It’s complicated.
So, my therapist gave me an exercise. Surprise, surprise.
{I NEVER want to do these.. but they do tend to get me together}
She said this one is about figuring out how to love yourself or something like that. Can I just say that I already hate it? It is just too much. Like, just pass me my phone so I can scroll the socials and pretend like I have it all figured out.
But alas, I don’t. So here we are.
{Trying to figure it all out, yet again...}
Okay, so, the e-mail says:
“Find yourself at ease.Look in the mirror.Take a deep breath.Look into your eyes...”{Chile, she CANNOT be serious}
“...And just be.As your eyes fall upon the frame of your face, reflect.Think about how you love yourself.Ask yourself what loving you feels like to you...”Loving me? Whew, now that is complicated.
/My eyes meet themselves in the mirror/
{Chile, sooo complicated}
What version of me is she even talking about? The “me” I present? The one who the people outside of me get?
The package. The polish.
The put-together version of me, that fits into spaces only how she is supposed to be - seemingly content, a joy to be around, never lost, always found, always right on time, the one no one seems to mind, who never seems to mind, always there, always ready.
Or, does she mean the other me? The one I resent?
The one on the inside.
The one whose voice is never quiet. Instead, a nagging whisper, that’s always loud, that second-guesses everything, that explains away every joy and justifies the pain, persistent,ho lding tight to falling short, never measuring up, to them, or to me.
The undeveloped one. The nuisance. The aching disappointment.
The one I can never admit is there.
{Oooh Chile, this is getting deep}
I don’t even know where to start.
I don’t know how to peel back the layers, to look at me, to see me.
Sometimes I don’t even know how to be me. I just am.
This all just feels
too
hard.
I don’t know how to do this.
{Chile, foreal, I promise you, I do not WANT to do this}
...But my therapist did say that one thing about self-awareness. She said that self-awareness—no matter how messy and hard—is the root of growth. Evolution cannot happen until you truly understand yourself, until you see yourself where you really are...
no projections,
not where you want to be,
not what you long to see,
But what is.
Your truth.
{my truth? my. Truth. Tuh...that’s a whole ‘nother story}
My truth.
Sounds simple and dainty, but the truth is that the truth is everything but that.
It’s raw and unrefined, convoluted and rough, tucked in corners and hiding behind the blinds, jagged around the edges, crouched down somewhere deep in my mind.
Never wanting to be seen, to be heard.
Reluctant to be released because release means sort of a reveal, when you find out just how people really feel, and well, that means judgment, which could mean rejection instead of
acceptance.
And truth is, I crave the acceptance.
And, since that acceptance may never come, the truth is, it’s easier to just hang on to the
reluctance.
But I have to get past all that, and, I guess if I could ever get past all of that,
if it were possible to let that go,
if I had to explain it, you know what loving me is like,
I would think about its potential...
how it can be a formidable power majestically and softly, caressing every piece of me, making
me
feel whole.
feel seen.
feel enough.
And how at the same time...
That impenetrable force, it’s tearing me apart
The weight of it bearing down on me, too much to bear
ripping away at the core of my existence,
bit by bit,
affirming that pieces will always be missing,
that the puzzle will never be complete.
It’s like me loving me means cultivating complete beauty yet destroying me with divisive critique.
Its essence forever exists in this state of duality.
This push and pull:
Being everything and not being enough.
Being just what I need and the very thing that breaks me down.
Giving me the source of survival, thriving even, and taking it away...
just like that...
And yet, I still feel in my heart that loving me shouldn’t feel so hard.
It’s supposed to be easy, right?
Supposed to feel warm, like home.
A breeze.
A soft kiss.
An abundance of good. Of all things good.
And it does sometimes.
Sometimes it feels like everything that I did not know I needed, the only thing that can gather me, that can guide me, holding me together, like God Himself is whispering to me, blessing me with the wisdom of the ancestors, crafting me and all of my competing identities, preparing them all to collectively face the uglies of the outside.
But then, just like that...
just like that, it flips, almost immediately, infusing boulder-like weights of outside’s ugliness, inside of me. Pulling them within the inner depths of my soul, wailing and wallowing.
Festering.
Parasitic nature crawling amongst my hopes and dreams, crushing their potential, settling somewhere between an abyss of hopelessness, alone and lonely, and the struggle of ambitions unattained, never to be reached, dangling like a manifestation of failure, a reminder of my
insufficiency,
my incapacity.
{Whew, Chile}
I just feel like loving me isn’t supposed to go like this.
You know, it’s supposed to remind me of the good things,
THE goodness,
my goodness.
Like, like my mother’s warm embrace, forever comforting and familiar.
Forever present, in the best way.
How is something so essential to my alignment of purpose also the basis of such deeply rooted betrayal? How can the very space that fosters my greatness be the source of my downfall?
just like that...?
/Deep Exhale/
It feels heavy...
{...Chile TOO heavy!}
The love. Unpacking it. The pride. Contrasting it with the fear. Its inner workings diametrically opposed to me landing somewhere safe.
/My head bows down, drooping eyes avoiding my own reflection/
Or maybe it’s not so complicated after all.
Maybe, it’s not the love that is complex.
Maybe, it’s just me.
Me, avoiding the acceptance of me, scared to give in, to submit to the imperfections and the works in progress, afraid to acknowledge that parts of me are to be continued, or waiting on their next season, stuck within the imbalance of understanding the complexity of who I am.
It leaves me teetering somewhere between the mishaps and the not quite yet to the permanence of never and just not going to make it, and I am left hanging...
Hanging.
just like that...
/Another Deep Exhale/
It’s got to be me.
It just can’t be love.
It cannot be love.
Love—its existence—is surrendering after all. It is not the source of the rage. That’s my failure to accept all pieces of me, the ones that are easy to love and the ones that may just need a little bit more finessing. Love is not my downfall, but my inspiration to see myself in its most beautiful power, and its most needy state, and know that both of those versions of me are me,
and
both of them are enough,
and
both of them are valid.
It’s giving into my divine purpose, knowing that the Creator created all of me, not just the flesh and bones that feel easy, but also the dark spots on my heart that seek glimmers of light and hands massaging them firmly into softness.
/My eyes gaze into themselves once again/
just like that...
I find my mind drifting.
Thinking about my dreams.
Thinking about my failures.
That inner voice: it is always so uplifting and condescending. Transparency and vulnerability
have never been easy for me. It seems like whenever I feel joy, insecurity is lurking around the
corner waiting to snatch it away from me.
and just like that...
It dawns on me that I deserve a little more.
A little more grace and understanding,
a little more acknowledgment of all that I am.
A little more of the good things.
I have already given myself enough of everything else.
I find myself whispering, “Girl, all of you is enough. It is always enough. Always has been.”
I am not sure if I heard me, not sure I know how to hear that kind of thing, but I said it anyway.
...My therapist did say that talking to yourself in positive affirmations is transformative...
{Okay, that was deep. Yeah, she know that she knows how to get me together}
