Now seeking: myself.
I’ve looked high and low, but most of all I’ve looked to find myself in everyone and everything else. Where I could fit, belong, thrive, enjoy life. I’ve looked in characters in books and movies and tried to emulate what they do, but nothing has ever seemed to fit.
That’s because I never looked to myself. I never even knew I could, that this was a thing, or that I had permission.
So many greats have paved the way for the self work I’m doing now. Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Jung, Nietzche, and then there was the women. The “mothers” who adopted me through the words they put out into the universe. A baby blanket. The arms I always needed.
Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, Anne Patchett, Sylvia Plath, Joan Anderson, Martha Beck, Brené Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach.
And my spiritual mother Elizabeth Gilbert. The woman whose daughter I could be for our many similarities. And oddly it’s innate and learned, even when our DNA isn’t shared. It makes me believe in the ephemeral in a way my science “can do” mind has never lent to.
If everything you need is always inside you it’s hard to figure out what to do with that when all the research suggests a feral child like me has so much less chance for thriving. It makes me wonder if my mother had even less than I did even with two parents in their traditional slots.
I’ve learned a lot this past few years about not romanticizing things at face value, that just because people have families doesn’t mean they have suffered any less.
I am learning now that suffering is a state of mind more than a state or circumstance regardless what one goes through. Because we all have our stuff. It’s not the hand, but how it’s played. And we will play it from what we know, until we know better. Oh I forgot the beautiful Maya Angelou above.
I have woven together a tapestry of love from fragments for as long as I can remember. And is there anything so wrong with that? Is there some better thing to strive for? Or did I have it right all the time.
“But you don’t know what it feels like to fall in love with you, you don’t know what it feels like when you can’t go back” plays on Ruelle radio that has also been a staple of this time in my life.
I was thinking about the things that mark each time period in our lives. The signature drink, the favorite outfit, the fears, the desires, the songs, the vehicle we drive, and the smiles mouths and body we share during that time, and how they change and once they do that time period is over.
Would life really be better with warning signals?
We don’t know when it will begin or end. Even if we work really hard to know these things, we don’t.
I’m in the mountains with beloved found family. Gifts from the universe. Good people. I find myself and lose myself amongst these experiences. We are all interconnected and yet we all have our own emotional experience, and those are colored by the things that have shaped our lives.
The closest we can get to connecting is bridging the gaps in understanding by sharing our feelings. We each do things our own way, but we still strive for togetherness because we understand that’s where the most meaning is found in living.
I love these guys. I love being here right now. It’s exactly what I need. When my mind threatens to take me somewhere else I bring it back and there is joy to be found.
There is no glory in staring at a door wishing that someone will walk through it. Someone asked me the other day if I ever let anyone surprise me, and it made me think. It called me to look back over my life.
I survived by creating fantasies in my mind of just that, someone surprising me with showing me they were thinking of me and would show up. So I turned myself into someone who could make others feel that way. I became what I was looking for. Because that’s what the mystical they says about how to manifest what you’re looking for. Become it.
I became the guy with the boom box in Say Anything. But the thing is I never counted that. It didn’t count because it was just me being that and unless someone showed up for me in that way, it never counted.
It’s a hard thing nearing 40 to realize you never really felt connected to yourself let alone anyone else. I thought I was, that’s the thing. I was doing the best I can and I did it with my whole heart.
There’s nothing wrong with that. But I missed so much about me. Who I am. What I need. I became an incredible tool to see others in the way I always wanted to be seen. But because I was so good at, and everyone is in such need of that, it never moved past that.
I thought they would recharge and then pick up and do that too. Not exactly like me at all, just the effort. And maybe I just couldn’t see their effort in their way. I need to work on that. I have lots I need to work on.
So here I am on the brink of 40 a blank slate, having my whole life before me rather than behind, and my God I’m grateful.
The tears began streaming as I’m writing this. I’m alive and I’m ok. And I didn’t even know that. I’ve been in survival mode my whole life and I’m grieving that. Everything that came with. Every way someone has seen the product of what I created to get through my life with, but not the whole thing.
Someday someone else will show up for the whole thing, no matter what, just like I do for them….
For now I will show up with more of my pieces in tact, the ones I’m tending to gently every day, reconnecting them to myself is a slow and painful process. It’s surgery. Much like therapy. Yet very few people understand and respect the seriousness of this work, because we all want to see things for the surface and believe you can work that and just manage.
Yet we have tired, ragged, masses, angry, hurting, sad, lost, starving emotionally. We insult the new generation who are trying to teach us to recover ourselves. We call them all manner of things. They are not tough because they acknowledge emotions or what they need.
A society of martyrs who cause horrendous damage insulting those who take responsibility for their own happiness. But that looks shameful in the face of tradition.
What’s shameful is the cruelty than can be afflicted when we are not aware of ourselves. To allow continued suffering because we are too afraid to face ourselves.
I am not a perfect mother, in fact I’ve made more mistakes than most. That’s where wisdom comes from.
I am looking forward to being connected to myself and those I love for the rest of my life. It’s taken me nearly 40 years to travel here. I respect myself for this journey. I’m too tired for anymore shame.
💜