no one

sometimes it doesn’t feel the way i want it to and i have to step back and look at why that is. not in the sense that everything has to feel good. (i didn’t say that was how i wanted it to feel). i think what i mean is that i sometimes don’t understand what is happening inside me and i have to take time to respond from a wise place rather than continuing to allow for that sense of chaos to take over and run wild in me. there’s a sense that has grown very strong in me that i belong to myself over the last year. i think i hear people talking about their experiences and i have noticed that i don’t need to make it about me anymore. like i don’t have this sense of needing to save anyone anymore.

i remember there was a point last year when i was still in kc and i kept saying over and over again. “no one is coming to get me” it was the saddest most despairing thing i had felt in a long time. “no one is coming to show me the way out” i think what was powerful in that statement was that the path to my liberation was buried in that statement. no one was coming to get me and no one was going to show me the way out in the sense that i was sitting in myself in the dark and was in a way of relating to myself that was dysfunctional. i was essentially looking to get away from my own heart because i didn’t think i was a person who had a unique, nuanced, complex, vibrant, riveting, expansive and very, very, silly story to explore. so yes, no one was coming to get me out of my own story. it’s true. i think the reality of where a person needs to move internally is different depending on the context that they have been existing from. for me, i had spent the last couple years doing heavy work on dismantling and thinking deeply about things like living a life that was valued and that people would speak about after my death in a way that i was at peace with.

for me the next part was to get the fuck into it. say yes. answer the call of life. no one is coming to get me because it’s all right here. it’s in here. my heart is wild. i think realizing that i no longer needed permission from other people to live in a way that was secure in myself while pursuing truer things (in general) and specifically choosing to live in a way that was honest, vulnerable and curious absolutely pushed me through that door. i think about the sense of loss and regret and anger and despairing aloneness i felt during that period of struggle. i think about how getting a long look at what my ways of relating to myself were producing in my lived experience and making a change that was risky and brave was a choice i made. What i couldn’t know at the time was that it would take me into a life that has been beautiful and has made me realize that being willing to risk a lot of what i have right now in service of finding realness in all the ways it is, is how i’m going to continue to exist in the world.

sure i lose some connections on the road, but honestly the ones i’m finding are the ones i want to keep. it turns out that if people can see you because you are letting them see you they can actually engage with who you really are. i’d lived in that small front room of myself with the light off waiting for someone to come rescue me. i prayed and cried and hoped and wished. the light entered at the place where i realized that no one was coming to get me because i was home. it was time to build a fire and put a record on start some tea and when i was ready, invite some people over to see what i’d done with the place. i do not regret it.