I AM NOT CHARLOTTE YORK (and other lessons in trying to be a neurotypical)
on not trying to be other people, enoughness and grieving the person I thought I was
I have spent the last twenty something years trying extremely hard to be someone else. I thought if I tried hard enough I could be this vision of successful writer, artist, person that runs a business, leads a team, rememberers to eat lunch, I could feel ok. I could see this version of “me” so easily in my minds eye.
She has a blowout and her hair looks incredible even after a run. She knows how to budget and doesn’t do her taxes all in one feral week of the year. Her dish cloths are pristine and not fully of ratty holes and her underwear doesn’t have period blood stains on it like bandage hanging in a world war two diorama at your local history museum. She shows up on time and know all the right things to say when she gets there.
She is Charlotte York, really. If I could flatten her and archetype her. She is good at all she touches and she is earnest and she cares. I thought if I just worked hard enough I could be her. Then I wouldn’t have things like “make a budget” on my to-do list for literal years. The trying of wanting to be here wouldn’t show behind the way I arranged the feature on my face when I walked into a room.
I try so hard. I’ve always been trying. Its not cool to be seen trying. To be eager or to want it. In the 6th grade I ran for student president. I was terrified to to give my speech, not because I don’t like speaking in front of a crowd (I was born with a microphone in my hand) but because I wanted it. I cared. Not just about winning but about trying to be the type of person that runs for class president. The type of person that tries.Middle schoolers can spots the weirdness no matter how hard you try. The uncanny valley of alien trying to be human, I will never measure up to it. Trying to just shove my frizzing hair into a clas clip before school. Trying to learn the dance everyone mysteriously knows all the sudden. Trying to pretned you’re no longer interest in beanie babies and instead love. But its a losing game. .
Post diagnosis I have been grieving this vision of me that has never existed. Will never exist. This impossible bar to reach. Of a woman that knows how to leave the house, what shoes to wear to the function, what kind of words are appropriate to use and the small talk required to implement them. The kind of woman with a blow out that sticks and doesn’t flap her hands while she runs and instead stays thin and doesn’t have to sit on the toilet because she forgot to eat for a day and then when she did eat she ate a bag of jelly babies and another bag frozen nuggets.
This is a version of me I have never been. And truthfully, if I met this woman I have tried so hard to become, I don’t think I’d like her very much. And if I did meet the Charlottes of the world I think I would see the veneer of their trying crack behind the seams too. But now I know this version of me is not possible. The choice to be her has been removed. I am grieving this ideal that could have been. That if I just worked harder. Set more alarms. Did more therapy. That I would stop being not enough. Or too much. Or whatever the gymnastics course that lays in front of me needs for me to preform.
And I know, I am inherently enough. That my being just is. And your being just is. And that actually our being just is together. But nothing stings like not understanding why you can be someone that takes four meetings in a day, hit clients targets, impresses editors and still gets asked for dinner and then “all of the sudden” need to sit down on the couch for the entirety of the next day. That tiredness will catch up with me. That bone dead exhaustion comes knocking just when I think I can back flip into another stunning success story.
And I really don’t think the choice was ever there. Or maybe some idea, the promise of a winning prize was there. The concept of the end of the road, the idea of Charlotte that could be achieved if we just we abandon our work in service of the archetype of “successful” “good” “clean” whatever measure of enoughness we have stuck in our minds eye.
I can’t be other people. You can’t be other people. How fucking librating.
AND there is so much space, peace freedom, joy, creation to be found when we try to us us. To be relentlessly and ferociously OURSELVES. To stop trying to be other people. To not beat ourselves up for not measuring or matching bars and outcomes others do. Because they are not you. And you are not them. To try and only be ourselves. To dig deep into our own wells of running, and blood stained underwear, and bad hair, and other worldly thinking and 658393 ideas before we even got out of bed, and notes apps, and tapping along to a song in the street because it lights up all the nerve endings in our bodied create from that.
To be ourselves is so embarrassing but so is trying in the first place. The earnestness of wanting and attempting. and isn’t that just so messily human. 💕
The Performance of Pitching // a free.99 storytelling workshop
Do you look at others IG stories and wish you could just tell a better story? Do you feel like that natural born storyteller instinct could probably be put to good use, but not sure how? Are you stuck trying to figure out how (or if you’re allowed!) to spin your latest internet obsession into a sales worthy yarn?
At my heart, in all I do, I am a storyteller. I show up to a page ready to weave. And as I have said in this space 5892 times and will continue to say 68392 more. I never promised to be a good writer, I just promise to write. So let’s tell our stories (and get paid to tell em😉)– together.
How would it feel if you…
Ditched your fear of IG stories
Stopped spinning your wheels when if comes to writing your next launch email
ACTUALLY deepened your connection with your audience so you can feel free from your codependency with the algorithms
AND make you (and your business!) more cash?
How to tell stories in business (that actually make you money!) Feb 7th @7pm EST
xx
Phoebe 💕
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️(and also like, don’t be an ableist freak🥰)
Thanks for reading the Creators Dispatch. A weekly essay about the creative journey! Here I write about being an artist, human, angry woman on the internet and living in the dumpster fire of a world that says not to make your art. If what I say here inspires you (or pisses you off 🥰) share my work with the group chat, or your best friends neighbour. Word of mouth is the most special and radical way of sharing – plus it helps put the Zuck 🏄♂️ out of business 👼
Thank you for sharing all of this. Your journey isn’t so different from mine, and it is a daily one. ❤️
Yes! Radical acceptance of ourselves...wouldn't that be nice! Instead of trying to mould ourselves into these perfect women/humans that we just aren't! J