i am the wrecking ball
i wrote a poem on the spot for this
🌧 click to listen to my current playlist ‘not sad anymore’ while you read
welcome to edition #1 of pitter patter!
you might be getting this letter because you subscribed to emails on my website, michaelapoetry.com
to reintroduce myself, i am a poet and author of the books you’ll come back to yourself and when he leaves you.
i’ve decided to start a newsletter! i am very excited and mildly confident that i will have enough to say to post weekly on thursdays.
and since the moon is in virgo (ruled by mercury, the planet of communication), and i have a virgo moon… i have a lot to say today!
first of all:
i’m fully vaccinated!
eighteen hours post second vaccine and i’m feeling 10/10, but we’ll see what today brings. i am very grateful to live in a country where we have vaccines readily available, and though it feels kind of fucking unlikely, i hope international vaccine equity starts to become a thing soon.
therapy lessons
since this is my first letter, i feel compelled to tell you that i have therapy with a spiritual psychotherapist about once a month. i have seen various therapists (including a clinical psychologist and social worker) on and off since 2017, but i started taking things a little more seriously with the apocalypse that was 2020.
though i do not have a clinical diagnosis, i have dealt with symptoms of anxiety and depression ever since i can remember (although i did not realize that’s what they were until my mid-twenties). having a therapeutic relationship and someone to rely on in pretty unreliable times has proven to be one of the most valuable things in my life.
sidenote: therapy should be more accessible aka cheaper!!! i will do my best to include book recommendations when i write about therapy, and hopefully you can learn something from what i write for free. going to start off with set boundaries, find peace by nedra tawwab because it changed my life.
this week in therapy, we talked about all the beliefs i had to unlearn to buy a house as a single woman:
that you need a partner to buy a house, that you can’t buy a house if you’re self-employed, that you can’t get a mortgage if you’re self-employed, that you can’t get a mortgage if you’re single, that you shouldn’t buy property if you’re single, etc.
it is absolutely wild to me that, a year ago, i truly believed all those things to be true. but in the past month, i discovered that they’re just… not. it might be a little harder to buy a house as a single, self-employed woman, but it still happened. i can feel the dissonance lingering, and i have to keep telling myself… yes, you did that.
at this point, i think life is just unlearning everything society puts onto you, whether it’s because you’re a woman or femme, a person of colour, fat, queer, or disabled. the intersectionality of your identities in a society that caters to thin, able-bodied white cishet men will always try to teach you that the more historically excluded identities you embody, the less you can do.
and although i fully acknowledge that i have privilege in a lot of my identities, the more i unlearn, the more i think… you can do even more.
so many things about getting a mortgage from a bank, read: an institution that’s entire structure is white and male, felt symbolic. getting pre-approved for a mortgage that then fell through after “the board” reviewed my application. like… i WONDER who was on the board evaluating me as a gay single woman who makes her income from the internet.
make it harder for us, and we’ll do more.
i bought a house!
enough complaining (though hopefully there was some kind of takeaway in there), as you know if you follow me anywhere, i did it!
i am doing the big move next week and i am very excited to get it done.
i don’t know why i’m including this because i don’t have much else to say, other than it’s one of my biggest life accomplishments to date and i’m probably going to talk about it for the next year.
poetry prompt
every letter, i’ll include a prompt that you can write to, along with my own poem written on the spot (saying this to warn you of quality).
i hope you’ll get out your journal (or notes app) and write with me 🖊
prompt: what are you unlearning?
brick by brick
i take down the walls i thought
were there to protect me
funny how protection
just keeps us small
i thought my hands were supposed to be heavy
turns out they had me in cuffs
how do you unlearn a life of
you’re not good enough
without a wrecking ball
how do you break through
what’s stopping you
without being able to see it
they’ll offer you a rose-coloured window
when what you really need is a prescription
or a door
i am tired of telling myself no
before hearing the answer
i am smashing bricks
i am letting go
i am the wrecking ball
and now, a tiktok
speaking of wrecking ball? i promise this will make you chuckle if not full belly laugh.
if you read this whole letter, i love you with all of my heart, and i will talk to you next week. also feel free to leave me a comment, i’m honestly just learning how this works, but it seems fun and i’ll respond to all of them.
xoxo
m
Already excited for next week! Can you tell me where you started the process of finding a spiritual psychotherapist? I’ve been contemplating therapy for myself lately and it’s on my vision board for this year!
You are such an interesting & beautiful human. Can’t wait to read more. ✨