I Called A Psychic and That's Okay

On Practicing Self-Compassion During this Olympic Season

໒(⊙ᴗ⊙)७✎▤ hello readers ໒(⊙ᴗ⊙)७✎▤

Every nation’s greatest athletes are currently competing on the world’s stage. Bennifer is now, more certainly than ever, breaking up. Again. Lady Gaga is engaged. Phaedra is returning to the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Gwyneth Paltrow, multifilm member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, does not understand the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kamala Harris has taken over Joe Biden’s presidential run and Taylor Swift took time out of her tour schedule to endorse Deadpool & Wolverine as if it were a cute, determined indie flick she wanted to help a friend get off the ground but has yet to endorse Kamala even after Charli XCX and Beyoncé did, and despite having made an entire documentary about wanting to use her voice for political progress. 

And I… am not going to write about any of that. I’m going to write about myself!

It’s time to get personal. 

Last week, my best friend from high school successfully defended her PhD dissertation in education policy. You can read some of her writing here. She is brilliant and is actively working to promote equity and create progressive change in her community and somehow still finds the time to be a really great friend. I know I could send her an eight minute long voice note psychoanalyzing one of my exes right now and she wouldn’t miss a detail in responding.

On the day that I (virtually) attended my friend’s PhD defense, my other main activities included a phone call with a psychic and a focused viewing of the latest episode of ABC’s Claim to Fame. Somehow, by the end of the day, I began to question… what am I doing with my life? 

The psychic said my career is my purpose. Apparently, I was an unsatisfied mother and housewife in a past life and I can’t repeat that, and I also might have been a child whose life was cut short in a past life, all of this pointing to the desperate need for me to fulfill my potential in my current life, right now. You know, I think I would have handled this whole “your career is all that matters” astrological message a little better if I hadn’t just watched my best friend become a doctor.

With nary a bachelor’s degree to my name, I became depressed under the weight of the existential questions embedded in my psychic reading. Am I pursuing the right career? Am I pursuing it in the right way? Will I ever have anything on the level of a PhD to brag about? Is Dedrick from Claim to Fame really a Jackson, or is he tricking us like Jamie Lee Curtis’s nephew did? Can any of my fellow former dead kids or past-life-housewives send me a sign? 

Yes, I am writing. I am a writer. I love to write. Every day, I think about what I am writing, and my next thought is - where is it going? What’s the point? Who’s even gonna read it? Who do I think I am to even believe it’s worth reading? Etc. 

Of course, all of these feelings are understandable given the circumstances of the industry I work in and the world I live in and the chemical problems within my brain. Plus, I am at an age where many of my peers are hitting milestones, starting families, graduating programs and, I don’t know, doing Roth IRA’s or something?

Every third instagram post is a reminder of what I’ve yet to do, which of course comes with the subsequent reminder that I am selfish and self-centered for making other people’s accomplishments about me, and I can’t even delete social media for more than a day without twitching and salivating in withdrawal, and so I download it again and see a “summer dump” that includes a trip to Sicily and a baby gender reveal and an infographic about how I’m not paying enough attention to all the horrors, and thus returns the dread.

Thank you robot. 

Over the weekend, I visited my parents house and took out my high school yearbook. My PhD friend is pictured in multiple photos indicating her involvement in school clubs and extracurricular activities. I am not. My only group photo is with the JV ice hockey team. I never even tried out for Varsity. 

Later in the weekend, in the context of the Olympics, someone asked me if I would pressure my future children to participate in a sport. I recalled all the sports and activities I started, then gave up, in my youth and how my parents supported and loved me regardless. Glossing over the latter, I declared YES, I would DEFINITELY pressure my children to pursue something that would make them special so they could avoid the plight of wasting their thirties in conversation with charlatans, awaiting the next episode of a lesser-Jonas-bros-hosted reality show, all while wondering when their life was going to finally begin. 

As a writer, I often envy those of my peers that have, in some sense, chosen a clear path. The ones who work in the field they studied in school and can sort of imagine what the next five to ten years of their career will look like. I yearn to go back in time and tell my younger self to choose something more solid, to choose anything at all, to focus on the right things, to stay committed instead of quitting, and to stay present instead of escaping.

These narratives - the mentally-go-backwards-or-forwards-in-time-to-fix-my-current-discomfort narratives of “if only”, and “always” and “never again” - are exhausting, boring, and a complete waste of time. The only solace I’ve found from these narratives is empathy - which is most difficult for me to give to myself. My privileged self. My nothing-to-complain-about self. Myself, who scribbled disturbing OCD intrusive thoughts down on 5 star hotel stationary as a confessional compulsion during a luxury family vacation that I *sigh* just couldn’t enjoy. 

Yet, when I remember everything that was contending for focus in my adolescent brain, it’s easier for me to accept that I didn’t start constructing a solid future foundation at age 14. In addition to the OCD, I had insomnia that kept me up all night watching YouTube videos of alien encounters and Kurt Cobain death conspiracies. I had a big nose and braces and the kind of beet-red, sweaty, mute shyness that made people uncomfortable. I couldn’t pee if anyone else was in the school bathroom, so I spent a lot of time waiting to be alone in metal stalls. Then, there was the eating disorder and the hours of calorie logging it required. By senior year, I couldn’t think, pee, sleep, talk or even eat with ease. I can understand why I wasn’t able to land on a life plan. I know that I was privileged, and I know that I was in pain, and I forgive myself for not being ready to go to college without self-destructing on drugs and alcohol.

So, here I am today, completing my bachelor’s degree online, learning how to accept the uncertainty of a life pursuing art, and honestly still trying to figure out the whole think, pee, sleep, talk, eat thing, but it’s all made easier with love for myself and from friends. If I had been practicing self-compassion last week, I would have preserved more emotional space to value my friend’s successful PhD defense. I would have reflected on how far we’ve both come from the moment we met on a sports field freshman year, when she was contending with her own forces of adolescence, but still found time to become one of the only people I could safely talk to. We learned to listen with each other, but sometimes I forget how, and that’s okay. I’ll keep trying.