I used to be afraid of my short comings. I didn’t know I was afraid of them. I had an elaborate system of hiding them from myself: they’re “no big deal”. Just don’t look over there (where they are) and all will be well.
Until a time came when I had to look, I wanted to look. To see all of myself, in sorrow and in ecstasy.
It’s terrifying and liberating to see your limitations, your addictions, the points at which you turn off your awareness and coast in that quiet, destructive place of non-awareness.
I found there everything I’d been hiding. I was hiding because I knew I couldn’t feign wellness in those areas, they were the areas where I was weak. They were the areas where I COULDN’T. No matter how hard I tried, I would collapse in the areas of my short comings. Most accurately, my ego would collapse. I could not hold on to doing the “right things” and since I couldn’t fully face doing the “wrong things” I would disappear from myself.
The first few times I stayed with myself as I was doing an unconscious activity, it was very uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable was trying to stop or shift the behavior while it was happening. I couldn’t. I could only observe, just barely. As the pull to remain “unconscious” was so strong. By unconscious I mean awake and operating, but “no one is home”.
I found I was doing this all the time. I knew I was an expert at dissociating, but I didn’t realize how often I wasn’t really present. It wasn’t just at times when I was stressed or overwhelmed, I had become accustomed to being only partially present consistently.
Reapplying consciousness (awakeness) to those moments shook up my entire life like a snow globe. I began to see my avoidance, my fear, my hatred of life and the present moment. I hated the present moment. “Anywhere but here.”
That’s what I found, sprinkled everywhere in my life. “Anywhere but here.” A fairly consistent, thin layer of hatred and avoidance overlaid with joy, over indulgence, distraction, and fantasy.
As I kept being with myself in as many moments as I could, I felt an anger quaking within me. Like the rumbles of an earthquake. The more I tried to be aware and present, the angrier I became.
Had I been angry all my life? I hated this anger. It was so inconvenient. It kept interrupting my persona. I needed to be nice and pleasant. I needed to pretend to enjoy my environment and what I was doing.
And here something beautiful started emerging. Why was I pretending? Why was I lying to myself? I discovered what I felt deep down, that I would never be happy. That my environment would always be uncomfortable. That the reality of being comfortable somewhere didn’t exist.
So everywhere I went, I quietly and internally prepared to be uncomfortable. I had been doing this for so long that I didn’t know I was doing it. I was constantly bracing myself, hiding myself because I had long ago concluded that the external world mostly sucked. The only safe and happy place was inside my own private world. So I became practiced in creating this part of me that could live in the outside world long enough to survive, until I could run back to myself in my solitude.
It’s strange to suddenly discover these operating systems you’re running, without realizing it. That there’s a whole quiet, emotional landscape reacting to the environment without your awareness.
I saw myself in the present moment in my relationships, in my work, in how I relate to food, body, and money. In those quiet moments where I don’t pay attention, where I was used to acting and thinking in the same ways. And I pressed pause and LOOKED.
I was feeling things I never acknowledged. Making judgment calls without awareness. Living in old, irrelevant patterns and reacting based on fear and avoidance.
The terror I felt shifted to absolute liberation. (A bone rattling shift.)
I loved this hateful, angry, fearful Me. She existed all along, I just never accepted it. I had no idea how to integrate these aspects of me. I didn’t know how to live with them and be successful and happy in ways I had come to understand success and happiness.
I had to accept that sometimes I wanted to destroy myself. That sometimes I couldn’t stop eating until all the food ran out. That I couldn’t shake myself into enough awareness to help myself, but that I could at least be with myself.
I had to accept that sometimes I would make terrible decisions for the chance to feel full and seen.
I had to accept that sometimes I would be absolutely powerless to help myself. And after the shame of that lifted, I felt such beautiful relief.
There is no love greater than being with yourself in the moments of your greatest shame and powerlessness and not shutting yourself out. Saying, ‘well, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I accept my ugly as much as my beautiful.’
That all the parts of you are colors with which you create the painting that is You, ever dynamic, flawed, and perfect in its spontaneous expression of Living.
It’s a blessing to experience life from this fullness of experience. To reclaim what was left behind long ago, and to understand yourself from a richer perspective.
“These are my limitations, bless them. This is where I fall, so let me rest here. This is where I Rise, watch me soar.”
Love: 