Go Anyway She was afraid but she did it anyway. Is there any other option? They say life is for the brave, but really, we don’t have a choice.
‘And so the sun also rises’ and so do we. We get up and go on regardless of what happens or if we feel afraid. We just … continue to live.
I think the concept of surviving as automatic rather than brave is most obvious when you go through something (awful, life-changing) young, and while you are aware that something of incredible weight has happened, you are unaware of how to process it and often not really able to take in the full gravitas of the way your life has changed forever. Plus being a kid usually means there are other humans, adult humans, who wake you up and tell you what to do (hopefully and for a little while anyway). They will tell you that, for the following reasons, we will wear black today, that it’s okay to cry, that life is going to be different. And maybe you pretend to cry because that’s what everyone else is doing because you can’t really grasp that life will be different.
The concept of life as you know it as a kid is still so tangible and ever-changing. So the little kid experiencing life-changing events will just nod their head and do as they’re told (lashing out will come later, the rebelling, fucking up, the dangerous times™️ and the bad times™️ will come in time too) but at first they will just go along with what is being directed of them at this obviously new and confusing but not really any different to how new and confusing every little season of life is, when you’re little yourself.
There is a certain cruising altitude of experiencing life-changing events before you can really grasp the concept of life and change. And this is what I mean by: we just continue. Whenever people have told me I was brave or strong for growing up without parents and everything else that followed, I always find it so curious. Because from my point of view, it went like this — I just … didn’t die? I just woke up every day between then and now with varying degrees of confusion, fear, despair, excitement, hope, happiness, and wonder. I actually didn’t do anything, and especially as a young kid and pre-teen, I just… continued. Continued to breathe and be alive.
Now, as an adult, there is a sense of having effect. Of being strong and being brave. Of having some pride in handling myself well or ‘going through some shit.’
Sometimes I even look back at my childhood and feel proud of me for the little things I was aware of and some of the ways I handled myself as I came into puberty. Around that time the ‘wow I was so brave and handled that well’ starts to drop off into the danger times™️ and then the bad days™️ and there was a much less constructive protection going on, self-destructive which is a shield in itself even when it almost kills you, and it is very hard to feel proud or brave about that, yet there is tenderness inside me even towards that time.
Somewhere, around ten years later, I feel myself drift back into itself. To start to be aware again. I started to do things, hard things and brave things, to impact my life rather than tank it. Here I feel the swell of bravery, strength and pride. And the tenderness, she remains too.
The softness I have for all the versions of me finally doesn’t stop or start in the past. After intense periods of therapy and healing, the tenderness and compassion I feel is overarching, like a protective hug around all the bad times and splintered memories.
(Tenderness in the present is another story and the current work™️.)
The ‘ten years later’ point in time is fluid too, that point of self-destruction moving towards resilience really depends on how my inner self feels in the present. What current me feels dictates how I see and relate to those me’s from back then. Funny that, almost like our sense of self isn’t a fixed thing and more like a flowing variable, like Schrödinger’s sense of self. Curious little fuckers, aren’t we?
I had a point, I’m sure, but maybe the point doesn’t ever really matter, and that’s the catch. To find joy and hope without reason or purpose, to find action and resilience within fear and uncertainty. Those are the points that matter, I guess.
I have wanted to write and/or blog for so long. The self-critical and surprisingly private real me has always stopped me though, various reasons but mainly that the mountain was always too huge, even totally inaccessible for long stretches of time. By that I mean, wow write? Write about what? All of it? But why? For who? And how? The kind of art that means the most to me, that feels the most sacred and true, are thoughts and writings. Books have changed my life and my outlook a hundred times over. The greatest artists that have ever lived in my opinion are writers and thinkers that either changed the world or made me, personally, cry. So to think I have the right and the talent to go anywhere near that art form, even just for fun, well I decided many times over that would be impossible. Plus sharing writing would be futile and useless. Who would want to read the thoughts that render me, more often than not, useless to myself?
It’s funny to think that as a real person (not just the persona — which is also true — of badass, solo female traveling, death-defying sword swallower me) I have SO much to say. I’m very open-minded while being very opinionated. I love turning things over rather than knowing them, I pride myself on wanting to understand rather than wanting to be right and am famously self-aware (for real though, it’s a quality my friends and loved ones — even my psychiatrist bestie — praise me on) but I constantly worry about whether I have anything of any real value to say.
Doing anything other than posting hey-look-at-me-I’m-a-sword-swallower reels that do nothing because numbers on Instagram do not = work bookings (not really, not unless you’re HUGE), they do not equal income (not for me anyway) and they definitely do not give me any sense of making anything lasting, inspiring or helpful (to me or anyone else). Why? Because although I live a really unique, unconventional, powerful, free and rare kind of life, and even with the self-proclaimed above levels of opinionated/great self-awareness — I have never really known what on earth I could write about and still am pretty worried that I: a) don’t have the ability to structure any kind of writing into a thing that works and people want to read and that b) without structure and purpose I will just embarrass myself by rambling into the void.
What’s changed now? Maybe I’m just exhausted by the inner dialogue’s relentlessness and need a freaking outlet (very probable tbh, am currently probing my own reasonings so brb on that one).
Curiosity and questioning everything has always been a core structure of who I am as a person but that shit gets tiring when it has no outlet and your own mortality starts fixating more and more on the ‘what’s the point?’™️ of it all.
The lack of outlet (other than my poor, sweet caring friends who suffer my podcast-like voice notes and all-but-incoherent slabs of text thanks to my horrendous voice-to-text usage, sorry and thank you and I love all of you) has finally tipped me over the edge so that the fear (of how bad I will be at it, about being judged, about how embarrassing and awful it would be to try and create (and share omg😱 the kind of art I value most) finally doesn’t outweigh the need to not just be thinking into the void.
Writing, trying to compile my thoughts always felt like it would be a waste of time (ha! I can literally feel and hear my higher self laughing at the idea of writing ever being a waste of time … yeh yeh I know let me evolve at my own pace babe) is no longer greater than the need to open the windows in my mind and let some fucking thoughts out (floodgates) and some fresh air (clarity, focus, what else is missing in here?) in. The void replied, she’s exhausted too. Time to lessen the load.
Plus lately I’ve been trying to remember this one thing … what was it again… oh yeah, I am really an amazing and impressive-ass woman!
I have lived a hundred lives already in this one short half-life and I travel the world, alone, with a career I created out of thin air with a skill around 10 people in the whole world can do and do regularly enough to turn it into a job (and an even smaller number who do just that).
I’ve lived on my own since I was around 13, moved countries 7-ish times totally solo/single and cities more times than I can count. I’ve traveled, succeeded, failed, fallen, rediscovered myself, and felt fucking terrified and done it all anyway so many more times than I feel I should — but I think that is kind of my point, my reason, my thing I’m meant to do.
I hold onto myself, my fear and the constant uncertainty my life has always had like I wrap my fingers around the handle of my swords on stage, with the kind of intuitive effortlessness that only comes from having to do it.
Lately I’ve really come into my own sense of awe at myself, a genuine and really healthy kind of self-appreciation. It’s been low-key life-changing and it’s made me examine all the reasons I didn’t feel good enough or articulate enough to share beyond ‘hey look at me I’m a badass sword swallower I live by my own rules!’ — because while those are definitely very true aspects of who I am and how I live, the fear of sharing anything more, be it from embarrassment or impossible-task-level-10, it’s a protective fear and protective fears are limiting. And now that I feel so much more impressed by me, I don’t want to allow limiting fears to have too much air time in my life.
The idea for this ‘blog’ is a collection of thoughts, ideas, experiences, provocations and suggestions on anything and everything that I do, feel, love, experience, ponder… because if there is one thing I can write about and explore as a theme — it’s how I live (travel, perform, self-reflect, interact, react…) not without fear (ahem, see above) but rather as taking fear as a fact of doing the business of being alive, and doing it any fucking way.
I wanted a blog title that could encompass this as well as some travel and life stuff because, well, I do a lot of travel and life stuff. The whole reason I am a performer and have so much recent resilience is because of my life experience and travel being my first and biggest passion I ever pursued.
I’m starting to think that maybe I even know a few things with my CVS-receipt-style list of life experiences, and maybe they can help and inspire others on their way, too?
Go Anyway was the only thing that kind of worked.
Nervous about traveling alone or moving to a new city/country? Go anyway. Worried about being alone if you initiate a breakup? Go anyway. Fearful you’ll be judged at the gym/the party/the thing/the place? Go anyway.
The thing I did by survival is still the best advice I can give in a soundbite — just Do the Thing. Take the Job. Move across the Oceans. Cut off toxic family members.
The worst that can happen is it’s awful. Which is a risk without action anyway. Either way it might suck so you may as well go for it anyway.
And even if it is awful, you’ll learn valuable lessons — not necessarily more valuable but the kind of lessons that dig their heels into your psyche and, if you allow it, change your life forever for the better.
Because the more we test ourselves the more we get to know ourselves and knowing ourselves is the one universal thing, I’m almost certain, that we’re meant to do.