Picking Up Pieces of Me

For much of the past four years, I have felt as if there are two people inside my head, a new Mette that is newborn and struggling to feel empowered and lovable and an old Mette who is judgmental and unhappy about the many changes in my life, who tells me that I am not doing anything that I promised myself I would do and that I’ve gone off on the wrong path. I know that I was programmed for years to set up in my mind this “watcher” self to keep me in line with Mormon rules, but knowing that didn’t necessarily make it easier to stop feeling judged and unworthy.

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed what has felt like a sudden loss of the strength of old memories. In particular, my childhood memories of abuse have begun to fade. I know that they happened, but the edges have blurred and the emotions around them have almost entirely disappeared. They don’t make me upset or feel as if I am still in the moment. I suppose you might call that PTSD, but those symptoms are gone. Maybe this is the way other people experience memory all the time, but to be able to say—that happened in the past and isn’t happening right now wasn’t something that I could say until now.

To some degree, this has also been happening around the memories regarding my daughter’s death and the subsequent disintegration of my marriage. Because the emotions and panic have subsided, I feel like I am able to put together the pieces of the narrative of what happened to me and that I can see myself as if from a distance. Of course she believed this—everyone around her told her it was true and she had no other information that contradicted it. Or of course I didn’t leave—the only people she saw leave were ostracized and judged unworthy and she didn’t have the resources to figure out how to survive on the other side.

It is, frankly, a relief, not to be constantly triggered by old memories, by dreams that target me in the middle of the night when my brain is most vulnerable and least logical. It is also true that this new life has begun to feel “normal” because it is part of my routine. I’ve already said that it takes me longer than most people to feel settled in new places and in new routines (also true that it’s harder for me to give up routines), but that seems to be why I didn’t embrace the newness of this thing. I’m not driven by novelty or by dopamine hits (or possibly just get dopamine from other things than novelty).

What is happening now is a strange artistic rebuilding of myself. Instead of feeling like I have to guard myself against the judgment of old Mette, I find myself looking around on the ground and finding bits and pieces of my old life and my old self, reconsidering them like a mosaicist and then determining if I want to put them into the new artwork that is my new life. Some I simply put back down as they feel like they were not truly part of me, but part of the programming I went through in Mormonism. Other pieces are joyously rediscovered and reunited with the rest of me.

German has been one of those things. I went to a German high school for a year and spent a decade reading German novels and eventually getting a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton. Then I taught German at BYU for some years before feeling discarded by the department and rejected as unworthy when I applied for a full-time position and was rejected. For a long time, German was painful because it represented a failure of the past. I didn’t use my PhD as part of my bio for another twenty years, and even then it was just a way of trying to argue my legitimacy in the world of “literature.” I’ve begun to listen to German podcasts again and have found that I understand it well, that no stress or panic hits me as I do so. It's not something I intend to use in any way except for my own pleasure. I enjoy it and that is all that I need to do with it.

Mashed potatoes is another example. I used to love mashed potatoes and eat them several times a week. But I’ve found that I just don’t love them as I used to, except as a comfort food when my stomach is upset.

I spent years learning how to play the piano (badly) so I could play hymns for church. I haven’t played in a while now, though I have a piano in my house. I pass it and sometimes wonder what I’m going to do with it. Do I still want to play? I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. It isn’t the same trigger as it used to be nor does it give me the same joy to lose myself in playing and singing along.

I’ve always loved books, but I used to believe that I was only capable of writing a certain kind of book, with a certain voice. I look back at my career as a writer and recognize that I don’t like to write the same kind of book for any long period of time. I love what I’m doing now, but acknowledge that might change at any time and I might start writing something else. Who knows? Maybe even poetry.

One of my childhood journals has a lot of doodling in it. I stopped drawing when it became clear that my younger sister was a far more talented artist than I am and in our family, the pressure to be “the best” of the other siblings was intense. But now that I don’t care about being “the best,” I might pick up doodling again just for fun. Because that is all that it needs to be.

Racing is something that I’m still trying to figure out what to do with. I’m currently injured and allowed very little running. I’m unsure if I will ever be able to do the miles I used to do easily. And I am trying to figure out if I want to place this piece in my mosaic of self for next year. There’s no need for me to prove myself worthy with running, or to punish myself with physical pain for the loss of my daughter. I enjoyed it once. I may still enjoy it. I don’t have to decide now what I want permanently. That is a pleasant way of being, no longer feeling as if there are obvious rights and wrongs with every decision in life.

I used to believe in some concrete idea of who “Mette” was and that she would remain that way forever, because behind the scenes God was in control and I had an eternal soul that had existed for millenia before I was born and would continue to exist afterward forever. Now I only believe I came to exist when I was born, in the specific family and culture I was born in. I am eternally changeable and I can pick up any piece I want and put it into my mosaic self.