Now it seems to me that Rainbows are a colourful explosion of complete confusion. Streaking across the sky announcing to the whole world that Sun and Rain have got all mixed up. They need a few moments to untangle themselves and throw a colourful smoke screen of a rainbow as a serious distraction technique hoping that all of us below will get caught way up high in lullabies and pots of gold. We're none the wiser whether it is meant to be sunny or rainy. We don't even register the confusion. We just smile and point at the rainbow.
I had absolutely no idea that I was playing a dangerous game of emotional roulette with my very own rainbow until it was plucked out of the sky and dropped in my lap during a therapy session. There I was chatting away exploring some new mental avenue or other when I got zipped. Zipped shut by the psychologist. She stopped me because what I was doing was recounting something quite traumatic as though I was telling a funny story to my mates in the pub. To anyone watching me with the sound off I was smiling and laughing and telling jokes. To anyone listening without looking, this was serious stuff.
I was masking the deep-seated emotions and feelings with virtually the complete opposite outward cues. My body language wasn't telling the truth. Except how would anyone else ever know if I didn't even realise it myself? I was completely out of kilter. It was like using a parasol to hide the rain, painting a unicorn to hide the stain.
This meant two things: firstly that for some reason on a subconscious level I believed that it wasn't safe to visibly show anything other than positive emotion; and secondly that I was regularly sending out the wrong message. No wonder I was having trouble feeling that I was being heard - I was all smiley faces and exclamation marks. The question marks, capital letters and dot dot dots had all gone missing under a protective layer of body armour. I was actively asking people to misread and mishear me. I needed re-wiring, reconstituting, restoring- I needed a full-on factory reset! But first I wanted to explore this emotional infidelity in my life a little further.
The rainbow effect was different with my wardrobe which mainly seemed to be black and white with a hint of baby blue and pink thrown in for the softer days. Since I'd stopped working I was dressing according to how I felt each day- pyjamas mostly at the start, and then jeans and hoodies, and then prettier shirts and more expressive jewellery as I started to feel better. But what I did notice was that I always put the same North Face body warmer and brown leather boots on to leave the house. Keys and phone in the inside pocket. Zip. Left boot on. Zip. Right boot on Zip. Zip, zip, zip. Body armour on and ready to face the world. I felt strong, padded up and in control. This got me thinking about how I used clothes over the years. In the Army, uniform made me feel proud, smart (although generally under-ironed and hurriedly polished) and that I belonged; at school, uniform was the blissful protection from the pressure of having to keep up with the latest Naf Naf jacket or Nike Air trainers (although the brown knickers and straw hats left a lot to be desired); at work, I used clothes to put on the persona I needed for that day - dress and heels for difficult meetings, jeans for Fridays, jacket and big ring when interviewing. I was using the rainbow of my wardrobe to empower myself. On the outside. The pattern was the same- I was giving an external message that did not match the inner one. It denied and overrode it. The shape-shifting, colour-changing rainbow was me.
And yet, if I think back to all the fancy dress parties I've ever been to - they have mostly been brilliant, the best. A monumental display of people being more themselves than ever- using the adopted identity to exaggerate, explore and enjoy their own. Was this down to the simple fact that fancy dress was a conscious choice? A conscious choice to have fun. No masking of inner emotion but actively tapping into it and exploding it outward instead. Ironically, I could learn a lot from fancy dress- it was exactly what it said on the tin, it sent clear messages to everyone around, and it was completely at one with its inhabitant having undiluted, unadulterated fun. It also lived completely in the moment- I'd always end up leaving the key accessory of it behind that night never to be seen again. The hats, masks, wands they all walk (have you ever come home with your fancy dress outfit intact??)- they're not thinking about the next time, just this time.
So maybe I had got my rainbows all mixed up. I needed to know when it was sunny and know when it was overcast, know when it was hammering it down with rain and when the fog was closing in, and keep them all separate. I didn't need the roulette of a rainbow, I needed to feel and exude emotional clarity. This was going to take work to identify my feelings accurately in the present moment and then have the courage to articulate them, to be me. To push the boundaries, and not be scared to leave parts of me behind. Leave a mark. An echo.
Perhaps I could learn something from a clumsy brown bear, an incessant zip-faced chatterbox and a camp pink hippopotamus after all. They are exactly who they are, inside and out. And we seemed to love them. Up above the streets and houses...rainbow flying high.
Wrong?
No comments:
Post a Comment