just to be where you are

February 8, 2022

Throughout my life I was frustrated by how irritable and off I consistently felt. I was working hard to be the person I wanted to be and it never quite worked. I would get what I wanted, what I thought would make me happy, and I would feel empty. In fact, getting what I wanted made me even further from happiness. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.

That was exactly the problem. I fundamentally believed something was wrong with me. Because something was wrong with me:

I didn’t trust my gut

I didn’t follow my desire

I believed people’s words over my feelings

I didn’t trust other people, especially if their opinion of me was positive. That person clearly hadn’t yet seen what was wrong with me. When they did they would leave. I could never figure out exactly what "it" was, but my entire personality was formed around hiding it, fighting it and, futilely, trying to fix it.

Over the past few years I learned a lot that changed things:

I could be me & people would love me

I could be flawed & people would still love me

Other people were flawed & they, too, were lovable

I could feel my feelings & they wouldn’t be too much

I wasn’t too much

I wasn’t too much anymore because I learned to trust myself when something felt off and give the relationship room to breathe. I could give myself and other people the space they needed because, unlike before, I didn’t need a person to make me feel safe or accepted. I loved and accepted myself.

With the help of amazing, patient friends, psychedelics, Ram Das lectures, and a good therapist whose wise words took years to integrate, I realized I wasn’t who I thought I was. When I didn’t feel loved or good enough as a child, I imagined a person who was lovable and I leaned into that image. When the compromises I was making were too severe or a desire was too strong to suppress, myself would reach out of the darkness and grab the wheel of my consciousness. Otherwise, I kept her hidden as much as I could. After all, she was the one who was different, unloveable. My repeated failed attempts at finding the formula for happiness, how miserable I felt in my carefully crafted life, didn’t wake me up to the flaw in my plan. In fact, it only affirmed my theory even more.

Any action that is rooted in trauma will create the very outcome it is designed to avoid. I felt miserable in my life because it wasn’t the life I was meant to be leading. Grief cracked the shell of who I thought I was and I was spilled into the unknown. How awkward in my mid 30’s to admit I didn’t know who I was, what I liked to eat, how to get dressed, or how to spend my time.

It was humbling to be so lost in my own skin. Despite the overarching atmosphere of depression, this emptiness honestly wasn’t much worse than my functioning and outwardly desirable life. None of my habits, old checklists, or logical strategies of making decisions applied anymore. The only thing left was my internal compass.

Feels good? Move towards it.

Feels bad? Move away.

Feel nothing? Stay put for now.

And that was it.

Following my feelings, trusting myself, this was all new for me, but once I got some momentum I was hooked. I was absolutely fascinated by the creature emerging before me. God made her perfectly, without a single flaw. Society may disagree, certian people certainly will, but no one knows what each of our roles is in the bigger picture. It definitely isn’t to die and have everyone think “I didn't know her well, but she seemed nice” or “wow, she did a great job following all the rules.”

For me the purpose of life is to keep turning inward and uncovering myself in each moment, in each decision. The purpose of this life is to lean into the joy as well as the pain of being human. It’s come back from the other side and share about the journey in the hopes it may speed and ease someone else’s. That is part of why I wanted to start sharing my writing, why I wanted to write about the things I’m ashamed of.

Because I had the chance to feel grounded in a sense of myself, of peace, of safety, I know when I lose it. For the first time in my life I know what feels good for me. It’s easier to take care of myself without guilt or compromise because nothing is more important than keeping myself feeling good. Without my baseline, I'm useless to others and a detriment to the world. This doesn’t mean I avoid discomfort or the many unfun tasks of adult life and relationships, but that when my equilibrium is deeply thrown off, I can look at my environment, not the core of who I am, to figure out why.

The more I let myself be myself, the more I liked myself. The more I knew and liked myself the less I needed to hide from other people. The more comfortable I felt, the more I liked other people

The more compassionate I was with myself, the more empathy I had for others. The more grounded I was in my intentions, the less I needed to take things personally. The kinder I was to myself, the kinder I was to the world.

I was finally in the positive feedback loop I had been seeking for so long. Who I was didn’t need to change, but my external circumstances, especially the ones in which I didn’t feel free to speak my truth or where I found I started behaving badly. If I’m acting out of alignment with who I am when I feel good, it’s because the situation is wrong for me. This whole time I actually wasn’t doing anything wrong other than staying where I didn't belong.

Moving through the world with my inner compass as a guide has led me to some unexpected places. I have picked up new dreams, identities, loved ones and no sooner been asked to put them down. I have made choices that made no sense to me at the time, but I trusted that they would someday and they did. I have cherished chapters and relationships and been told it's time to let them go. While letting go hurt, nothing is more important than my relationship with myself.

My whole life I tried and tried and tried to contort myself into an identity that would feel good. The answer was simple, but not easy, and in the last place I looked for it. What finally felt good, what made my life work, was to just be me. To actually be me. To push through the antisocial and counterintuitive and incredibly awkward barriers to being me. When I stood still in my own shoes, I finally got it. The fastest way to get where you are going is just to be where you are. After searching the world over, I have finally come home.