I either want to switch off and return to my habitual conformity, or be too loud, too persistent, too passionate and too insolently inquisitive, too me.
The journey to self-love is a difficult one. It’s one that shows you harsh and cruel truths, failing us to see our falsehoods, invalidating our experiences and tormenting us.
I’m currently in this convoluted mess of figuring myself out, which happens to occur every few years. This time I will not permit my anxieties to overpower my thoughts and turn them into something destructive.
I have come to terms with harsh criticism (not only from others but also myself), and the immutable feeling of not belonging. Maybe we don’t. As simple, unvarnished and brainless as that. We never have and never will belong, and maybe that’s affected most of us in cruel and unorthodox ways, gravitating in desperation towards all the wrong people, submitting ourselves to all our bad decisions and reaching for that tiny glimpse of hope in substances and self inflicted pain.
I’m aware and awake to my unbalanced emotional health – constantly venturing into depths of abandon yet clinging to that which is said to be fact, to only find out it is submerged with lies that we wish we could avoid – learning to accept the ways of the world with which I can clearly not comply – like the veracity that I’m living in a world where a certain degree of social conditioning is not only normal, but somewhat worshipped.
I want to be myself - unapologetically me, with fierceness and loyalty.
I want to stop apologising for the things I cannot understand and cannot change. I want to stop saying sorry for being too quiet, too loud, too emotional or too forgiving. Only recently did I connect these dots, catching the parallel lines running through what I have habitually said and what I have consistently felt about myself. My verbal apologies were merely surfaced manifestations of a deeper apology, an apology for being this not quite normal, not quite successful mess of a human, which leads me to make a positive change, in hopes of rewiring my thought patterns.
I want to apologise if I’m unintentionally rude to you, if I make you question your worth for even a split second, if I made you ever think you were unlovable or too difficult. I’ll apologise if I’m running late, if I forget your birthday or plans we’ve made. I want to apologise if I drink too much or make you worried about me. I’ll say sorry and mean it if I forget my please and thank you’s.
What I will not apologise for, is being myself. I wont apologise for my dreams, even if they lead me to an untraditional lifestyle that isn’t usually idolised. I wont apologise for not being able to think of anything worse than ordinary, for not wanting to fit that cookie cutter mould that we’ve conditioned. We create and perpetuate and sustain the society which encourages people to fit in it, then we enable a society that required approval, and in doing so we enable a society that calls for shame and guilt when that approval is not met.
I wont apologise for crying too much, for loving too much, for hurting too much, or asking to pat every single dog I see walk down the street.
I am tired of feeling like I am simultaneously too much and not enough. That I am too loud and too emotional, too sassy and too sarcastic. Not kind enough, not loving enough, not ambitious enough. And I’ve come to realize I’m not alone in this fear of being myself.
Let. It. Go.
We are always bound to be too much of something for somebody, too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. Don’t round out your edges – Especially for someone that, what? Doesn’t deserve your love in the first place? Or someone that still wont approve of the new, conditioned version of you? Someone that STILL tries and encourage you to stifle the brilliance that you are? Don’t let people into your life who manipulate you to feel that your existence is reason enough to apologise. Find that person that accepts and appreciates you for who you truly are, without conditions or restrictions. Love is being seen in your entirety without hearing “I wish you were different.” And the ones that love you? Well they will thrive off of your unsuppressed, uninhibited, totally liberated “you-ness”
I have been falling for much too long. My legs are too capable of standing to do it any longer, constantly distracting myself from my battles with the thrill of the peaks I would hopefully reach one day, and even though I am still yet to reach those peaks, even though I haven’t yet accomplished all the glory I once envisioned, I’m still trying, and it has lead me to this consequential wave of understanding. I may be broken, but I’m adapting. I may be weak, but I’m climbing anyway, and I’ll see you all at the top.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
easymacman:
I want to say the things that will make it all better but I don't know how to. I want to show you how amazing you truly are. You can always stand on my shoulders to reach the peaks. Being "too" much of something is only putting more trust on a strangers opinion of you than it deserves. It's ok to be loud, to be emotional, to be quiet, because it makes you who you are and please don't lose sight of that <3
freakme:
Meditation helps me to center in on my intuition