I usually write blog posts after an idea has fully integrated for me. I wait to see what happens; I wait to see how I feel.
This evening, I’m inspired to write in real-time. I’m pulling this idea in, letting my body and my mind swirl into the vibration that it carries.
Maybe you can relate…I’ve grown up thinking that my natural way of being is incorrect.
I was “good in school”, but I hated it.
I loved learning, I loved words and reading and writing. I loved the infinite seeming worlds that math and science and language opened up to be explored.
I hated the rules and the busy work. I didn’t like doing something “just because”, when it obviously had no value. I didn’t like waking up early or being herded around with no power to choose for myself.
I couldn’t wait to get out, into the world. And once I got there, I was more free. Yet there were still so many rules, pointless work, and the herding of the masses.
I always wanted to dream. I liked to play outside alone, or way upstairs in a big closet with slanted walls. I would make up stories, I would write poems, I would animate every blade of grass or rock or insect that I found.
As I got older, I liked the freedom of skipping school and going to sit in nature. To walk around town feeling free and curious, eating whatever and whenever I wanted.
I just wanted peace and happiness. To smile, to play, to rest.
And life kept saying no.
No, there’s no time to rest it’s time for school. There’s no reason to smile, in a house full of sadness. There’s no one to play with and no rest in the constant mixture of violence and isolation.
And as I got older, there’s only time to work. To heal from the past. To get myself together.
I worked. I healed. I got myself together.
And I was lost.
I thought, I never got to play. To dream. To walk around and animate the trees and leaves and write poetry.
I was an expert at not being myself. I learned to live as an imposter, and I was an expert in my field.
One day, as I had the opportunity to start over, I tried to live as myself. To find the natural impulse of me, somewhere inside the imposter.
Beneath the duty bound, money bound, image bound shell there was a me that never changed. Could I find her?
Yes, easily. Everything we’re ever searching for is Right Here. Within our hearts. Never corrupted by life, never changed, always pure and steady.
I had an immense fear of Doing Nothing. That if I let myself, I would never do anything again. I would rot away on a couch, unmoving. And I would be nothing.
I thought, I can’t afford to let myself be myself. It’s too much of a risk.
I think I knew how different my natural rhythm was, to the one I had adopted through surviving life.
I forced myself to sit, without planning, or thinking about what I should do. I tried to relax and lean away from my conditioning.
Without my constant anxiety around being “productive”, what would I choose to do?
I spent several weeks investigating. Here are my findings:
I have intense anxiety around being myself, letting myself move naturally. It’s so overwhelming that it leads to all the unhealthy behaviors and low mental states that I’ve always struggled with.
My darkness stems from the discord between my natural self and the one created from surviving in society. It was as though I hated myself, but that was because I didn’t know myself. So it felt scary and foreign.
This was hard to go through, to feel the feelings and to bring in awareness so that I wasn’t lost inside of them.
[This is why mental health professionals exist. And don’t worry, I have one and I had one back then too.]
It was hard to feel how big the hatred and fear was inside of me, it felt humongous. No wonder I had been using everything I could to avoid myself. I wanted to avoid that truth. To avoid that hatred.
I’m thankful for the parts of me and that protected me from myself, until I was ready.
It’s taken me just over 2 years to accept myself. I’d say I’m 25% to full acceptance. That 25% feels like 1 million percent!
More findings:
I like to draw and to paint. But not for the “art” of it, for the expression. I found a big part of me that doesn’t like verbal expression. I would just swirl the paint brush or marker around, it felt like I was letting something out that was non-verbal.
I like sitting outside. I like playing with earthen material. Making pigments or texture mediums for my paintings with clay and eggshells etc.
I’m actually good at taking care of my needs. Listening to my natural impulses, it was easy to make and eat healthy food. I was easily moved to stretch and walk and sleep well.
I woke up early. I liked the quiet early morning hours to sit with the trees and pet my cat and just exist.
Some of my other findings are more private and I’d like to keep them for myself.
So it turns out, I wouldn’t just sit and rot. But I would move slower. I wouldn’t talk as much; I would express using other ways besides the intellect. I would easily take care of my body and my mind.
I had to fight through what felt like thick concrete walls of anxiety, fear, anger, and hatred to come to these findings!
All to find that who-I-really-am is, peaceful. Quiet, gentle, enjoying communing with nature and painting.
She’s not so scary or so foreign after all. But I couldn’t be “her” for so long. In my world that was violent and rushed and chaotic.
There was no place for gentle, quiet processes.
I had said to her, “I can’t use you. You’ll ruin us. We’ll sink like a leaky boat. There’s no place for peace, for slowness, no place for quiet.”
And maybe that’s why I hated her too, she threatened the shaky survival we had patched together.
In all the years of pushing her away, squelching who I really was, I accidentally made her my enemy.
I accidentally made myself my own enemy.
And now was the perfect time to clear things up.
One step at a time, patiently. A loving reintroduction of self. No threat to survival. Only an easy communion, a little bit at a time.
And now, over 2 years later, it’s time. Time to let myself deeply accept my natural self. Not to hate my gentle processes, but to trust that they are perfect.
Perfect because they’re mine, my natural ‘god’-given instincts and impulses.
And because they’re natural, and because they’re mine, they are supported by the universe-by life itself.
I feel like a fish, that learned to live on land. And I’m thankful for the wild skill-sets I’ve learned, out of the need to survive.
But like the fish, my natural self is supported in the water. The place where I breathe easy and move freely.
I never let myself go in the water for too long, always thinking I had to rush back to land. Land was where I could survive, because that’s what I learned.
Because I was born a fish, inside of a desert, and I adapted.
It feels the time now, to see what happens when I act like a fish.
What happens when I do things “my way”? Will life support me? [I know it will.]
Will I let myself be supported?
I’ll let you know.
🙂
With Love,
Heba ❤
Love: 