Letters to monsters.

I feel somewhat better today. I think it has to do with a few things that I did last night. One was treating myself to a Waitrose curry, which was yummy. Mmm, Bombay potatoes. Another was spending money on stationery in Paperchase (more on this later). But mostly it was the incredible, incredible stuff that I shifted in my head all by myself.

Well, of course, lots of credit is due to Havi Brooks and the jumpstart she gave me. Lots of credit is due to her ideas and concepts and the way she presents them. The way she talks about monsters and fear and asking questions and all kinds of useful stuff that really helps me out. I can’t talk about this process without talking about Havi, because she was the beginning of it. But lots of credit is also due to me.

I wrote a little bit yesterday about a couple of my monsters. Well – yesterday, as mentioned, was really, really hard, and I elected to give myself a prize. I felt that I deserved one. My prize was to go and sit in a café, drink tea, eat scones, and experiment with writing in my Little Book Of Monsters. I had written some pages, but no monsters had yet made an appearance. And I wanted to try.

So I tried.

I tried talking about HLV, my “Hard Little Voice”. And she popped up and started talking to me. So I wrote her a letter. A long, careful, loving letter. In which I promised to stop trying to shut her up, if she would agree to try and actually talk to me, instead of ranting and trying to scare me. And the weird thing was, it really seemed to work. When I was done with the letter, I had a long chat with her in my head (and okay, sometimes out loud, under my breath) and she was really, really helpful. She’s still trying her usual tactics, but I’ve learned to call her on it. And when I do, she is very articulate about what she thinks and what she wants, and most of all what she predicts.

We’ve agreed to do some experiments, too, so we can see if we can find a new way to interact with the mistakes that will help HLV to get what she wants – which is a more happy, successful and productive Lucy. Strangely enough, that’s a point we agree on: I want a more happy, successful and productive Lucy, too. So it helps that we are aiming at the same goal. And as I make mistakes anyway, no matter what HLV does, trying to see what happens with the mistakes is probably a good place to start.

(Whoa, HLV is chatty. I can point out here that HLV feels disappointed in me, and frustrated with me, whenever I make a mistake, and feels that I am failing her despite her best efforts. Oh, HLV, I know how hard you are trying. I am trying hard too, but I know that sometimes you don’t see it. How about we try giving ourselves permission to make a mistake or two, just so that we can see how we feel about that?)

So experiment number one is to play with mistakes. What that means is I’m going to try to notice my mistakes, first of all, on a conscious level, instead of the subconscious one where HLV yells “you made a mistake! You have to fix it!” and I try my very best to ignore her. Instead, I’m going to try to go, “oh, hi there, I made a mistake”. And then I’m going to try to notice what happens next.

That means not telling HLV to shut up. It means actually listening to what she has to say, really paying attention to her, and trying to figure out where she is coming from. Listening with compassion and love, even. It’s not going to be easy – although I say this, but the one time I tried it so far, earlier this morning when I made a tiny mistake at work (really vanishingly tiny), it was a lot easier than I had anticipated. Not entirely comfortable, but it wasn’t the screaming agony I expected. So that’s good. Because the thing about HLV is that while she has some weird misconceptions about the world, she is mostly wise, and she loves me a lot. She really wants for me to be happy and successful, and to be all the awesome things that she knows I can be. She thinks I’m fabulous; she just wants me to be it. (It’s just that her tactics are not that helpful, that’s all. Guess what, even head-monsters fuck up sometimes.)

There’s another experiment, too. HLV and I had tea in the coffee shop of a big department store in a shopping centre near my work. On the way out, I got a bit confused. My impulse was to look for a staff member and ask them to direct me to the exit. And the minute I considered this, HLV piped up, “Oh no you don’t! They’ll only attack you!” So I didn’t.

And once I got out of the shop, I thought, wait, what? So I asked HLV. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You think that if I ask a stranger for directions, they’ll attack me?” And HLV said, “Yep. Actually if you ask a stranger anything that makes you seem vulnerable, they will probably attack you.”

Me: “So if I ask a strange anything at all, pretty much, they are likely to attack me?”

HLV: “Yes.”

Me: “Huh. Why’s that?”

At this point, HLV clammed up. Apparently direct questions like “why?” don’t work (Havi again).

So I tried a new tactic. “Okay, forget why. How about we test this theory? How about we ask questions of a hundred strangers and see if they attack us?”

HLV said that was okay.

And now I feel a bit less scared of asking random things of strangers, because it’s a game! In fact, I asked a random woman what the time was, in Waitrose, and she was completely lovely to me. It was awesome. I think I approve of this experiment. So far, I’ve asked 3 people. So there’s a lot of interest still to come in this experiment!

The other cool thing, as mentioned, was going to Paperchase to buy more stationery. I browed the notebooks, and found a really nice one, because I felt that alongside my Little Book Of Monsters I wanted a Little Book Of Words: under the same “no pressure” rules as my monster book. Plus, I wanted an even smaller monster book, for little notes. And then a smaller little notes book for the words, too. So now I also have a Tiny Book Of Monsters and a Tiny Book Of Words. Whee!

In a small, final bit of news, I’m going on holiday from tomorrow for a week. I probably won’t have any internet access for the whole time I’m away, though if I manage to get things set up on my phone, I may be able to be on Twitter a bit. So this will probably be my last blog post until I’m back on May 8th – I’ll catch up with you all then!

Tagged as: hanging out with HLV, ramblings from my head, self friendship, stalking Havi Brooks, stories from my world