are you afraid of your shadow?

Láska balked as we walked down the fence line on the edge of the property at dusk. I let my eyes follow his ears to what caught his attention, assuming the neighbor’s cows were nearby. The only thing on the landscape was his shadow stretching out to the east as the sun set.

“That isn’t usually there” he seemed to say.

In certain light, our shadows are more noticeable. They are longest when the light is low. The shadow can be the entirety of the unconscious, or just the parts of ourselves that we don’t like to identify with. For me, my shadow is the things I tell myself I’m not, try not to be, don’t want to be, but still am. I know them when I see it in others and think, "how bad, how wrong, how unfortunate for them."

I feel ashamed of certain parts of myself, parts I don’t like or that other people don’t like, the parts I have deemed as ‘difficult.’ When I am ashamed of something, I want to hide it, but if I suppress a part of myself it goes underground and usually comes out eventually, just uglier, contorted, unconsciously. It slips out when my guard is down that usually holds it in, doing maximum damage in the limited time it has the wheel.

When working the 12 Steps I had the realization that my defects may not be what I thought they were. God made me as I am and just because other people find me difficult, often when I’m showing them a part of themselves they don’t want to see, doesn’t mean I’m imperfect. Maybe that is part of the way I was designed, part of the job I’m in this life to do. I remember the relief of that moment. “Maybe I’m perfect as I am, all of me, even the parts I don’t like.” That thought felt like laying down the sword in a lifelong battle with myself. If I trusted god to remove my defects, identifying them was above my pay grade. I was tasked to trust and to be.

This falls as the days have grown shorter I have invited my shadow into the light. I realize how often I say “no” to myself, how often I squelch a feeling, desire or impulse in the instant it arises. My identity says “that isn’t me” even as the truth of me seeps out around the finger attempting to plug it, pleading to be acknowledged.

Instead of being me, Allegra, honest and earnest, always well intentioned although sometimes heavy handed, I am all things. A body with aches and desire, sometimes for things it ’shouldn’t’ want. A wide range of emotions that pop up one after another, often contradicting themselves. I am the one who sets goals and the one who rebels against the plan laid to achieve them. The one who deeply desires closeness and the one picks the wrong people to trust or who finds excuses to leave.

This summer has shaken loose my attachment to being who I think I am and excluding the parts of my experience that don’t fit. I was the best ‘who I thought I was’ that I could be, and I wasn’t happy. In my truest moments, I am the observer, the one witnessing what arises, welcoming it all with curiosity then letting each brief chapter of feeling pass instead of attaching to that, too.

My job isn’t to be the Allegra I think I am, but to maintain that attitude of openness that says yes to the unexpected, god please yes. I have been so bored pretending to be static. Even if what comes doesn’t feel good or ‘reflect well on me.’ Exultantly, I have been too busy saying yes to the next thing to linger on worrying what people will think. And the beauty is that if you care deeply in a way that drives you to judgment or ridicule, that is your own shadow begging to be seen.