YOU TRY AND I LOVE YOU FOR THAT
MARGOT TERC
YOU TRY AND I LOVE YOU FOR THAT
THERE ARE PARTS OF ME THAT ARE BIG AND BRIGHT. OTHER PARTS SIT HEAVY, AND PRESS AND ACHE. THIS ZINE IS FOR MY MESSY INSIDES. YOU ARE PART OF ME AND I WILL WORK WITH YOU TOO.
TW FOR MENTIONS OF DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY.
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There are patterns to this, and I'm catching onto my own. I go through waves of tunnel vision, of avoidance, of too much at once, of not enough. I've been making more of an effort to ground myself in the cycles of my life and my days. It's humbling and insightful, and I want to work with it. This is also for the love, and the skies and lil things that keep me going. Yes impermanence is a b, but also good thing that none of this is forever. Everything will change, and we'll keep growing and waning, until the day we're something else. And a new cycle will emerge. For now, I hope we make and try, and give as good as we get. Depression is real, and anxiety is tough, but so am I. If I'm in this, I will get a say too. 2
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I KNOW THAT I WILL
I didn’t need my therapist to tell me that I actually do have anxiety and depression, because I’ve known that. But the validation of it coupled with my determination to live best life for self, has made it clear that some things have to change for this to work. The importance of being consistent with my selfcare has magnified too, and not just the indulgent kind that I’ve always been good at.
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Now I'm thinking more of tomorrow, and putting things in place so it'll be just a bit easier for myself. I have to take into account that I’m not always okay. Some days I avoid and procrastinate and try to keep to myself. Sometimes I’m far along in a project, but then catch myself getting overwhelmed and shifting onto something else entirely. I always come back, and I know that some days I need to flow between different mediums and projects to get context and perspective, but it isn’t always that. Sometimes the Overwhelm feels so big that I rather not deal, and sometimes something happens that shakes the rug under my feet and pushes me into seeking comfort and quiet. As much as I
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support indulgence in our precious lives, there’s a difference between expanding because growth is needed, and jumping into new things for the sake of avoiding the discomfort that comes in growing an idea, and seeing it through to its many parts. Seeing how much I've done that, and knowing that there are extra players is pushing me a bit. Just knowing that I am predisposed to depression, anxiety, and over-thinking makes me want support myself more. I have many creative visions to grow, and I really don’t want my fear of the unknown to slow me down. Especially when I don't know what I don’t know. Whatever happens, I want to go down fighting, because my depression and anxiety cannot get the best of me. 4
I NEED MORE / I NEED THIS TO SHIFT
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I am insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but still here. And somehow my existence is part of the thread of this (ALL THIS). Just as I am affected and fired up by the elements and people around me, I do some of that too. I don't exist in a vacuum, and I’m not sure why I exist at all, but I’m here and I affect this too. My body/spirit came to be part of this, and I’m felt. Anything can happen, anything can change, and nothing is fixed anyway. 7
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I see the big things, and I am moving towards them, but I’m finding it difficult to focus consistently, and physically show up to things. I’ve been thinking how collective feeling or not, this might not ever go away for me. Yesterday I thought about seasons and cycles in the moon, and I remembered that if the things of this universe grow and fade and grow again, so will I. My energy comes in bursts, and that’s cool. It has been humbling to remember again and again that although I come up with ideas, they aren’t bound to me. Ideas fall onto a bunch of us, and then it’s down to whomever runs with them. My ego would love it if I was ‘the one’ to make the thing happen. And of course, there’s also the need I feel to do things with my life because everything is temporary, and I really want meaning, and big beautiful things out of this. But I keep having to balance my drive with my visions with my actual energy. Sometimes I have it, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes my energy is just low, and on those days it’s easier to write and
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read and brainstorm. And that has to be enough. I’ll try to match my mental energy with more physical grounding, but I really just want to be okay with where I am right now. Especially since the only way is through. I am powering up, and this is it, but also, this is it. The heaviness and the doubt, having to push through discomfort because it would kill me not to.
Originally written on my Tumblr on July 2015. Minor edits were made, but feeling is very much the same.
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How do I move through this? How can I feel past the ache in me? 11
Sometimes I want to glow and shine bright, but instead I feel the dirt and the ashes. There is an ache on my chest that presses on me, and screams louder when I'm waiting for the bus, and when time stands still, and there's nothing to distract me. There is a heaviness to my heart, and I'm screaming inside, because my sister is gone, and I will eventually lose everyone I love. I'm not sure how I'll see everything through. There's a pit in my stomach, and a hole in my chest, that pull harder when I think about feeling like this for the rest of my life. Sometimes I don't get it at all. Feels that this could be so much more simpler. I resent so much of this system, and the lives we live because we are socialized to, and not because they really resonate with us. And yeah I can fight and build alongside my communities, but it doesn't always feel that way. Sometimes I just don't see it. Sometimes I can't see past the ache, and all I know is that I don't want to live like this.
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This is cyclic, and good and bad things will happen. There will be love and joy, there will be heartbreak, deaths and endings, disappointments, bad jobs, bad people, and bad systems. Love that floors us, people that hold us down and build us up. We will love and we will lose, and we’ll scream from frustration, but also from loving, from seeing our visions come through, from knowing that the people we love and hold dear are out there doing their thing too. We will feel it all, and our insides will keep shifting. For however long we’re here, we’ll be part of it. After, who knows. Maybe we come back in the still parts. In the pinks in the sky, the blue that makes us all !!!!!!!!, in the lines of someone’s back.
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THE WAVES WILL HIT AGAIN
Sometimes I have to push myself to study, practice, email, call, work, and show up, when I much rather not. How different would life be if I was healthier and more focused? I've come a long way since the days I'd wait for inspiration to strike. But I also know that I want to better nourish the energy to take care of my body and practice, and see my visions through more often. For this to work, there needs to be space for off days. I need to anticipate this, and actually plan things out, so that I can support myself and see this through. There are many ways to this. I have to focus and be consistent, but I also have to flow in this. Eat the good food, let energy move through my body, be physically active, and mentally still. Surround myself with people that love me, and that I can love back. I'm still not sure how I feel about my diagnosis. It isn't entirely surprising, but I also don't know how much weight I want to give it. At the end of the day I'm very much the same person I was when I didn't know. The difference is that now I have more context, and more of a push to take care of my body. Knowing that I'm not a well of never-ending energy puts things in perspective, and reminds me that I have to give myself extra support. There is space for my sad and existential, but I also need to nurture my body and mind, so that I work better and bounce back faster. There will be moments where I don't have it in me, and that's fine too. I just want to know that I'm making an effort to care for my body. Mostly because I don't want so much of my life to be influenced by my mind or feelings I don’t like. There's much for me to learn about mental health and treatment, and I'm sure I'll adapt as I go. But for now I want to give more love and care to my body, and I want to make my project-obsessed self work for me. As long as I've known that I go through 'waves' (my speak for depressed/anxious times), creating has been biggest coping mechanism. I'm determined to use it all to push through my discomfort. None of this is new to me. These waves have been here for a quite some time, and now I know what I'm playing with. 15
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Discomfort is a constant, and the sooner you get used to it, the better off you’ll be. Because if you keep waiting to feel entirely good, for your mind to be sure or still or whatever, I don’t know how long it'll take to see things through. So know this: you just gotta be in it. I don’t know when this feeling will ease. There’s an ache and it isn’t going away. But that’s what we do, isn’t? We find ways to move around it. I don’t want lose the thread. Even though there are times to quiet down and recharge, I need to feel I’m in it, and that I really am trying.
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It's up to me to say: thank you for doing this. For making, for going to therapy, for waking up today and doing this, for writing, for always coming back. Please let it be known that even when I'm moving glacially slow, I'm always in this. I am very grateful for that. I don't have to, but I choose to. And as hard as I am on myself, I don't want to forget that even when it dips, it's always happening in some ways. I might switch mediums, and sometimes the outcome is ugly and messy, but I'm always in it in some way. And for that, thank you very much. There is something in creating that has grounded me through all this. Knowing that I've been growing in my art also makes me hopeful and proud. Thank you self for trying. Love you so much for that. 20
THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO THIS
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LIFE WILL SHIFT MANY TIMES OVER
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Writing, photography, & design by Margot Terc June 2018 Margot-Terc.com instagram.com/margot.terc lunario.org