Sharp Knife Club
I’ve always been a sucker for an advice column. (Please, someone, tell me how to live!) This obsession started in college, when I remember finding Dan Savage’s love and sex advice column. Neither of those topics was at all relevant to my life at the time, but I read it religiously. For research.
In the aughts I found Ask Polly Esther, an existential advice column written by Heather Havrilesky. This was absolutely my jam. Polly would write amazing, ranty, tangential, and devastatingly on-point responses to her letter writers. One really stuck in my brain: the writer wanted to tell her boyfriend deep, important things about herself, and he would often get distracted and change the subject at a critical moment. This was frustrating and disappointing, and she wanted to know how to make him a better listener for her. (This framing, by the way, is something I now try to actively undo with people in therapy. It’s much easier and more satisfying to change ourselves than reshape the people around us. But that is a digression for another time.)
Polly responded by writing about the “smart women with lots to say who are also very sensitive and weird and analytical and incredibly talkative, who ALSO listen very closely. These women are often labeled ‘a little too intense.’ We think way too much, and slice and dice everything under the sun like a Ginsu knife that’s been sharpened one too many times and is now capable of cutting a watermelon in half like it’s made of crepe paper.”
Oof. This description landed HARD. I had spent my whole life trying to not let people see my sharp little edges. I kept all my slicing and dicing on the inside, having gotten the message early on that it was better to be soft and fuzzy, receptive to anything and everything, to be smooth and edgeless, without needs or intense feelings. But on the inside, I considered and analyzed everything, often at the cost of actually connecting with people. I loved moody poetry and music, spent a long time thinking about how I’d end up like the first Mrs. Rochester, and felt very, very alone.
Polly went on to talk about the reality that being a sharp knife means you need a champion listener as a partner: someone who can hold space for all the slicing and dicing, the dissection and analysis.
The first champion listener I found was my sister. After I watched her birth her first child, an incredible and humbling event, we grew close. Just close enough for me to catch a glimpse of her sharpness, and realize that we might be able to slice and dice together. Then I found a therapist, and started to appreciate just how much I’d been suppressing my true self. As I slowly began to share more with my family and friends, I’ve been able to let my sharp edges be seen and appreciated.
As soon as someone starts to share with me their fears that they’re too needy, they ask too much of people, they feel insecure about all the processing they want to do in a relationship, I tell them about (and then send a copy of) this column. Being a sharp knife has become a shorthand for me, to describe my deep and abiding passion for uncovering deeper layers within myself and within my relationships, my wanting to understand why I am the way I am, why others are the way they are, and why we impact each other in the way that we do. I’m really grateful to have many sharp knives in my life, because sharp knives also make champion listeners, and we all need to be heard.
When I started writing this, I went back and reread the original essay, and realized I had conflated this one and another column of Polly’s called “I’m 33 and single. What am I doing wrong?” When I read it, I was 34 and single and this one also hit close to home. She references being a sharp knife here too, in the context of not trying to hide that sharpness from potential suitors. She describes a guy in the letter writer’s life as a “bunny chaser” and points out that if he knew from the jump that the letter writer was a sharp knife, he probably wouldn’t be interested— and neither should she be. Sharp knives need champion listeners and steady drawers; bunny chasers are nice but will not give us what we need. Her advice is not to try and entice somebody looking for a bunny, when we know perfectly well that we are not fluffy bunnies. (To be clear: I love bunnies. They’re adorable. I’m just not one, most of the time.)
Polly: “They just don’t get it. They aren’t for you. Walk away. You have worlds inside you — swirling, colorful, mournful, generous, soaring, hopeful, searing, heartbreaking worlds. You cannot offer just a tiny slice of you. You cannot hold back the flood. You want to share those worlds. You are way too big, too complicated, too glorious and infinitely sad and unspeakably divine. You have to share all of it. Find someone worthy of all of it. Find someone who wants ALL OF IT.”
In the last 10 years, I’ve really worked hard to undo all the cultural conditioning that tells me I need to be a fluffy bunny when I am most certainly a sharp fucking knife. It’s been difficult and also the most worthwhile work I’ve done. In January of this year, I drove to St. Augustine and got a chef’s knife surrounded by mountain laurel (the flower I am named for) tattooed on my forearm. When I sent a photo to a friend, she said, “that’s a ‘go for it’ move.” It is indeed. When people ask me what the tattoo means, my single-line explanation has been that it’s about not sacrificing authenticity for belonging.
In the first days after I got the tattoo, despite it being covered up by my clothes (it was January, after all, even in Florida), there were a few conversations I had with people in my life where I could feel the image burning on my forearm. It was like the art there knew I was in a pivotal moment, where I could pretend to be a soft, fluffy, gentle bunny, or I could reveal the truth about what, and how much, I truly needed. It has helped me remember my strength and clarity, and how important it is to be honest with myself and other people about who I am.
Talking about all of this with a mentor, she said, “the difference between a tool and a weapon is intention.” A knife can become a weapon, but it’s primarily an incredible tool. I use my metaphorical sharp knife to slice and dice in the greater service of discernment, awareness, integrity, and nourishment.
