Sensitivity & strength: destruction and creation
Unravelling through the loops, spirals, and cycles of life
Feelings, emotions - those powerful, pivotal tools that tend to both plummet and propel us. They keep us stagnant, they also get us sailing.
You would think, and like to think, that everybody feels things to their depths, that everybody experiences the intensity of their emotions to the same degree. But not everybody does. Some people naturally are more sensitive than others, they feel things more deeply, more intensely; thus having more empathy, more awareness, more compassion, and dare I say it - more depth.
Personally, I’m a thinker and a feeler. I’m innately curious; curious to my core. In the who, the what, the when, the how, and most importantly - the why. This is how I navigate life, how I make sense of the world which in turn builds my world, my life. Or rather, I’d like to think life isn’t built, life unravels, it unfolds, unwinds through experience, through setbacks, through thoughts and feelings and emotions.
Some people, like myself, are more sensitive to this unravelling, they don’t just bear witness to the unfolding, they get entangled in it, chewed up and spat out by the harshness of it all. Repeatedly gather the scraps of themselves and piece them back together.
My heart of gold leaves my mind blue
To think and feel deeply can leave you in a state of being both blessed and cursed; of being both sensitive and strong.
I’m noticing lately that the deeper you understand something, the deeper you feel it. What cuts deep, lingers longer.
I am constantly humbled by my own humanity. By pain and loss and grief and change and memory and love. I am shaped and moulded out of it all, doing my best to not bend or fold, to not force myself into a shape to fit what’s not meant for me. Sometimes I am more malleable, like soft clay I can let the world shape me into something it wishes me to be, other times I am firm and rigid, like steel already set, yet each and every time life unwinds, I always spiral inwards.
I may stray a little, but I return to myself time after time, increasingly more me with every turn. The unravelling, tangled, winding road is always followed by another bend and another and… another.
The other side of the loop, is of course, a loop. It’s a loooooooop.
The other side of the loop is a loop - Frank’s Seigfried. A tender reminder that amidst the pains of indecision, self-reflection, and introspection, on the quest for meaning, for freedom, and for connection - there are cycles. And some cycles repeat, some cycles we’re not brave enough to step out of, some cycles end, some cycles send us on our way to the spiral. It is both pain and beauty that remain throughout. Pain and beauty co-exist.
Maybe the spiral is made-up of endless loops?
Life is not linear
Whether it’s the loop or the spiral - life lacks linearity.
Kae Tempest puts it perfectly - The Line Is A Curve. What looks straight forward, or what we expect to be, is in fact bent and split and winding. Life is steady, and then it’s not. There is no end point of smooth sailing clarity, it will always get rocky again. The waves will be choppy and treacherous, but you must stay afloat, you must.
And another thing, there’s no avoiding it. You have to go through it. Not over it, not under it. When it comes to facing pain or hardship or difficulty, there is no re-route, no detour. You have to go through that bitch. The only way out is through.
Like that children’s book - We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it”.
Through the storm, the river, the mud. Physically and emotionally trudge through the mud and the dirt. You have to, it’s the only way.
There really is no avoiding it, it is up to us to summon our courage and strength and make our way through life’s challenges and life’s setbacks; to set foot on the trail and slog our way through.
Move
Keep moving, that’s the antidote to pain in my opinion. To not stay stagnant. To gather all of your bits, grief and pain included, and keep it pushing. Not avoidance, that’s the distinction, you have to allow yourself to sit with it but then you must move, and if that means setting off whilst still carrying some shit, so be it.
Some words from Earl Sweatshirt on movement:
“How to stay afloat in a bottomless pit the trick is to stop falling, only option is to start with a step, bet” - Vin Skully
“I see you ain’t moved in a while, ain’t gon’ lie you probably should get ya sails up” - WELL DONE!
“I made every effort, then I laced up my creps and kept it rocking. I can’t see no other option” - Exhaust
…and along the weary way, we lean on things to help us through: people, vices, hobbies. Sometimes these things serve a purpose, and other times those things become a hindrance or another obstacle, as opposed to a guide or an aid.
Sometimes we depend on these things to avoid the road ahead, to avoid the feelings that are to be faced if we’re to move along, to avoid getting in the depths of the mud where it’s grimey and messy. I’m learning lately that to make it through, having survived the thick of the dirt and the upheaval of the storms, whilst sitting in the heaviness that comes with this, you reach the other end more adaptable, more resilient, and with more strength and more trust in yourself.
Albeit not unscathed by the turmoil, of course the pain and grief leave imprints on you, but they also alchemise into strength (and softness).
If you sit with the harshness long enough, with intention and openness, you learn a lot from it; you learn a lot about yourself, about what you’re capable of. If you don’t ignore it, which you never can forever, if you look at it and listen to it, the pain changes form. You work with it. You let it move you just as much as you move it.
“I’ve got all this pain in my heart but I’ve got no place to put it, tried to leave it behind, but I couldn’t.
I need alchemical transmutation,
I need alchemical transmutation”
Sins Of The Father - Daniel Caesar, Bon Iver
What was once pain and grief and sorrow, is now strength and resilience and solace. All of which help to mould a version of you that is now more equipped to move forward, more importantly, to move forward with grace.
Speaking of grace, and the importance of pulling your pain and grief from within, and sitting with it, transmuting it - some little lines that have stuck with me from Kae Tempest’ Grace:
But love said, “If you bring forth what is within you,
what you bring forth will save you
but if you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you”
Destruction and creation
The cycles and loops of life are full of uncertainty, they’re frightening and full of destruction. For those sensitive souls that experience these things so intensely, it can feel like the world is suffocating us with our own experience, our own emotions, but there’s a great deal of strength in this. To think and feel so deeply, to sit in it and with it, to not run or hide from it, to transmute it - it really does feel like a return to self once you’re out the other end.
Life’s difficulties tend to wound up at renewal and rebirth - just like the phoenix.
A creature of destruction and creation, dying in flames, resurrecting from its own ashes; an inspiring symbol of strength. Morphing continuously, the phoenix shows us that the end is only the beginning. That pain is power. That sensitivity is strength.
“You can be remade, you can live again
what was pain now’s gained
a new path gets laid
and you know what is great?
Nothing stays the same”
AWARDS SEASON - Bon Iver
So once you’re out the other end, enjoy it, because they’ll be something else to tackle soon enough. It’s cliche but you do have to take comfort in the fact that everything is temporary, for better or worse, it’s all temporary.
One thing is for certain - change is the only constant. Consistent change. Permanent impermanence.
Change, in all of its disruption and uncomfortableness, is not only inevitable, it’s necessary. The seasons are necessary. The bud, the bloom, the withering, the shedding, the bareness - and back again.
Life is cyclical. It’s those spirals. It’s the loop which is the other side of a loop. Transformation. Metamorphosis.
As Bon Iver says in AWARDS SEASON:
“What can wax can wane”
wax and wane - Verb
To progress cyclically through various phases, such as growth and senescence.
To alternate; to increase and diminish in turn.
So, like the seasons, like nature and all things living - surrender to change, surrender to temporariness, to the unknown and unknowable. Surrender to your sensitivity (which is your strength). I’m learning to surrender to it. I’m learning to let go of control. To embrace and welcome the uncertainty.
Forever unravelling. Forever winding. Surrendering to the spiral that is life.
A little playlist to capture the essence of sensitivity and strength; of destruction and creation. Themes of change, growth, alchemy, freedom, self-assuredness, faith, hope, and love.
This is so beautifully written. The way you describe being both a thinker and a feeler, and how life doesn’t just build but unravels, really resonates with me. Your words capture that delicate balance between sensitivity and strength so perfectly. You’ve expressed something so many people feel but struggle to articulate the blessing and the weight of feeling. Congratulations on such an honest and moving piece, I know how long it took you to do this. Keep writing, honestly so inspiring sis🩷