Life Truths on a Jaunty Fridge Magnet

Content warning: discussions of suicide. Some graphic depiction.

Insta-Cynic

Insta Inspo-quotes are big news these days. Usually concise, set underneath an image of a a serene looking woman on a beautiful zen landscape background, and often not accredited to anyone in particular. Do you screw your face up when scrolling past them on Instagram, in the manner of a cynical pragmatist, knowing that each is carefully crafted with the intention to manipulate the reader’s reaction, to elicit an emotional response? Yeah, I feel your nausea.

I’ve always found these faux spiritual posts, along with their predecessor, the friendship quote on a jaunty little fridge magnet, quite objectionable. It’s the assumption that our lives are all much the same that bugs me, that we all have the same feelings about the things that happen to and around us. I object to humans being lumped in together in one big homogenous agglomeration as if we were robots, or mindless cattle.

I’m Not Like Everybody Else.

The old cliché-hater me used to be very proud of the fact that I didn’t ‘get it’. Trite aphorisms such as ‘Friends are the family you choose yourself’ and ‘Miracles happen to those who believe in them” repulsed me, and at least partly explain why Instagram has never really been my bag. Scrolling through masses of sentimental inspo-dirge would cause my lizard brain to squirm uncomfortably inside my head. It makes me want to proclaim to the world ‘Not me! I’m not like everybody else!’, with less musicality than the Kinks in their song of the same name, but with an equal amount of fervour.

Live. Love. Laugh.

On a Sunday mooch around home decor shops, I would cringe inwardly and outwardly at the cheap, chalk-painted, wooden letters that spell out ‘LIVE LOVE LAUGH’. My other half and I would make each other guffaw by rearranging them into ‘VILE EVIL HO’, or my personal favourite, for it’s absurdity, ‘VOLE HUG’.

I used to think I knew something that fridge magnet/wooden letter-owners didn’t. In buying into this, I thought, they allow themselves to be conveniently boxed up and labelled: ’1 x Standard Human’. They absorb the banal quotes and cheap words of wisdom like human sponges. Allowing this superficial, mercantile world to shove fake feelings into their emotion holes, instead of giving their own feelings time to breathe, to expand into that space. I equated these new-agey expressions with mindless middle-aged women who haven’t lived full enough lives to understand themselves. Imagining the kind of person who lets films, books and TV tell them how to think and feel, grasping the wooden letters to their heaving breast proclaiming that THIS spelled out how they felt about life.

I, on the other hand, was infinitely more discerning about my choice of home decor, knowing as I did that life and emotions are way too complex to boil down onto an ugly fridge magnet or facile Boomer Lit beach novel.

But that was all before. Before a year of notgoingout, and before an unexpected bereavement. Now I’m left wondering if perhaps I was the one who didn’t understand.

Just like the movies.

Last September I had my own first ever ‘cliché moment’, in the form of a call to break the news of my sister’s suicide. I dropped the phone in slow motion, like they do in films and tv, and my brain and body then promptly went into shut down. My universe shifted, instantly and irrevocably in second.

In hindsight, the way the news was delivered to me, the excessively blunt language, was cruel. There was no softness, and no preamble. Perhaps the messenger thought it pointless and facile to use the same old platitudes for something that, either way, would shake me to the core. Or perhaps, like me, he just didn’t have the tools to do better. So, over the next few weeks, I passed that callous announcement style on to my friends and acquaintances when I was asked ‘how are you doing?’ by those who didn’t already know that I was dying inside. My standard, horrifying response to the polite question was: “I’m OK, considering my sister hanged herself on the back of her bedroom door on Sunday’.

I was too disconnected to know how to act appropriately in those first few weeks, that’s true. But also, frankly, I was very angry. My warped rationale was that if I had to deal with the horror of my reality, then it wouldn’t hurt others to deal with the words I chose to describe it. Genuinely I didn’t know how to act, what else to do. Over the last 40 odd years, I had neglected to develop the tools I needed to feel and manage my own feelings. I didn’t know it then, but that monstrous day put me at the start of a necessary journey to rectify fill in some gaps in my life education.

Gentle Language.

For most of my life I’ve studied language, and it has been a passion, a pursuit and a career for me. Ironic then that I had for so long ignored the soft subtleties that language proffers, the nuances available to help buffer us from the harsh realities of our lives, as well as to communicate empathy with one other. In my life so far, happily, no policeman or doctor has had to inform me of a loved one’s death. As seen onscreen, this is done by means of a gentle buildup, followed by the use of euphemistic syntax to convey semantics concisely. I expect that this mirrors real life, and authority figures are no doubt trained in delivering bad news in a kind, gentle, yet succinct way, designed to help the recipient mentally process the bones of the information safely.

Feelings? What feelings?

I’d been through some of life’s complications by the time my sister died, of course. Most of life’s struggles are so commonplace that by the time we get to a certain age we can nod and smile knowingly, with compassion, when we hear others go through similar. The emotions a lived life evokes are intense and powerful, and everybody has them. My ‘before’ mantra though, as you know, was that ‘I’m not like everybody else’; hence I shrugged off the feelings that were for other people, but not for me. I dealt with the matters in hand, and pushed on through. Job done.

In rejecting these feelings though I was also rejecting myself, and I didn’t register the harm that my avoidance tactics were doing to my psyche, and my physical health. For decades I systematically denied myself any opportunity to heal wounds, big and small, and also, the chance to really be part of the human race in a meaningful way.

Emo

…tional Literacy is a thing. Who knew? A lot of people as it happens. For those who have, for whatever reason, missed out on important lessons about emotions in childhood, it’s said that it can be invaluable to actively practice emotional literacy exercises in adulthood.

If you don’t already do this instinctively, then when you first try to sit with and feel your emotions, never mind find the words to describe them, it is super hard. Tiny baby steps were all I could take for the first few weeks and months. Although now I feel I’m steadily improving, I compare this to basically being a child, floundering in her attempts to master reading and writing. I don’t think it matters how old you are, who can manage a household, or hold down a high flying job, run a business, manage kids; if you are illiterate emotionally you are missing a massive chunk of essential education. Like me, you have a lot of catching up to do, and honestly, it makes the rest of the ‘adulting’ look like child’s play.

*Spoiler* All Fiction is cliché!

Just after I started weekly counselling sessions, I settled in one Sunday with my lockdown film club gang. We were watching an offbeat indie film that I had chosen myself, called ‘Kajillionaire’. I chose it because it looked like a quirky little number about a strange family with a happy ending. The plot basically goes like this: dysfunctional family, outcast daughter leaves the family unit, daughters starts a new life, has struggles, wins out in the end. Standard cliché weepy fodder for those who are that way inclined. Nothing hardcore, and the like of which I had seen a thousand times and found it interesting, if not especially moving.

I was totally unprepared for the force with which Evan Rachel’s performance in the film struck me emotionally. Some of the scenes, and specifically the intense, awkwardly eloquent use of language in the script, hit a nerve that I didn’t even know I had. It broke me a bit, for a while. It was scary, but I realised that I had to let it all just happen, then I made a mental note that I had changed on the inside, and needed to start being more attentive to my feelings, and choose films and books with that in mind.

I heart fridge magnets

In seven months my journey has distanced me somewhat from the pragmatic, cynical cliché-hater I used to be. Without realising it immediately, I started to live by some of truths that can be found in those previously derided expressions. Now, if I do happen upon an inspirational insta-quote, it might actually strike a chord, and I will eagerly click the share button to forward it on to a friend who might find it helpful. I do this with an enthusiasm that I know the cliche-hater would find cringey and embarrassing if she knew.

If you are sceptical about the power of a life affirming quote, try to drop your sardonic guard for a short while. Allow the vulnerable part of you to engage with the sayings below and you might see them in a new light. A year ago I would have mocked most of these mercilessly, but I promise you, they do all have some truth to them if you let yourself feel it:

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”― Oscar Wilde

“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”― John Lennon

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” ― Bernard M. Baruch

“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” – Bernard Meltzer

“If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.“ ― Craig Adam Smith

Weed your path

I still don’t think that life truths and emotions can be adequately summed up in a few words on a fridge magnet, I stand by that. But at the same time, I do now understand why they exist and why people buy them. I think it helps us to feel less alone to know that we are all dealing similar feelings of melancholy, happiness, joy, love, anger and frustration.

Personally, I’ve started to uncover a creative path underneath a lot of the weeds and detritus that had grown where feelings should have been. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, and hopefully one day, I will have learned how to wield language gracefully enough to express some of the truths and ideas that I now understand, but in a way that resonates for those of us who have grown weary of the tried and trusted clichés.

Like Ray Davies, I know that I’m not like everybody else. But in a way, also I kind of am.

Vole Hugs x