Losing seems to be the word hovering above, around, and in my life right now. It, however, is being used in so many contexts that I can’t grasp all of the feelings that are in me right now. In the most immediate and direct terms, this losing feeling highly correlates to my evening job, as I am a lacrosse coach on multiple competitive teams. Being in season, that word is striking harder every day. As a newer coach with a relatively short, impressive background, I am scared this is the season I (and my multiple lacrosse jobs) will learn that my history has been luck and not skill. This is a fear that I have every season and with every team. I am not sure how long or what type of season it will take to quell that insecurity, but that sense of losing sits hard with me continually throughout the day.
Losing, though, has taken some more subconscious effects in my life recently. I am recently out of the most serious relationship I have ever had. And by most serious, I also mean only serious relationship I have ever had. I took the first few weeks of us ending to mourn the loss of our relationship as I was told to do, but as I enter the 4th month of not speaking to him, I also now have to accept the loss of that person as an aspect of my life and as a topic I can excusably dwell on after a certain amount of time. Never having had a break up this intense, I thought the feeling of loss goes away after a few weeks, and you are back to normal. I have learned it is not like that, and in my attempts to feel ok and move past it quickly, I have prolonged this feeling of loss. I have prolonged it to a point of frustration in myself for being this far out from the relationship’s end and incapable of imagining someone else touching me, physically or emotionally. I am also frustrated for allowing it to sit and collect until I find myself crying in cabs alone at the end of the night. It has become increasingly hard to not contact him to let him know how much he hurt me. I want to tell him that my not talking to him is not a sign that what he did was ok or forgivable, but due to, and thank goodness for, my over inflated sense of dignity, I have not reached out. I want him to know that me not reaching out is a sign of my strength over my love for him, and that he did not break that strength. I do logically realize that contacting him to tell him that would undermine that exact point. That, still, does not end my desire to still do it.
However, that imminent sense of losing and subconscious sense have been compounded with one of the harshest most realistic senses of loss I could imagine, a death sentence. Matthew Puckett is facing his death March 20th. He knows the time, the date, and the location. A security in knowledge sometimes we may wish for in our own lives, but none of us could ever realistically want. He will be executed despite however much I may try to speak, write, and petition that he should not. This knowledge of his death will not deter me for trying to stop it, but I know the outcome, as I have faced this before. Matthew is a pen pal of a good friend of mine, and while I do not know Matthew in that way, I lost a friend like this before. A man that I used to share poetry with was executed a few years ago. I was shocked by how much a known upcoming loss could still affect with such surprise and lack of control. It is those memories of lack of control that now resurface, and I feel I must learn to address within myself
Losing in all of these senses correlates very closely with control to me. And it is control that I think I struggle with the most when it comes portraying my feminism. Feminism is didactic and interpretative, and I have largely supported both entities despite divergence from each other. With this loose definition of what a feminist is, I have been able to mold my feminism to my immediate world in order to function. However, the control of my emotions has not been flexible in defining and portraying myself as a strong woman. I believe a woman’s need for strength is fluid and a not always necessary for women to always be seen as a strong woman. In fact, with my friends, I usually encourage embracing weakness as a sign of humanity within, because humanity is an absolutely necessary trait in a modern feminist. However, I cannot accept weakness within myself. In fact, I get angry at myself for feeling so deeply or so extensively. My weakness in some way, to me, reflects on my strength as a woman.
I am not all together sure if I have put this pressure on myself or if it has come from my social interactions. In many of my friendships and personal interactions, I am told that my strength is what they admire or rely on. I allow the people in my life to see this trait as strength, and very infrequently do I ever let anyone see that my strength is just a need for control that I cannot loosen my grip on. I am scared what my weakness will look like, and how I will be able to define myself if I succumb to it. I am currently falling and losing my sense of self to loss, as I cannot control it and I cannot fix it by taking my emotions and wrapping them tighter around my finger. As much as I have tried, they keep coming loose. I am scared of the losses I cannot control and even more of the ones I can, because at some point something is going to break, and I can’t pick what it is.
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