In Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, author Elizabeth Gilbert explains our emotions as being like passengers in a car. “There’s plenty of room in the vehicle of all of us,” she writes to her emotions, primarily to fear, “So make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are still part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.”
My emotional road trip is dominated by three “Casey’s”, the three versions of myself that take up the most mental space. I picture them together in a Jeep Wrangler, just like the one I drove in high school, with the top down and headed towards the beach.
In the driver’s seat is Casey Jane. She’s singing along with the radio, hair piled into a bun on the top of her head, wearing scratched up aviator Ray Bans and her favorite yellow shirt. She’s daydreaming, her favorite driving activity, letting her mind drift through the stories she’s writing, the books she’s read lately, memories and song lyrics. She’s present, experiencing the breeze on her skin, taking in the smells and the sights. She is me at my most balanced. She’s creative, curious, friendly and inviting.
Casey Jane is sweet, she enjoys life and life enjoys her. She takes deep breaths. She’s an optimist who believes in good and believes that she has something good to share with the world, which fuels her creative spirit. But she can also binge watch Friends for the fifteenth time and eat ice cream for every meal and not notice as time slips away from her.
The Casey in the passenger seat has her hair pulled back and her glasses on, typing furiously into her phone. My husband calls this Casey the Beast from the Southeast. In college, my friends called her Caserace. In a word, she’s the boss. She takes charge and gets shit done. She’s ruthless. She’s relentless. She’s impressive. She does things other people can’t and she knows it. Without looking up from her phone screen she barks out directions, because she’s always focused on where she’s going. She’s always moving, always chasing, never stopping.
The Beast from the Southeast is a badass. She’s fiercely loyal, driven, focused, and I love her determination but sometimes it scares me with how cold she can be. If she doesn’t care about you, you know it. And if she does care about you, sometimes you don’t know it. Sometimes she’s a showoff, because attention reaffirms her dominance, so she can be obnoxious. Her mind is always racing through the possibilities and worrying about what could happen if she slows down.
Most people don’t notice the girl in the backseat. She’s got her arms crossed and is staring out the window in stony silence, pouting. “Hmph,” she puffs occasionally just to remind people she exists. This is why we call her the “Hmphkin” (hah-rum-ph-kin) a term that perfectly describes this grumpy little gremlin who is easily annoyed and even more easily hurt. She’s always on the edge of either yelling or crying, so most people just don’t talk to her at all.
The hmphkin, God love her, is a fragile little shitshow, and while it’s easy to point out how she complains too much and can’t ever seem to find happiness, it’s harder to see how she is so full of empathy and desperately wants to both love and be loved. She is the small child that has to be protected, so she should never be in the driver’s seat, but from the backseat she is capable of seeing the world in a way that the adult versions of her simply can’t.
It’s not always easy to get these passengers to play nice: the Beast always wants to be the one in charge, and the other two don’t like to stand up to her; often when people are looking for Casey Jane, the hmphkin shows up in her place. I used to think of these pieces of myself as different hats I had to take off and put on, and sometimes that works. If I’m going into a difficult workout, I need that beast mentality. If I’m leading a yoga class, I let myself relax back into Casey Jane mode.
But other times the picture isn’t so clear, and it’s not easy to tell who should be driving. Even more often, the part of me that wants to get behind the wheel isn’t the right person at all. Getting into an argument can stimulate the same sensations as a challenging working, filling me with adrenaline, and the more bossy parts of me want to take charge, which usually escalates the fight and causes more drama than necessary. When I’m seeking my flow state through writing or hiking, my little hmphkin pops up to remind me of all of my insecurities and short comings, and I’m unable to concentrate and end up giving up on the task at hand.
It can feel exhausting, and confusing. It feels like different people have a completely different understanding of who I am based on which part of me they’ve seen the most, and I have always struggled to hold the disparate parts of myself in my hands, present them to people and say authentically “this is me.”
So lately I’ve been trying to reimagine my road trip. Instead of constantly pulling over to switch drivers, I’m trying to let each passenger participate in every conversation, and have a voice in the decisions that are made. I see what happens when these versions of myself are allowed to interact and collaborate instead of taking over. What happens when I can show up with both grace and determination? If I can recognize my own grumpiness, my own fears and voice them up front, how am I better able to deal with them and move on?
The road is still a bumpy one, but it’s reassuring to remember that there’s room for us all in the car, and that we’ll all get to the beach eventually, so we might as well enjoy the ride.