Own Your Shit — Get a Diamond
I ended my year by fighting with my sweetie. I began 2016 digging for shit diamonds. Not what I envisioned, but not necessarily a bad way to begin another trip through the calendar.
I have discovered that hidden within the steaming pile of any kind of unpleasant interpersonal interaction — be it lover, sister, grumpy teenager grocery store checker, or those master button-pushers, our parents — there is a treasure. A shit diamond.
But first, I have to dig. And before I can start the digging I have to extract myself from the emotional shit storm that highjack my mental and physical well being. I have to calm the hell down. If I want the treasure, I first must sit down, get quiet, and tell my very practiced inner-victim-child “Shhhh, I’ve got this.”
Then I can pick up my shovel and dig into the altercation. My inner-victim-child can’t be trusted with a shovel. She’d probably swing it at the “perpetrator’s” head, or the emotional equivalent. The angry and/or sobbing child has’t learned that the shovel doesn’t work unless it is powered by honesty, no need to be “right” or “win,” no judgement of right or wrong, just a thirst to be a better person and not repeat the scene. In other words, a bit of egolessness is in order.
And it is at these emotionally dramatic times that my ego is in it’s glory, pitching a fit because life isn’t unspooling exactly as expected. Learning to get my ego to take a snooze in the backseat is as important as learning to bind and gag my inner-critic while I write.
Calm the child, quiet the ego.
Shovel in hand, I dive into the shit situation. Replay it only once or twice, not looking for bad guys or words to throw back later, but to dip into my feeling memory and know where I first got “dinged.”
You know that feeling? Something in deep in you gets poked, Ding! You can feeeeeeeeeel the off gassing of old hurts and wounds. As it bubbles up, your emotional alarms start going off. And you trot out your tried and true defenses.
Digging into your shit pile pushes you through the lingering defenses, and down to where the wound is.
Why do I call it a shit diamond? Because these wounds, once we FINALLY listen to them, carry wisdom. They will get poked on a fairly regular basis until we dig down to them and find the lesson, see the beauty.
I promised Muse Dear that I would do one absolutely creative endeavor a day. I’d hoped that on January first of this fine new year, I’d be making music with my sweetie. Instead, I’m polishing my shit diamond.
I’m scraping off the bits that are solely about the situation, or the individual slights as we both maneuvered around our anger and righteousness. Those bits are never important. I hold this diamond up marvel at the clever way I’ve been carrying around this startling truth, hidden as it was under the compost of my life.
I give it one last polish by doing a bit of journal writing, physically bringing this truth out and in front of my eyes. It helps to not just think these things, but to see them, say them, do them, anchor them down into who you are as a person. Tomorrow I’ll call my bestie and say it, own it. I’ll add it to the impressive collection of shit diamonds I started about 5 years ago.
People say, “Own your shit.” I wholeheartedly agree. Deep in the steaming piles, diamonds await you.
