with the river and said yes to going every morning because it’s what I wanted. I fell in love with floral cowboy boots and let myself buy them. I fell in love with the waitress who served me brunch at Sutler’s saloon and let myself get sweet potato pancakes with brisket hash, and fruit, and grits. Because it’s just what I wanted. And that was enough reason to do it for myself.
I fell in love with Lue, the woman I sat and talked with at the nail salon. I fell in love with the sweet barista at Steadfast Coffee who told me about the best ways to buy statement jewelry, and the barista at Frothy Monkey who looked like 2004 Ashlee Simpson in the Pieces of Me music video (I know, I know, all my friends tell me I have very specific associations) and gave me a stellar turmeric coffee recommendation, and the kind bartender at George Jones’ rooftop bar.
It was a reminder that there are so many beautiful and good and raw and human things in everyone, and pulled me out of my heartbreak in a way that allowed me to clean my glasses and see there is no one person for me, and no one and nothing belongs to me, so feelings of jealousy or hurt over someone not wanting me need not make a home in my bones—but most importantly, I am the one who most belongs to myself. And I can feel the aftershocks of that understanding in me now.
At the end of my trip, I was overcome with the understanding that my week away was more about taking time away from the idea that I owe the world anything other than honesty with myself, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, as the Serenity Prayer says, than about having any specific kind of adventure.
My vacation wasn’t just a vacation from the trauma that had pried its way into my life during the last year, but it was also a vacation from myself—or who I thought I needed to be to survive in the world.
It was about asking myself what I wanted and needed and then honoring that instead of fighting myself. Which meant eating at the same place twice even though there were other places I’d planned to go. Which meant diverting from the meticulous and thoughtful spreadsheet with an itinerary and options for adventures that I spent a month putting together to be prepared. Which meant deciding spontaneously I wanted to rent a scooter and breeze along the riverside like a water pixie, flying along Cumberland River feeling as free as I did when I rode in a Barbie Jeep at 7 years old, or when I rode a two wheel bicycle for the first time as my friend Phoenix let go of the back of the bike and let the wind do whatever it would with my small body still so new to the world.
And in all of this what I have been most reminded of is that I am free already.
I am free to honor myself and listen to myself and change my mind about what I want to eat and fall in love and fall out of love and eat too many biscuits and stay up late watching my favorite movies and buy clothes that feel like myself, no matter what time zone I am in or what river I’m running along. And all and more. All the time. Cultivating and honing that intuition is simply a skill I have to work on more intentionally, just like any other.
If there’s any huge wakeup call I’ve received since going on vacation, it’s the clarity that I am so constantly excited about all the wonderful things available to me that I say yes to too many things, and in doing so, I end up saying no to myself and my own intuition—which both Turner Joy and my therapist reminded me (just this week) is not very kind to myself.
Since returning to New York, I am focusing on the truth that all there is, is trying to move forward and find yourself in new places that make sense of the things you’ve experienced, the people you’ve been, and the people inside of you that you are still trying to find, and giving yourself permission to let all of them out into the open.
I am working thoughtfully and diligently to reconfigure what boundaries I’ve set in my life in order to not become overwhelmed and to best be able to follow my intuition. I’m being more intentional about my time but in a flexible way—allowing myself not to live by such a set schedule and listen to my gut, to what I need at any given moment without judging myself for being different than before.
Reflecting on the amount of patience I’m giving to myself lately, and how proud I am of the growth I’m experiencing, I truly do feel that the sun is shining on my life after a long, cold, lonely winter. And I am soul-shakingly more aware of who I am right now than I have been in a long time. Because I am learning to find myself. To set boundaries. To say yes. And to say no. So what, dear reader, does this have to do with you?
Well, reflecting on all of these things for myself leads me to believe that everyone has the potential to learn who they are through the joy of granting oneself permission to be as they are. It’s likely there are signs that could remind you of and make you feel rooted in yourself all around you. We just have to listen to the tune being carried outside the window. We just have to look closer. We just have to give ourselves more room to find ourselves in strange places and conversations we’ve never been before, asking ourselves, Is the air different here? Or is it just me?
Nashville taught me a lot about myself. But really it was me who taught me about me. And who am I? (I’ll never tell, XOXO Gossip Girl… Sorry!)
I am a person who makes bad dad jokes and puns all. the. time. I am a person who likes to wake up early for writing and river walks. I am a person who tips waitresses and baristas extra whenever possible. I am a person who responds to heartache by belting out Beatles songs in my hotel room, and recording myself dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen. I am a person who gives back to my community. I am a person who will never stop writing angsty poetry. I am a person who really enjoys swimming in empty hotel pools and letting the water carry me for comfort.
I am a person who experiences a lot more of the peaceful love, the I-hope-the-person-I-am-in-love-with-is-happy-and-has-everything-they-need-in-life-and-I-am-glad-to-be-a-part-of-their-life-in-any-way-at-all rather than the jealous love. I am a person who needs to eat fruits and vegetables at least once a day because I can’t subsist on grits and fried foods, and that’s okay. I am a person who has very strong intuition, but just needs some self-coaxing and sometimes external cheerleading to learn to trust it. And I am a person who dearly missed oatmeal while trying all the local foods, so excuse me while I go make myself a bowl.
While riding my bike around Brooklyn this Saturday, I felt the breeze in my hair and smelled the sweet smoke of charcoal from the cookouts happening in the park, felt the hope and joy of the laughter of children, and let the bubbles blowing from bubble wands catch my eye. I realized that all of my favorite things to do in life (which include but are not limited to cooking and baking, bike riding, walking, writing, photography, and playing music and writing songs on ukulele, guitar, or piano) require total focus and presence, and require me to follow the intuition already inside of me.
All of these things make me feel most alive, probably because they each require me to focus on myself and listen to the humble but important voice inside telling me I know exactly what I need to do, no matter what fear or hesitation I am experiencing.
To keep my eyes fully on what I’m doing, my ears open for what’s happening around me, my nose to take everything in, whether that’s a pie going into the oven or the smell of pee on the Brooklyn streets or burgers being grilled in the park. The precision of my finger on the button as I take a picture at a specific angle to capture the light bending through the tree branches to get it just right. The way my fingers feel strumming the strings as I belt out a bad rendition of Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer on uke.
Becoming yourself is kind of like swimming in a hotel pool on vacation. The more you swim, the warmer the water gets, the more you feel like you know what you’re doing in uncharted waters (that you’re honestly not sure have pee or someone else’s saliva in them or not). The more you wade, the more familiar you are with the pace and rhythm you need to swim with to enjoy yourself. Or elsewise, becoming yourself and allowing yourself to live however you need to is kind of like biking. You pedal and pedal to propel yourself forward and only when you’ve pedaled hard enough can you let your feet rest for a bit and just guide. Trusting that the bike will keep going if you give yourself a break and let the machine do the work for you is not easy.
But when you feel the breeze in your hair and can see and feel that you’re still moving along after you’ve stopped pedaling, you feel a little more free.
Reader, this is a reminder to you that, if you haven’t already—you deserve to explore the world and yourself. Meet yourself as you are. Meet your many selves that have been waiting inside of you. Meet yourself somewhere new. Whether that’s a cafe or a neighborhood you haven’t explored yet. Or a new pair of boots. Ask yourself, Who am I? Who do I love? What do I need to feel like myself? What is my oatmeal? What is my bike riding? What is are my floral cowboy boots?
What are the things you really want in life or really want to be that you have not given yourself permission or space for? The answer doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s whatever you want.
However you choose to find yourself, whether it’s in the South sitting on the grass by the water scrawling poetry on blank journal pages, or under a shady tree down the block from your house with a new book or a new song or a new friend, remember that you are always deserving of love from yourself. Sometimes you just have to go somewhere new to find it or create it. But sometimes you don’t have to leave yourself or where you are at all. You just have to take a bike ride. Or swim. Or write. Or do whatever it is that demands your focus and allows you to hold space for yourself.
I think we all deserve to give ourselves that permission, ask ourselves the tough questions (which is sometimes simply How am I holding myself back?), and then fully feel all of it. In our bodies. Feel ourselves in our bodies and the lives we have been wanting to explore but were maybe too afraid to listen to ourselves.
Sincerely yours,
Elly
P.S. A few people suggested I start an Instagram to give tiny bursts of joy in people’s days as an accompaniment to this newsletter, so I did just that. You can find it here.