Too soft for all of it

Newsletter inspo from Taylor Swift (again); thoughts on softness and strength. Plus, book tour dates and The Sober 90 is open for registration.

Since Taylor Swift’s Lover album came out in 2019, I’ve been thinking about how great it’d be to do a whole year of newsletters or writings inspired by TS lyrics. I’ve talked myself out of it on account of seeming like one of those ideas that’s far better in my head than in reality, but it won’t leave me alone, so here we are! (To be fair, last week’s “I’m the problem, it’s me” newsletter about people-pleasing and boundaries was inspired by the lyrics in “Anti-Hero,” so we were already well on our way.)

The inspiration for this one is too soft for all of this, a line in “Sweet Nothings” on the Midnights album. It’s a sleeper song I ignored for the first two months of listening, but caught one day as I was stretching after a workout when my phone was too far away to skip past it again.

When I heard these lines, a lump swelled in my throat.

Here, listen. The stanza begins at 1:50 and ends at 2:00.

And the voices that implore
”You should be doing more”
To you I can admit
That I’m just too soft for all of it.

It got me because she’d captured the juxtaposition of two themes I’ve felt all my life and am feeling extra intensely right now: the pressure to be strong, to push, to do, and the softness inside—the ways I feel too soft for this world, sometimes. Too soft to be taken seriously. Too soft to belong in many rooms. Too soft to be respected.

I’ve long believed these two things to be in opposition to one another—that I’m either soft or I’m strong. That softness isn’t strength, and strength can’t be soft. Like one cancels the other out, or at least they serve two distinct purposes, as if softness is the Reverse gear, and strong is Drive.

Here’s what’s going on these days. We’ve got construction going on in our house, both expected and not, with potential lawsuits and large sums of money involved. I feel out of depth in these conversations and I HATE that. Alma is about to turn fourteen, and while her birthday always breaks me open, this is the year she enters high school and I can’t wrap my heart or brain or anything around that. I’ve got a book coming out in less than a month, and as much as I feel cool and collected about it, there’s an unavoidable intensity building beneath the surface. And T has been traveling for three weeks straight and flat out while he’s away, only returning home for 24-36 hours on the weekends, so aside from missing him, I haven’t been able to process things with him like I usually do. Plus, winter. Fucking winter, man.

Anyway, over the weekend, all my push/go/more resolve crumbled, and by Saturday night, I found myself in a puddle on the couch, unable to eat or talk or think. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t a puddle of tears. That would be fine! Preferable! Please, let me cry! This was a puddle of shame. Ick, gross, thick, sticky, self-rejecting shame.

I hated my weakness. I hated my softness. I told myself one of the oldest, meanest stories I know: I should be better than this by now.

I used to go through moments like this alone, but now that I live with another adult, there’s someone watching. He’d watched all day, rubbed my back, asked me questions to try and understand. I tried to explain, sort of, but I was dancing around it. It wasn’t until the end of the day Saturday on the couch, in my shame puddle, that I took the risk to ask the question I needed to ask.

“Do you hate this part of me?”

He looked at me, surprised and confused. “What? No honey. I don’t hate any part of you.”

“Because I hate this part of me,” I said.

I went on to tell him it felt young and weak and scared and chicken shit and annoying. We talked about my people-pleasing/need-to-fix tendencies and the trouble that causes me sometimes. We talked about the uselessness of hating any part of myself, but also, what is this part, anyway? I perceive it as this highly-defective thing that overshadows and cancels out everything good about me when it shows up. He perceives it as a tiny aspect of who I am—hardly a defining characteristic. I believed him…sort of.

I woke up the next morning feeling better, but still shaky. In the days since, I’ve been thinking a lot about it all, rolling the song around in my head, considering what softness and strength really are (again), and what an extraordinary gesture of courage it was for me to allow someone to witness me feeling so small; to ask a question like that, which is to admit in my own way, that I’m too soft for all of it. And to watch him not budge an inch. Alma sat there with us on the couch that night too, listening and asking questions, talking about how she people-pleases too, and, It’s okay, mom, you can only control some things, but not others.

Sometimes we can’t see ourselves clearly at all, especially when we’re down.

Sunday, on the phone with T, after he’d landed in yet another city, I asked him to tell me some of the good things. To remind me what was truest about me because I was having trouble feeling it. He did, and it wasn’t my strength or fantastic organizing skills that came first, it was my ability to love. “You are this massive, endless generator of love for the people around you.”

That felt pretty damn good, and sort of like a relief? Because that part comes easy. I don’t associate it with being soft or strong, it just is, and so maybe I can’t fail at it either way.

Funny thing: when Midnights dropped in December, I ordered this shirt from the TS merch site (a consolation prize for not being able to get tickets for Alma and me for the Eras tour; still mad about it) because I liked the blue. I had no idea what the words were about or which song they were from. It finally arrived last week, just in time.

This was a bit all over the place, but so am I. I’d love to hear what you think, as always, in the comments. Thoughts about strength? Softness? Do you freak out when you feel weak? Hide it? Beat yourself up for not having shit together 100% of the time? Feel like you need to justify having ~feelings~?

Love,
L

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