"Don't Let Teenage Danielle Drive the Boat"
-my therapist on staying regulated while I heal my inner teen
There’s this old tumblr post that says, “I was so angry at everything when I was thirteen. And I was right.”
Many of the people in my life know that I’ve started doing lots of internal work on my inner teenager. While I have never formally done IFS work, I think the idea of sub-personalities or “parts” is helpful here. My inner teenager has a great deal of hurt, grief, and anger that has never been processed before.
I started this journey as I wrote a poem I began in
’s Unfold class on found poetry. While I am long practiced with the cento form, I had what seemed like an exciting, new idea: write a cento from all my old poems! I still have every notebook I’ve written in since I was eleven years old. They sit in my hobby room in a cedar chest, haphazardly organized, many of them worn and some of the pages even yellowing. Because I’m getting old, or whatever. Sometimes I wonder what I’ll do when I outgrow the cedar chest, but I suppose that’s the proverbial bridge to cross when I get there.
At any rate, I began a foray into my old journals, pulling out old lines. The great thing about a cento is you can cherry-pick your favorites and fit them in with other favorites. This seemed like an exciting and fun idea for a poem. I’m looking into the past! I’ll find all the best lines! I’ll see what I was like as a fledgling poet!
What I neglected to remember is that I suffered deeply as a teenager. From being a closeted queer kid in an less-than-friendly-to-queer-folks environment to the undiagnosed bipolar disorder and many things in between, I was really quite miserable. The pain of this version of myself was something I’d never faced, hence the forgetting.
I’ve done a fair amount of work healing my inner child. I’ve worked on seeing them. My inner teen? I guess I’ve done a hard swerve on that for many, many years. As I journeyed through the journals, it certainly makes sense why. The things I endured were unfair as well as entirely unnecessary. It’s probably not useful to outline them in detail here (nor am I ready for that), so I’ll just say that the journals and the old poems reminded me of one thing: when I had nothing else, I had words.
I wrote about this in the Job newsletter, but there’s a thing I believe with my whole heart: when we are at our lowest, we need to speak. We need to use our words. Even if no one is listening.
No one was listening to teenage Danielle. No one saw their suffering. No one did anything.
Still, they spoke. They filled those journals until, one day, they found a microphone. Until, one day, they found poets. (As well as a psychiatrist and psychopharmaceutical medication.)
I have theological grounding for this belief, and it is one of the few things I can say I’m sure of. If there is anything we are called to, it is to speak. I’ve got a tattoo about it. Even if you are angry at everything, even if you are shouting into an endless void.
Because, someday, you can do what I did and witness yourself, even if no one else does.
I’m lucky or blessed (or both), because at The Heart of It writing retreat, facilitated by
, only a few short weeks ago, I brought my inner teen with me and they were witnessed by some of the people who matter the most to me. My suspicion is that if you are willing to speak, if you are willing to let the tender and wounded parts of you have their voice, someone will be there to witness you, eventually.I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember and a part of that is because I suffered deeply. I don’t happen to believe that writing is always about suffering deeply. Some of my best work has nothing to do with suffering. But for me, it was the catalyst and the reason. It was a need to speak.
I was recently reminded of this quote:
“I wonder if that’s how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.” –Jasmine Warga
Writing, speaking, witnessing can be just as much about joy as it is about grief. At THOI, I spent the first two mornings of solo time crying as I wrote about, explored, and recounted some of the ways that my inner teen suffered. During the first day, we were led in a grief workshop by a dear cohort-mate and friend and I wanted to talk about my inner teen. But the exercise was to access joy and levity about the subject of your grief and at that point, I couldn’t access that.
On the last full day of THOI, I woke up at 5am and knew I wouldn’t be going back to sleep. One thought was resoundingly clear in my head: I would be able to access the joy of my inner teen that day. After days (and weeks) of grieving, I had the distinct feeling I’d be able to access the parts of teenage Danielle that had life in them.
This is not to say that grief always ends in joy. In fact, the grief has far from ended. Yet joy becomes accessible to us the more we witness our grief.
I have this Google doc that’s called “the place where the dirt lives,” taken from the idea that we need dirt for our poems and writing to grow from. I’d like to share a bit of the dirt document from that morning with you.
August 10th, 2024
I woke up at 5am despite going to bed at midnight. Felt like my job today was to access joy. I’ve spent the last two custody of eyes crying and I don’t exactly feel like I’ve cried all my tears out but I do feel like it’s time for a shift in focus. I chose the cheesy mug that says “may this day be full of laughter” and I’ve been thinking lots about what made teenage Danielle happy when they started healing. I wouldn’t say Lamictal “made them happy” but it sure did heal them.
Lamictal. Chili cheese fries. Poets. Friends who are long gone from their life but mattered so much then. Drip coffee. They were too proud to put cream in it. I’m glad they grew out of that. Staying up too late. Stargazing. The life-doesn’t-make-sense trail. Community college. Welcome to the Black Parade. Dresses. Making the top sixteen districts for the 3200 in track. Slurpees with Alison. That shithole of a house their friends lived in on 17th and Southeast Blvd. Being the youngest poet at NPS 2010. Moving out. Working at Arby’s. That one time they climbed the statue in Riverfront Park, that says on the top “Transcend the Bullshit.” Just kidding. It wasn’t just one time. Filling a journal. Returning to the place they belonged. Books. Anis Mojgani poems. Cross-country. Not going to high school. Relearning love. Cigarettes smoked by other people. Emo music. Local folk music. Reading Dostoevsky (no really). Dunking their cross-country coach in the pond at Windermere Golf Course. Writing anonymous notes. Winning anything at all. Splitting Thai food. Always a curry, a noodle dish, a rice dish. A single pancake from the Satellite when chili cheese fries were a little too much. Queer friends. (They should have known.) Bad karate movies. Their guitar, despite everything. They loved a lot of things. A lot of things made them happy. Empyrean Coffee House. Places that no longer exist. Places that exist within them, forever.
One of my favorite artists,
, has an art piece that says, “There is a part of me that was never injured.” There is a place within me that can hold joy and nothing else. There is a place, even in teenage Danielle, that experienced voracious and unapologetic joy. It just took a long time. None of it makes the suffering “worth it,” but it is still true.Duality or multitudes or whatever.
This is an invitation to witness the injured parts of yourself. It is not a promise that you will find joy and love beyond the suffering, though I suspect you will. Do your most injured self a favor and really look at them. Chances are that’s all they want. You can be the one to do it for them. If you’re lucky or blessed (or both) like me, someone else will come along and witness them with you.
xoxo,
d