My eyes, colored green as the tears start to fall. Sadness, the emotion that has filled my body. The hurt of days past and fear of what is yet to come. Defeat has claimed me once again. My fingers, I can see them, feel them trembling as I think of all that could go wrong. The walls seem to be growing or I am falling short, either way, I am guarded. Afraid of what is on the other side for pain is what I am most familiar. I sit and stare, but I see nothing. The feeling, is empty. A familiar place, I have visited many times before. I am alone. Alone with my thoughts, with myself. The sorrow I have felt here before is renewed again. Uncertainty, the creator of fear, has emerged. Weak and broken, my mind is once again hers for the taking. She loves to explore. The maze she creates is her favorite of all, for there is her masterpiece. By night fall we are met with darkness once again. The emotion has retreated and I am left solely with my thoughts. They play so freely in the maze she has created, the loop, endless. She is me.
Self-awareness, what an odd thing for one to think about. I mean, we live with ourselves everyday. We should know who we are, how we feel and what we desire. That seems simple enough, right? One of the obstacles many face, myself included, is that we don’t trust ourselves. Either because we have made misguided judgments in the past or have steered ourselves in a direction not meant for us. Instead of taking those moments as lessons learned, we tend to berate ourselves until we are completely reliant on the voice of others. When we stop listening to ourselves we shut down over time. Our emotions become the enemy, our desires the trader and our body’s the liar. We stop feeling as a form of protection and we lock ourselves inside, throwing away the key. We build a cage around who we are so that we can live as others think we ought to be. In fearing ourselves and our abilities to be great, we become small.
For many of us, becoming smaller means not being seen. It means, not being heard. It means, fitting ourselves into a predesigned puzzle. So we pretend. We pretend that life is nothing but perfection. Our children are angels, our relationships are always happy and our life is as it should be. The trouble with pretending is that even when our minds betray us, fool us into believing the story it has concocted, our bodies and our hearts hold the truth. The emotions that we hold back become everything our body feels. When we are sad, but pretending to be happy, our bodies respond by feeling hurt. Our heart responds by feeling broken. The voice in our head screaming for freedom is silent no more.
There is freedom in loving yourself. Freedom in listening to your own voice. Freedom in seeing the world as you are and not as they are. Self-awareness is not learning who you are it’s about being who you are. At the end of every therapy session the conclusion and therefore the solution is always the same. I must live as I truly am and love her for all that she is. It is a battle I am constantly fighting, but the more I listen to the voice in my head the happier I become. She reminds me of who I am. She reminds me of all the love I hold inside. She reminds me that even in the darkest of times I have found light. She, is not afraid. She, does not play pretend. She, is not small.
