Come Undone, My Love
The ugly truth of unraveling: my two-year disaster of doing, undoing, doing more, and coming undone.
Undoing is ugly. It’s embarrassing and weird. Many of you have earned the right to say “I told you so” or “yeah, we knew,” but you also deserve to know the truth. In this post, I describe the reality of my two-year undoing—bluntly and without extra padding—because it’s important. All of us are undoing in some way, and we need one another—to stay sane, to stay rooted in who we are, and to do the work we are meant to do. But for me, this post is important because this particular cycle of doing and undoing needs to end. I need to stop fighting the undoing, let everything go, and come undone.
Doing | Undoing | Undone
I’ve never thought about how weird it is that the most common way we check in with one another is to ask “How are you doing?” The weirdness of it isn’t the how are you part, but the doing. How are you doing? As if the most direct route to the heart of human matter is to know what someone is producing or accomplishing. It makes more sense to ask “how are you being,” but as a woman in recovery from success obsession and hustle culture, it tracks.
Anytime I’ve been asked the usual question over last two years, I’ve said I’m doing good! great! And of course I would—Doing is all I’ve been doing. I’ve been at my laptop—eyeballs reflecting pixels, chest caved, elbows bent, shoulders curved inward—busy, busy, busy, busy—doing all the many things and getting all of them done.
But I’ve known for a while that something is seriously off. Something in me has felt horribly disordered—bent, sideways, wrong.
For decades, I’ve used doing as a remedy. It’s how I repair something that feels incomplete or broken. I problem-solve with to-do lists—stacking papers and projects on top of problems and calling it a fix. This is nothing new, but in the last two years, I’ve been fixing by doing in hyper-speed—thereby creating more projects to complete and more problems to fix.
In the last 24 months, I’ve checked 100,000 items from my to-do list with absolutely nothing to show for it—NOTHING. This isn’t pity or anger speaking now. I exaggerate nothing. I haven’t done a single thing I’m truly proud of—with the exception of this Substack—and even then . . . well, that comes later in this story. The immediate point is the glaring contradiction between what I’ve been communicating through my words and actions and what is actually happening.
I’ve been loudly and proudly “claiming my freedom” and “launching my business” and “rebranding my service offerings,” while projecting an image of building upwards—building toward something. But the story I’ve been telling (myself and everyone else) is far from the truth of what’s really happening. My many efforts have not transported me a single step forward or built a single thing worth keeping. Quite the opposite. Over the past two years, I have only been progressively and painfully breaking myself down.
So how am I doing? I’m not. I’m not doing a damn thing. I am undoing. I’m unraveling in a way I did not know was possible. I’ve been fighting it for minutes on hours on weeks on years now.
And I think I’m done.
Build | Break | Become
It started in 2023. I made a big decision and took a big risk. I left an 18-year legal career to start my own law firm. I left dream-building for others to build dreams of my own. I left Person A—who I never was—to become Person B—a person I genuinely thought was really, truly me.
I’ve talked and written about the big leaving and big beginning more than anything else, so that part of this story isn’t interesting or the point. It simply marks the time when everything turned sideways and just . . . kept turning. It’s when the dials of my home planet started shifting—degree by sickening degree—while gravity stayed the same.
In the first week of the big beginning, Person B d i s i n t e g r a t e d. She was sitting at her desk at noon—booked and busy—and at 2:00 pm, she was a pile of salt and ash on the ground. By 3:00 pm, I had reconstituted myself into Person C with a thing called a pivot and continued right along. Thus began a chaotic 24-month cycle of disintegrating and reconstituting, unraveling and layering, launching and rebranding, doing and undoing . . . then doing more.
What followed was a grotesque carnival shit-show of weirdness, in which I threw ever-so-many identities on my body to cover the naked rawness of my unraveling. I tried to white-knuckle my way to coherence, while falling further into disorientation and exhibiting behaviors that made me unrecognizable to anyone. In the end, I lost my light, my marbles, and my bearings in the upside-down doing and undoing of all the someones I’ve been trying to be and all the things I’ve been trying to do. It was destabilizing, nauseating, hard to watch, and worse to feel.
In the next few paragraphs, I answer the question “How are you doing?” by telling the truth about the doings and undoings—all 1 through 1000 . . .
»» 1 through 150 — LOST
I’ve been lost. I’ve been totally in my head and out of my mind. I’ve been confusing and weird. I’ve been fawning and desperate. I’ve been naïve and hyper-aware. I’ve been unpredictable and insane. I’ve been all-in, then overnight, over-and-out. I’ve been absent and needful. I’ve been manic and bewildered. I’ve been attention-seeking and self-conscious. I’ve been impenetrable and fragile. I’ve been frantic and activated. I’ve been detoxing and denying. I’ve been unreliable and unreachable. I’ve been everywhere and nowhere. I’ve been lost.
»» 151 through 351 — SOMEONE ELSE
I’ve been someone else. I’ve seen myself in a hundred women and been a hundred more. I took their personalities; I wore their clothes; I launched their businesses; I told their stories; I wrote their content; I quit their jobs. I made their mistakes and fixed them; I wrote their poems and burned them; I painted their paintings and hated them. I moved into their homes and became their preferences. I moved into their hearts and became their desires. I moved into their sleep and became their dreams. I sat on their couches, in their favorite outfits, and worked as hard as a girl can work creating a beautiful world for their beautiful dreams. And when the world was finished, I moved out. When the perfect life I designed went up, I broke down. I d i s i n t e g r a t e d. I was nothing more than salt and ash on hard wood floors, and then . . . I was someone else.
»» 352 through 500 — WASTED
I’ve wasted myself. I’ve dressed myself pricey and sold myself for free. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on things I don’t like, don’t want, and don’t need. I’ve spent thousands of hours working on nothing. I’ve put out cheap art, cheap words, and cheap thoughts. I’ve made and sold work I don’t care for and would never buy. I’ve served my failures liberally and kept the good stuff to myself. I’ve consumed everything offered to me without regard to my body and with no appetite. I’ve gorged myself to fit into outfits that were too big and starved myself to fit into outfits that were too small. I’m in the worst athletic shape I’ve been in for years and I’ve lost weight. I’ve made myself sick. I’ve neglected my body. I’ve neglected my mind, heart, spirit, and soul. I’ve wasted more than just time and energy and money and relationships and credibility. I’ve wasted myself.
»» 501 through 625 — AWFUL
I’ve been awful. I’ve been withdrawn and resentful. I’ve been sullen and performative. I’ve been irritable with others and cruel to myself. I’ve been distant to the ones that love me and present for the ones that don’t. I’ve discovered emotions that weren’t supposed to be on my “Feelings Wheel” and punished myself for feeling them. I’ve blamed places as the problem when it was somewhere I just didn’t belong. I’ve blamed people for disappointing when they were only beautiful and brilliant and perfect, I just wasn’t theirs and they weren’t mine. I’ve hurt my favorite people and been violent to myself. I’ve cried for help and gone to ground. I’ve broken my own heart, and since I did it to myself, I’ve been compassionless and pretended everything’s fine. I’ve been awful.
»» 626 through 1000 — FIXING
I’ve been fixing. I’ve been fixing by shape-shifting, selling myself, and spending all my earnings on alternate shapes. I’ve been grabbing and throwing “fixes” into my life like a frenzied game-show contestant with a 1,000 dollar budget, a 3-minute timer, and a cart. I’ve been fixing problems I keep creating, and creating problems faster than I can fix them. I’ve been fixing with endless answers and zero questions. I’ve been fixing, not listening. Fixing, not hearing. Fixing, not seeing. Fixing, not waiting. Fixing, not healing. Fixing, not stopping. I’ve been fixing.
»»» 1000 through . . .
A few months ago, I crashed out—hard. I sent a text to a few of my sisters, basically saying “I’m done.” They could, of course, see the wheels coming off the carnival wagon from miles away. No one could name the problem within the problem, but the immediate solution was obvious: I had to stop.
So I stopped. I withdrew from social media. I stopped taking new clients. I cancelled all non-essential meetings. I withdrew from all planned events. I stopped recording my podcast. I put my phone on DND. I trashed my planner with nine months left. I deleted a bunch of content. I unpublished my book. I posted half-baked essays about what I thought was going on. I stopped listening to podcasts and reading Substacks (even the good ones). I stopped taking advice from anyone (even the loved ones). I got out of my office. I got out of town. I watched a lot of soccer. I spent time with family. I sat on the back porch and talked to my husband. I snuggled the pups. I baked cinnamon rolls. I stopped.
Several weeks went by like this. The raw skin from my last undoing started healing over. My headspace became less assaultive and the silence, a bit more friendly. I started to feel somewhat rested, maybe even regulated. But after about a month of this semi-forced stoppage, I just wanted to be done with it already! and get back to work! The problem was, I couldn’t.
What “work” was I going back to?
My husband and I have been married for 22 years and last year we started couples’ therapy for the first time. During our weekly sessions, our therapist will often ask me to articulate my “wants” and “needs.” And almost every time, it’s the same. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want or need. I could tell you what others want and need, but for my own, it’s mostly just blank space.
After one of our therapy sessions during the first stoppage, I pulled out a paper journal and wrote some questions down.
What’s the problem beneath the problem? What’s the question within the question? Who’s the real me under all the others? What’s the pattern within the pattern? What’s the thing behind the thing?
I held my pen to paper, waiting for answers . . . but nothing came. More blank space. How am I supposed to answer these questions, I thought, if I don’t even know what I like or want or need? It felt ridiculous in the moment, but I decided to write those questions down.
What do I like? What do I want? What do I need?
Again I waited. . . . . . . Nothing! Blank ___________ space.
I wanted to trash my office and pull out my eyelashes, but I instead I made a double batch of brioche and ate bread for three straight days.
On a roadtrip later that week, the answers came.
They didn’t come to me like an epiphany or by any conscious effort to solve the riddle of like, want, need while driving. I was just thinking my thoughts, and they were just there—in me, as me.
What do I like? I like writing.
What do I want? I want to be a writer.
What do I need? I need to write.
I instantly recognized these answers as my own—like the way my real laugh sounds or like my eyes are blue. Simple, sacred, immutably true. They’re my true north—the gravity of my home planet—so when I finally found them along the North Carolina highway, I felt my world shift back to center. I was no longer sideways, bent, disordered. I was home.
About a week later, I started this Substack. And I wish this story ended here, but it doesn’t. Not quite.
Almost immediately, I started doing. I started filling my time with research, content planning, and to-do lists. I filled the sacred silence with uninspired questions about how this whole Substack thing works and how to be successful. My heart remained oriented to my true north, but my work started bending toward the wrong subjects—What do they like? What do they want? What do they need? I wrote and published a batch of essays with an 80/20 split of Me/NotMe—which is an ideal ratio for making a burger, but not for remaking a life. It was the pattern within the pattern: I was diluting myself, I was deluding myself, I had fallen off the wagon again, and I was selling myself out.
This relapse was short-lived. Before I even realized how compromised I had become, I crashed all the way out a second time. My fitness for duty clearance was premature; I had to stop again.
I write this now from my second forced stoppage in as many months. I think the shit-show is over, but the undoing isn’t done. There are still remnants of the last two years left in me—the leftover likes, wants, and needs of others—and I need to let them all go.
I’m exhausted, but it’s time.
It’s time to pull my shoulders back and lift my eyeballs from the screen. It’s time to stand and stretch. It’s time to clean out my closet, eat a good meal, and go outside. It’s time to drop nine bags of carnival clothes at goodwill. It’s time to paint something and waste my own time.
It’s time to listen, for real this time. It’s time to meet myself, for real this time. It’s time to let it all fall away, for real this time.
It’s time to let everything that doesn’t belong to me unravel all the way down. It’s time to let every someone else crumble to salt and ash and remain on the ground. It’s time to end the cycle of doing and undoing, doing and undoing, doing and undoing—and let myself become completely undone. It’s time to accept the undoing as one of the greatest gifts I could give myself in this lifetime. So I do.
So I say to the real me that is in me—Let go, love.
Let it all undo, unravel, and unbecome. Let it all fall apart. I know it hurts to come undone, but what is not you will die and what is you will stay. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’ll be okay. So again, I say—let go. It’s time; let the undoing come . . .
Come undone, my love. Come undone.
Indeed, the Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself; and the agony of the Artist, far from being the result of the world’s failure to discover and appreciate him, arises from his own personal struggle to discover, to appreciate, and finally to express himself.
—E.E. Cummings1
I get a feeling of magma rising through 10,000 years of layered strata. Pyroclastic flows scour old lands. Fire-flecked plumes puncture the sky. New lands rise from the sea.
Beth, I see so much of myself in your writing. Kindred achiever spirits in search of something else. I keep writing down that I want to be loved just for being…not for doing. I’m with you.