Tightly Wound Woman

Character “Nina Proudman” from the series “Offspring”

There’s this archetype I often see on television.

It goes something like, tightly wound white women, not quite a Karen, but definitely gripping for control.

She wants to be good. She’s well intentioned, even sweet sometimes. But her need to control her environment is neurotic, cringey, and annoying.

Everything about her is forced. Her motivations are completely external. Motivated by how she wants the world to view her.

She wants to come across as put together, centered, intelligent, and wise.

She knows exactly what everyone should be doing with their lives. She does know. She has all of the right answers. But clearly can’t embody them for herself. And because of that she she is critical and judgemental. This pattern has made her frigid and resentful.

To some, her obvious insecurity, and flakiness, is endearing. To me, it’s a persona. It isn’t real. It’s a shell. The real person being carefully hidden behind many layers of masks.

I know because I was her.

I didn’t start out this way. I was wild, authentic, too loud, too free. Once.

But then I decided it was time to grow up. It was time to mature. But because I didn’t know how too, I copied what I saw out there.

I wanted respect. I wanted to be good too. So I picked this archetype. I put on her pencil skirt, heels, and lip stick. Closed my mouth, and my legs, and transformed into something that was not me.

I voted, signed petitions, joined the PTA, shopped at the right stores, read the right books, watched the right shows, had the right thoughts, and the proper canned answers around important issues.

I have spent the better part of the last ten years unwinding what this chick did too me. I have spent almost as much time unraveling the junk she embedded under my skin as I did wearing her costume.

I think “mature”, you know “adulting”, is yet another tool meant to manipulate us into behaving. Another way to Shepard us into the proper pastures.

My husband was hit by a drunk driver who didn’t have insurance last week. He damaged our car. My husband was furious. But instead of taking it out on the basketball court, or screaming down at the beach, or finding a way to connect through the intensity, I watched him stuff all of his feelings deep inside him. I actually saw it while it was happening. Down the hatch. And when I inquired about what he was doing he said “I’m fine, I can handle it maturely”.

Only he can’t. It comes out later in distorted ways. People get sick like this. Is this why we have an epidemic of chronic illness? Cancer?

But I am probably partially responsible for this response. This bullshit about maturity has been a way that I can control my partner. I could police his responses like that. “Grow up! That’s not how a mature adult would handle the situation, you sound like a child.” My scolding probably made him feel shame for his authentic reactions to whatever was happening. And because I didn’t have the capacity to be with it, I used maturity to control him.

In becoming a sheep to maturity, I have also managed to harvest my own wool, betray my own self because “a grown up would never”….”Adults don’t act like that, don’t feel like that.” They don’t get angry like that, or sob uncontrollably like that. They. Don’t.

It’s heavy programming. Being Mature. Emotionally Mature. Pushing yourself into a mummy caste. Betraying your genuine feelings out of fear someone might think you can’t handle yourself.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I can reframe this for myself because maturity, real maturity is important. But real maturity knows faux maturity when it sees it.

So now I’m cultivating embodied wisdom. Channeled wisdom. Something that perhaps lives beyond language. A wisdom that comes up from the earth instead of down through my head. Something sourced from emptiness not frenetic shoulds. Something that allows me to stay connected to the real me while still being able to move with intentionality in the world. It’s a dance, finding this pole and then staying in relationship to it, moving with it. Being flexible enough to adapt when what was once true changes.