by Jenna Chante
I am a radical.
The auditory spank on that phrase used to give me the shudders.
Because the way I was taught is that balance is key. “Everything in moderation,” my grandmother preached to my father who passed on this cursed motto as inheritance.
Moderation is the base method of mediocrity. And that is the path to a life unfulfilled. A life drip-dripping into the stale coffin of normality. Boring, custom-responsed conversation.
Long days of staring at a computer screen and counting down the minutes to evening leisure in front of yet another draining screen.
I learned that from my parents too.
My heart squeezes one pulse too tight at the thought of a thirty-year haul being stuck in the prison of a job and an existence that doesn’t rile me up.
From that trench, radicalism beams out and finds me on my knees, forcing me to look into the light.
Like our minion-reared mindsets, the term itself has been beaten and abused. I used to think radicalism, aka terrorism, attack, religious and fundamental polarity.
Violent aspects of this word best avoided because, “I’m not like those radicals. I’m a good, hard-working, rule-abiding citizen.”
Truthfully, radicalism is often violent. It is often extreme. It is exactly the medicine needed to break out of this poisoned rat cage.
Radicalism is the seed of change.
Cliché, maybe, but there’s a reason we love clichés. They speak the truth. They resonate to the depths that aren’t so easy to reach.
And the Latin origin, ‘radix’ literally means the root. The place where growth can emerge and form new ways that differ from the old, trodden paths.
Stripping down
There is nothing placid about radicalism and when married to honesty, it becomes a magical key, unlocking doors to the unconscious.
The kind of stepping up to the mirror that leads to a raw and often painful undressing of the true self.
It is in that authentic reflection that we can find our greatest gifts. And, in the spirit of exposure, I’ll be the first to strip down to my roots and lay claim to my own:
1. I am not perfect.
I‘ve tried to be.
I’ve beaten that dead horse up and down my stairwell for years. I was top of my class, distinction-ranking in not just a Bachelor’s degree but a Master’s too, just to make sure I was smart enough.
But the only thing chasing credentials has taught me is how to heighten anxiety to a monstrous level; even the thought of taking calculated risk winds up sending me into a self-flagellating sickness.
Theory, texts, all the words that others have taught me cannot mold me into a right enough human being.
Perfection is the myth I sold myself about hard work and abandoning intuition. It is the sacrifice of fun and play and process for doubt and criticism and product.
2. I am not fearless.
I used to think that ‘when I get there’ to that woman I want to be, she will be entirely unafraid. Well, that was years ago and I’m still waiting. I am entering a phase where I don’t only daydream about desire but I’m beginning to follow its lead.
It’s horrifying. I don’t know where I’m going – I can’t see the treasure past the mouth of the cave – I can only see the darkness. What if I lose all the gems I’ve come to grasp?
My husband, my daughter, my friends, my house, my permanent job with all its benefits?
What if the money I’ve scraped thirty years of skin against rail to attain is peeled from my fingertips?
What if everything I’ve learned is a lie and all this law of attraction bullshit is a well-executed marketing scheme that I bought into out of desperation?
It could be.
I’ve seen people lose. I’m averse to their pain, doing the opposite so I won’t end up like them. But if I’m really honest, some of them were making all the right moves.
No matter how cautious any one of us attempts to play, there are no guarantees.
There is a reason we convocate in front of the television at night. In our secret hearts, we all desire that heroine’s journey.
We covet her courage in the face of her fears. We tune in to tune out and become her on hour-long escape trips.
Yet, vicarious viewing doesn’t have the sensation I’m seeking. Even if I stood on the sidelines forever, I could still lose.
3. I am not safe.
This thought is the turning point.
As attached as I am to my habituated comforts, I’ve overspent on them. They no longer thrill me. Deep inside this woman lusts for danger. I’m holding the knife, now I want to feel it slice into my skin.
Here is where the real journey begins.
4. I am not clean and tidy.
The darkness is not kind nor is it straight. I have been a wild, volatile ride through the valleys of starting and stopping, of giving up and then not giving up.
I cry myself into the quicksand of self-pity and victimization.
On any given day, I am warrant to distractions and a multitude of roles that make identity and clarity and alignment impossible.
I ooze mess like a bucket of slop.
5. I am not good.
Ouch. This one is especially wrenching. I’ve held the ‘good girl’ ideal close to my chest since birth. It is the landmark of who I thought I was.
But I get angry and I hurt people. Not always in the punch-him-in-the-throat way. My silence is infinitely painful and I use it – consciously – to withdraw and intend suffering to all those who love me and wish to connect.
I’m greedy too. I want more money than I can fill a room with. I want luxurious diaper bags and coffered ceiling houses.
I want never-ending massages that make my givers’ hands ache. I want hard, penetrating sex on a whim – in the middle of the night – exactly the way I like it.
I don’t want a piece of chocolate cake. No. I won’t have a piece. I want the whole damn thing.
6. I am not unbreakable.
I am fragmented in a hundred different ways.
But my growing ability to stay present in the ugliest of sensations is becoming my greatest asset: the ripping fingers of grief in my chest, the baring teeth of conflict, all the tears and ballooning overwhelm that scream: “impending explosion – abort – must dissociate and drift away immediately.”
It is in staying present through these sensations that I am able to first acknowledge when and where I got lost and then to reclaim the most vulnerable, feeling parts of my being.
And it is all those parts together, glued and misshapen, frayed at the edges that paint a picture I couldn’t see before.
7. I am not powerless.
I am a goddess with blonde, flowing hair. My shoulders are strong, baring a gorgeously lined clavicle and an ample chest.
There is a magnetism to this self-claimed woman.
She has full custody of body and mind, uniting them in an electrical current that runs straight from the river source.
When I am her, all the broken, greedy, bad, dangerous, flawed elements unite into a vast being capable of everything.
That is why I choose to be a radical.
It’s why we all need to embrace our full selves, starting with the measly, often unseen roots that shoot up from the ground and building into beautiful, gnarly, presence-shaking trees of life.
IN CONCLUSION
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featured image and broken mirror image: shutterstock