your insatiable need to move forward might be holding you back.

you might not need to get your master degree, you might need to process your feelings... so now what?

all art by shefon taylor

When I used to think about my past, I used to spend days mulling over what I didn’t do correctly. I mean, I would let hours pass me by while feeling angry about all the moments I was stuck, unsure, and unable to move forward. Ironically, I didn’t realize how much the mulling was also a part of the mud keeping me stuck. I think because of this, I’ve become shockingly invested in moving forward through anything — it doesn’t matter the situation — a traumatic breakup, or a shakey physical recovery, my goal has always been to move forward. One foot in front of the other. The jaws of time can’t grasp me again. I can’t waste any more moments.

In this last year of my 20s, I know now that the need to move on quickly is just another name for avoidance — a bandaid rather than a cure. Don’t get me wrong, always looking forward has its benefits. My body has learned when it’s time to go. My internal need for new air, and fresh moments, has become something like a compass for me. But now, I find that I don’t give myself the time to process things anymore. The muck has taken on a new face. I may not feel stuck physically anymore, but emotionally? Maybe.

The new mud looks like always rationalizing my feelings, giving them names, and patterns, but never sitting with them, learning them, or understanding them. It looks like going to the gym every day or signing up for graduate school without understanding my sudden desire to do those things. And again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those things, but doing anything without intention, without reason other than numbness, is equivalent to being stuck.

For the first time, I realized my need for constant progression is keeping me emotionally dormant. So here I am, in the mess of a new terrain realizing that what my younger self needed and what my current self craves is balance.

Even through the lack of balance, I look back on my life astonished by how much I’ve been able to get done. I’ve achieved despite the circumstances, all because I wouldn’t stop looking ahead. I’m grateful to myself. I’m grateful to God. But everything I’ve accomplished has been despite my experiences. What does it mean to be successful because of the experiences? Or has my relentless vision of moving forward into the future caused two things to become blurred?

As Black people, I think we can all understand the pressure of achieving despite the circumstances — despite the fact that the world underestimates you always. Black women especially are the best at achieving beyond expectations. Often, because we are left invisible if we don’t. There is no room for error, no room for regular, no room for muck, mud, or stuckness. So, instead, we opt to take on new tasks and find new parts of us to fix, curate, and reconstruct. While it’s noble, what we are often missing is the balance to ensure we don’t lean too far into the self-improvement quicksand.

There’s room for self-reconstruction as long as there’s room for the moments that led you to pick at the pieces of yourself.

I’m at a point now where I want to pick and change pieces of myself out of curiosity, out of excitement to discover new versions of me. Gone are the days of transforming out of spite. Rather than giving my feelings a new rug to be swept under, I am committing to feeling the hard things, even if it means I’ll shatter. Letting it out, talking it out, feeling it out, and then shifting because I want to, not because I’m hiding from the truth of what’s hurting me.

This is an ode to no longer being stuck, in any way.

xo,

simi