What's up, it's me, ya boi. I haven't kept up on this blog because I thought I had to have a plan and a marketing strategy and I was really stressed out about only posting things that mattered.
That version of me has been exposed as an imposter. Recently on Threads I shared a post about my anxiety and the moral judgments I hold myself to. Someone suggested - very gently - that I look into something called Scrupulosity OCD.
I did. And then my world crumbled. I've been crying (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) pretty much daily for two weeks about this. Everything clicked into place for me and some part of me panicked at being found out. Another part of me was screaming victoriously at finding the source of the weird fucking smell in here, and thank God I'm not crazy! There really was something here.
What if this blog is the most amazing thing I've ever written, and it goes viral, and it has an exclamation point in the title? That is not SEO. That's not professional. It looks childish, and you look childish for putting it there. Why don't you take yourself seriously? Why are you writing this without thinking it through?
I have been in my deep lore era. It started on Thanksgiving, when I had a cannabis-infused meltdown over hearing myself singing along in the video of my sibling's wedding. I was so embarrassed that I was being loud. When the next shot came from the other side of the room, this is when it really kicked in. My sib's husband Carlo was about to sing Through Heaven's Eyes from the Prince of Egypt Soundtrack. (You might think it was super cringe but it was the best thing I have ever seen, and this is not just bc it's my own sibling being publicly serenaded by a man who is so happy to have married them he is literally running around the room.)
And I knew I would have been so loud on the video. I would have absolutely ruined it. Thank God the videographer moved! My sib at this point is trying to calm me down because I am lost in the sauce of this anxiety spiral. I ask for a journal like I'm an extra on Grey's Anatomy. "I need a journal! Stat! And a pen!" I have no other way to describe what happened besides that I channeled a message from the deepest parts of me. I did not feel like it was me writing the things down. It was The Anxiety. It was The Deep Lore. It was the corest beliefs that had been installed before my conscious memory, and I wept as I wrote them.
If I talk and people can hear me, I am being rude. Do not impose on people. You are imposing when you do anything at all ever. If you express anything contrary to what is currently happening, you are the wrong one, the loud one, the inappropriate one. You should shut up shut up shut up. You shouldn't be seen. No one wants to hear you. No one wants to hear what you think. You're stupid. Why are you so loud? Why do you want to be the center of attention? Why, what a big ego you have. You inconvenience me. I didn't want you.
I knew they were my mother's words. And that has been the wound that keeps getting picked open again every time I realize that something new is part of the obsessive and compulsive ways I have learned to stay safe my entire life. It hurts physically. I feel this wound in my heart, and sometimes the feeling is one of ripping and tearing and grieving furiously... but other times the feeling is like a Sailor Moon montage, all glitter and glowing light and taking off the masks to interact with my destiny.
The next thing I did was write a poem.
Inhale
Hold
Exhale
Immediately inhale
do not pass go
do not go gentle into the night
do not try to see how long you can hold your breath on empty
DO NOT
Inhale
Hold
When you have abundance
When you are resourced
When you are healthy
You do not have to give when you have nothing
And your bar for 'nothing' does not have to be as low as you place it
you get to seek comfort
do not romanticize your poverty
It's okay to think about yourself when those thoughts are only focused on your survival
The poem changed. It became a diary entry with paragraphs instead of stanzas. Then it would sneak back to being a poem. Does the difference exist, or matter?
Hard mode: It's okay to think about yourself on a regular day when it's not about survival.
Your purpose is not to be emotional labor cattle, existing to fulfill others' wishes
You come first
Even your pleasure
Not just your survival
It is not morally wrong to be comfortable. You do not have to bleed to be worthy of the compassion you deem only suitable for others' consumption.
That compassion is for you. It STARTS WITH you. You have to love you for real.
It rips me apart to put this on the Internet verbatim out of my journal. It feels self indulgent. And self indulgence is bad, and morally wrong, and we must never do it. That is how we stay safe, stay loved, stay wanted. That is how we win. This is how we get to Heaven.
So anyway after we paused the video of the wedding to let me come down from this rollercoaster, I tried to apologize and these absolute assholes would not accept it. They insisted that I had not ruined Thanksgiving or upset them at all, nor did I ruin the wedding video. It is beautiful that I sang along. They are not mad at me and they are honestly a little confused about why I think they would be.
Which brings me back to the retreat. In August, I hosted a writing retreat for my book incubator clients. I was looking forward to it all year and it was honestly one of the things keeping me alive. But by the time it rolled around, I was suicidal. Because I couldn't afford it anymore. I had placed the deposit and trusted that I'd have the money together when it came due. I was suicidal because I was experiencing what was, in retrospect, VERY OBVIOUSLY a side effect of my antidepressants.
My partner says I was like a frog in a pot of water. The temperature ticked up so slowly that I didn't notice the danger. I thought I just "got depressed." Like people with depression do. Except that I am not a person who usually deals with depressive symptoms. My guy is anxiety, not depression. I am nauseatingly whimsical, optimistic, and joyous. (Not that you can't be this and ALSO depressed, but the point is I was not. [You can't say this because you're not allowing for the nuance of every possible reader's lived experience. You shouldn't say anything at all.)
So here we have, around April 2024, a version of Caitlin that is Depressed (but it makes sense because I'm financially stressed right now, so depression makes sense. Maybe I need a real job. Let me work on my shame around feeling like a failure in my business if I do get a real job. Not that this isn't a real job. But a paycheck would be TOIGHT.) and is scootching toward the passive ideation... thoughts like "I wouldn't have to deal with this if I just died. But I couldn't do that to Brennan. He would be devastated." It was easy to live for others when I felt too far away to do it for myself. There is no shame in not being able to stay alive all by yourself. We need people. Why is that so shameful? Why am I not leaving nuance for people who are neurodivergent in really anti-social ways who absolutely do not relate to living for others. Why aren't you being inclusive? You're going to get canceled.
There is not really a "get canceled" for me. I am not a celebrity for whom my Influence and Followership is part of my career. I am barely making enough money to literally just pay my minimum credit card bills and health insurance while my partner covers my living expenses. Who will they get to divest from me? No one is INvesting in me. It's safer that way. Don't be seen. Not seen, can't be canceled.
In case you haven't figured out my little motif here, when I put something indented in quotes, it's basically the OCD talking. The OCD I started talking about at the top of this blog post, which feels like I started it one thousand years ago. I just had to text my boyfriend to bring me a PBJ because I am stuck to the computer word vomiting all this out before I get too scared to tell the truth.
This feels like journaling. It feels like writing it for me, not for you. Because I cannot just write for you. I have to write for me. That's how everything works. That's how I grew my following in the first place on my first blog. I just shared my experiences and stories. I talked about whatever was on my mind. I have missed this feeling of "real blogging" and I could swear to God I just felt a mask on my brain fall off. Ever since The Gaslighting of the Millennial Generation went viral, I have been writing for you. For readers. For followers. For consumers. For the givers of my life, my validation, my career. Woof. I'm sorry. You can't have that anymore. That is mine. I am the giver of my life, my validation, my career.
In 2025 I'm going to tell the truth in this blog. And I don't give a shit about SEO or sales funnels or turning readers into leads into clients. I can't do it anymore, I can't live in a world where I only relate to people through the lens of my business. I didn't even know it happened. I don't know when people stopped being my friends and started being my contacts. Has it been since I quit my job and became dependent on self-employment? Always assuming I would have to be schmoozing or something? Oh God it's from the Beachbody days. It's the MLM training kicking in. I hate that. Don't like that one bit.
But now that I see it I can recognize it in the moment when it happens. Already I feel so relieved that I noticed this. I can feel my anxiety dissipating as I realize I don't have to worry about how I talk to people - I don't have to always worry that they're evaluating "Would I hire this person?" with every sentence I say. No one is keeping track like that. It's only me. It's only me. It's only ever been me.
And that kills me a little bit. Because how long have I been terrified of people leaving me for doing the wrong thing? How long? How tiny was I when I learned to fear that? How innocent? How alone?
Writing this down, telling the truth, it feels like I have been living a fake life (fake like NPC, as my friend Ash made me clarify - dissociation).
I'm furious. I thought I was healing all this time. I thought I was healing from the trauma of my ex-husband, my abusive parents, but I was dissociating. I was waiting. But I am here now. I am what I was waiting for. It is going to be okay. I am going to be okay. I am coming alive again. Whatever this was, it has been keeping me safe, and I feel like I don't need it anymore. I feel brave enough to tell the truth and be my real self and trust that the people in my life love me for ME, not for anything I could provide them. No one is keeping track of my Good Person Points. No one is measuring my worth on a day to day basis like the stock market. There is no morality stock market. THERE IS NO MORALITY STOCK MARKET.
How long have I been petrified of saying the wrong thing? Of not being good enough - or Good enough?
This blog is now the place where I will document my journey to unpacking this new aspect of myself. I will document my coming alive. I will tell the truth.
If you feel utterly seen by this post, hi, I'm a life coach. A really good one, 'cause of all the trauma. I mostly help people write books, but I am basically a Swiss Army-Knife of know-how and life experience, 'cause of all the ADHD. So I'm a "general life coach" too but that phrasing isn't me. I am more of a chaotic fairy godmother. So if you are in want of a chaotic fairy godmother, let's chat about working together. I am letting you know upfront that I am mentally ill as fuck. Like as FUCK. I don't have to hide that. It doesn't make me more hirable to pretend I'm less crazy. In fact it makes me less hirable, because of all the anxiety around being found out. God, this really goes deep. Anyway, book a consultation with me here: https://cal.com/caitlinlizfisher/disco or press the button.