The Ayes Have It

Except when the noes do.

Once, a few years ago, I decided that I would spend a year saying yes to things that I would ordinarily say no to. At that point I was saying no to so many things that my existence was shrinking to a point of discomfort. I was allowing myself to be defined by what I didn’t do rather than what I did.

Some of it was fear. A lot of it was pure exhaustion. It wasn’t that my life was empty of purpose or things to do. I had three children, a house, three cats and a husband to tangle with amongst other things. My life was busy. The problem was that I was largely busy with other people’s things and as a result my life was becoming empty of me. My family hadn’t asked me to do that. I hadn’t consciously chosen to do it. The slide was gradual. One day I was just gifted the knowledge that I was allowing myself to become a little fainter round the edges. A little less me.

This wasn’t the first time it happened. I had done this before, but in the times before when I noticed, I burned the metaphorical house down as a response. I didn’t want to do that this time. I liked my house. I loved my family. I did not actually want to run away and join the circus. I just wanted the option to tootle around in a clown car on my own for a bit.

The experiment was interesting. I learned a lot. I learned to knit. I learned that crochet gave me unhealthy levels of rage. I learned that flamenco dancing was not for me. I learned that I loved to paint and that even though I wasn’t very good at it, I wanted to do more. Most of all, I learned a new way to learn that wasn’t about school or passing a driving test. I learned how to lean into the things I loved and find people who loved to teach me how to do better at them. I also learned to give myself permission to be terrible at things.

The saying yes to things didn’t last a whole year, but it lasted long enough to remind me that the I that wasn’t a mum or a daughter or an employee was still in there and had opinions about things and enthusiasms I could make space for. Sometimes she has been pushed to the back of the queue in the years since, but she’s been more vocal about getting a look in and I get around to looking after her more often these days.

I needed to have a period of saying yes to everything to unstick myself, but the most important thing I learned was that I actually didn’t want to say yes to everything, just like I didn’t want to say no to everything. What I wanted was to learn to trust myself to choose what I liked and what I didn’t. I wanted to learn to be more confident about making those choices for me, not because of what I thought other people wanted or needed from me or what I thought other people thought of me.

As I have been gradually rebuilding my boundaries in the last week I have noticed that I have been extremely unsure of myself. I have said things and then gone back to a person to clarify or apologise in case my meaning wasn’t clear. I have been worried about what and how I’m saying things. I have been second-guessing myself.

It’s not that I want to be adamant about everything I say and do. That’s a recipe for disaster. Nobody needs me to start chiselling my commandments in stone, least of all, me. But in allowing myself to slide back temporarily into chaos I scared myself quite badly and now I’m a bit paranoid. Where once I said yes to everything, now I’m saying ‘yes/no/maybe/on second thoughts.’

I wondered what I might want to do about that, because although I completely understand why I’m doing it, it’s not much fun. I remembered the saying yes experiment and I thought maybe I want to recalibrate my system by testing it out again on some things that don’t matter.

When I started saying yes to things I wasn’t committing to anything major. I didn’t have the time or the inclination. I started with small, manageable things like six weeks of learning to knit. There is literally no peril in learning to make a scarf with two sticks and some wool. The group was small, so the social cost was negligible, and knitters are a friendly bunch who are unlikely to slag you off or go postal and stab you if you tangle up your knits and your purls.

After knitting was done, I decided to try crochet because I had really enjoyed being a knitter and everyone told me crochet was easier. What I learned was that I found crochet almost supernaturally hard to do and I actively hated it. I sat through two lessons where I barely contained the itchy, fire ants of textile rage that coursed through me. Then I had a word with myself.

I could have powered through the negative feelings. I am sure that eventually, although never being likely to win crocheter of the year, I would have figured out how to become mildly competent at it. I am equally sure that my absolute fury was not entirely down to my inability to weave wool into blankets with a small, hooked stick. There was some deep, dark stuff in there that needed addressing, but I did not want to address it through the power of pro-active crafting.

I went back to the lovely crochet teacher and said that I wouldn’t be coming back to any more classes, because I wasn’t enjoying myself and crochet wasn’t for me. She was very understanding, probably due to the fact that she didn’t want a ticking time bomb of wooly fury going off in her otherwise positive and tranquil class. I went home and then nothing happened at all.

The nothing happening bit was the most powerful bit of the whole experience. I tried something, I learned I didn’t like it. I decided not to push through my pain or set myself the target of raising four thousand million pounds for three legged dogs by charitably crocheting a cathedral just to prove I could turn my frown upside down and be victorious. I decided that on balance neither I nor anyone whose opinion I valued would give a shiny shit if they never saw me pick up a crochet hook again. I said no. I went home and thoroughly enjoyed spending the hour a week I was scheduled to learn crochet, sitting on my sofa in my pants eating biscuits and reading my book.

I had learned that it was ok for me to say no to crochet largely because I learned what yes to knitting felt like. I needed both to calibrate myself properly and for me I needed the learnings to be low stakes, so I could faff around and take time to figure things out in my own, sweet time. Learning to trust myself with the small things allowed me to start learning to trust myself with the big things. Once my brain understood what yes and no means and feels like, it doesn’t care if it’s yes to pottery class, or no to that person who enjoys making me feel small.

Recently I allowed myself to forget that again. Yes and no have a lot of responsibility around boundaries and I’d taken all mine down, which was quite confusing for me. In the last week I have been doing the work of putting new boundaries in place. Because they’re in different places, my mind has been a little unsure about where my yeses and noes go and what they look and sound like now. But a little experimentation with all the low stakes, no thrills available will see me right, as long as I avoid crochet classes.