I don’t know how to start this and how to say everything I want and not have this be 15 pages. I’ve been gone from the brand for 6-7 months, don’t really know exactly how long its been.
I got physically sick. Not in a dramatic, sexy, tragic, lana del rey way—just in a slow, body-shutting-down, “I can’t do this anymore” kind of way. I’ve been feeling sick for around two years, but truly, body shutting down weekly sick, for around 5 months.
So for the past 6-7 months I have been staying at home. Barely working for the first time in 10 years?
These 6 months I have gone through it physically and mentally. I’ve been doing mindbody work. Read works by Nichole Sachs and Gabor Mate. Watched all seasons of Girls for like the 100th time. Watched youtube for like 8 hours a day (my recent favourite @HeavenSentHoney). Told chatgpt everything I’ve been thinking and asking is this normal to think this??. Felt calm for the first time like ever?! but here’s what followed the happy calm feeling:
I felt empty, aimless and grew not interested in running a brand, because I realised that this drive, this overachiever personality was all coping and escaping. and when i faced this, there was nothing left? It terrified me truly. Nobody told me that after the work, the brutal self honesty, all the emotional excavation, what comes is nothing? Its emptiness. Not even clarity, just emptiness. Everything that once kept me running, getting out of bed, is all gone in like a second? Productivity obsession - gone. The constant strive for validation, that shaped, it seems?! every decision - gone.
This stillness, this calm, this emptiness terrified me. I did not want to stay in it, but I had to stay because honestly I did not know what else to do outside of my home.
I am writing this today because the quiet today feels more calm—for the first time. i’m not afraid of it anymore. i don’t want to force it out. i’m actually... happy it’s here.
yes, i think i'm no longer motivated to achieve. but also i still don’t know how true that is.
because if the brand, the team, the studio—everything i’ve built—were to disappear today… would i still be okay in the void? in the stillness? or would the drive to achieve reappear? would i find myself needing to impress again, or just expressing would be enough?
is this calm only possible because of external safety? because i, for the first time in my life, have financial stability, and time, and space? because for the first time in my life i’m not in survival mode?
which parts of my personality are really mine… and which ones were just survival strategies? the drive, the discipline, the qualities people around seemed to respect me for. i don’t think they were me. i think they were survival??
even the love of beauty—i’ve asked myself if it was just another way to be perceived as close to perfect as possible? but right now, it feels like me. it’s not a mask, it’s now a ritual, in the morning and at night.
the emptiness feels like a blue circle if it was a shape and color. the sound is something continuous.
The quiet is heavy and light, both at the same time. comforting and uncomfortable. It is really really difficult for me to not try and make this into something productive in the external sense. I am trying my best to just stay in this still moment and not try to think of how it will influence my work. BUT ITS HARD. ITS HARD BECAUSE I AM EXCITED OF WHATS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. I’ve heard of people finding their voice through therapy but i never believed it or understood what they meant. I thought that you find your creative voice through exploring art, history, the world etc. I thought that if I know EVERYTHING about fashion, if I have every reference in my brain library, I will find my voice. But omg that was wrong?/????? I actually BEGIN finding my voice once I was forced to stay in my apartment for 6 months, when I was not looking at anything, besides health related stuff and literally laying in bed being numb? I have a tiny idea of what that voice will be about, here I will share it:
it will be honest,
it will be for girls,
it will be about girls,
it will be told and made by girls.
My new dream: I think I realised that fashion was never my calling (does that even exist), but rather just a tool?
my brand won’t be about technical skill, or silhouette, or modernity. it will be about honest girlhood. i don’t know how yet, but i’ll figure it out.
and I debated sharing this, before I knew EXACTLY what this new voice will be, what it will look like in a collection form. but this is an old thought pattern, so i am sharing this now before perfecting it into something tangible.
I might be needing a new routine, maybe routine will replace discipline for me? Its kind of similar, but maybe more relaxed? I do feel all over the place and like my mind is about to explode some days, I’ve been thinking about how David Foster Wallace* would say that he wears a bandana so that his brain doesn't explode. I immediately go into thinking of making this into some kind of hat? How strange is that. I try to turn a feeling into a product in my mind, this is messed up in the most uninteresting way?!!
*i tried reading his books, but sadly could not understand anything, but watched all his interviews a bunch of times, because I find him really attractive in the way he talks and thinks.
i’m resisting rest—true rest. rest that isn’t secretly productive. like ‘i will be more productive and creative after rest’
my brain wants this healing to become a thing, a story, a project, a product. i want it to be enough just for me. but i also want to share it.
how do i do both?
the overachiever wants to rush forward. she’s saying, “it’s been more than half a year. you need to come back. you’re going to lose everything.”
but i’m learning to respond with love. “this is fear talking. but i don’t live in fear anymore. this stillness has already given me more than ten years of overworking ever did.”
and also—wtf do you mean “half a year”???
it’s been twenty-nine years of the other thing. give a girl some time. before a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it becomes a disgusting soup of cells. that’s me now, i’m in the soup rn.
here is the first blog post omggggggg
xxxxxx Urte
