It's been a while...
...since I could hold my head up high...
...since I could say that I wasn't addicted...
...since I can say I love myself as well as...
I've realized something today, something I should have realized sooner, but I tend to be dense when the universe is trying to get through to me. Where was I?... I was at my friend's house, waiting for her to change, looking at things in her room, looked at myself in the mirror, and somehow it just hit me: Maybe people like me just for who I am.
It seems like a silly thing, something everyone should know, "be yourself" it's the most-used phrase in the book of happiness in life, love, relationships, success, etc. It's just that I never realized I had this fear: that "myself" was not good enough. That because I can be bossy or pushy at times, because I may sometimes seem arrogant, and at other times seem like a total ditz, that people may not like me. How I don't know everything, but desperately want to. How physically there are things about me that I hate and wish I could change, that I try to change repeatedly in different ways, only to have the same problems return, or else transform into something else. I have a fear that people see these things that I hate in myself, and also hate them. Wow...there it is...you've just witnessed a personal epiphany, folks.
Despite all of my many, many, countless flaws, I still have friends who love me dearly and who accept me with all of my imperfections. Hell, some of them even like me more because of some of those flaws! I've been getting the message of "acceptence" repeatedly lately. That the only way to change is to accept the way things are now. If you deny something you only feed energy into that very thing you are trying to get rid of, and even though it's negative energy, it's still energy, and it feeds the thing instead of overcoming it. It's the principle behind many martial arts, fighting something never works, you have to deflect the agressive negative energy away from you, and/or transform it to work for you.
I'm going through a period of intense change right now, and I know it's just the beginning. In 3 weeks I'm moving to Buffalo to live with a new boyfriend who is a very old friend. I am so excited and hopeful about this move, but the process right now is difficult and scary because there are certain new things I have to deal with, outside of the relationship, and I will not have time to completely deal with them on my own before I move to be with my boyfriend. So I will be bringing things to the table there that I am unsure of, and I don't know what effect that will have on the relationship itself.
Part of this change, part of the transfomation I am going through, as I have recently discovered, is learning to be myself, completely. I seem to have formed a strange habit for myself, of hiding. I've become afraid. The funny thing is that really is not part of who I truly am. It's like a virus I've picked up along the way...this fear. But maybe it's been there longer than I care to admit, because thinking back, I remember a similar fear from years ago. Being afraid, but for no reason I could pinpoint. I remember standing on the shore of our beach at night with an old boyfriend and asking him, "If most people fear the unknown, when you don't know what it is you fear, is that just fearing fear itself?" I don't think either of us really found a solid answer to that question, but I think when you don't know what you're afraid of, it's because you're afraid of knowing. If I know that I am afraid of people not liking me, that illuminates a weakness in myself. When you don't know what you fear, it's because you're afraid to admit that you fear at all. So yes, actually, I guess it is, just fearing fear itself. Look at that! Epiphany #2!
I've been trying so hard, too hard, my entire life to be somebody. To make a difference, to change the world. And all of my fits and starts have done nothing to that effect, at least nothing noticeable. That same boyfriend on the beach, (now dear friend) recently told me, in response to my questioning the seemingly-destined doom of any romantic relationship, "maybe you're just destined for greatness." I laughed at that, because I used to believe it, in my deepest of hearts, that I was, in fact, destined for greatness. But I've stopped thinking that after all my failed attempts. Now... well, I have accepted that I just do not know, and will not know, until the end. But at that point it will not matter. What's done is done. What I do now, well... I've decided I want to be happy. I do want to change the world. I do intend to, but perhaps in not so grand a scale as I had hoped, maybe it won't be until my next lifetime, maybe it will be too subtle to really matter at all. It's just that the way I have been living, recently, has not done much good for me or anyone around me, and I'm so very very tired of it. I've decided to let go of my old ideas on who I was or what my purpose is, and just live. I trust that through living deeply, my purpose will unfold, and my self will blossom.