Fear and Freedom

I haven't written. Correction, I haven't published anything, because I write everyday. I started posts a million times, one about judgment, one about abandonment, one about love, one about running...I started them and while I completed the sentiment I left the posts unwritten. Nothing moved me until this moment, and even as I type I am unsure of what is going to arrive in only a few sentences into the future. I have really been present lately. I have been able to take in the moments as they are happening and appreciate them I was home last week and I remember being both in the room and over the room watching what was happening. I saw everyone but straight to the insides of them, their energy. I thought, "Wow...what if I stayed here? What if I lived here?" Then I left. straight back into my own body to continue living.

JW also made me realize something...I wrote to her: when you touch someone physically, you exchange energy and I guess I don't like hugging just anyone because they might leave and then I am left with pieces of them, and simultaneously me with them." I caught myself...they might leave. How much of what you do is based on this fear of abandonment?

I have been wondering lately, asking myself, "What part of you is left unhealed?" I am not sure where that question was born within me, but it has been here on the tip of my tongue...in the forefront of my thinking. Connection. How do you love fully if you live in fear that the things or people you love will leave? It becomes a desperate love. A love that shackles. It becomes some alternate form of love, like the bad Ariel that was really Ursula the sea witch in disguise. Or the Alice just behind the glass.

And I believe that my weight, my physical body began as a way to fill the void of loss and to perhaps even be a barrier between. But the thing is, I (the real inner, energetic me) is here to connect. And so I do it despite myself. When I made the decision to connect, I did. To two people who were already close to me, but in what felt like a different and more meaningful way.

I went back to read the post I wrote about meeting the Dalai Lama. The day I was caught up in the "things" and in the past and was unable to see the magnitude of my present. Then I think about that day in my grandmothers living room when I saw, fully, what was happening, who was present. In just over a year I am able to go back to this monumental day and now say, with a joyous weeping soul, Thank You.

Is there anything wrong with the girl who is alone? That is the big question I had to answer. Is she bad? Is she undesirable? Is she unattractive? Is she foul? I believed all of those things. The girl who was left was broken in some way, and when I was left, I became her. I had to reconcile not only my not being this being, but that girl not being any of the things I thought she was. We take patterns and we assign meaning to them. I had to give my patterns different meanings. Ones that did not mar my Self. Ones that did not leave me shackled. In short, I had to really love. Without condition, without pretense or precedence.

That meant not being afraid of failure. Not being afraid of judgment. Not being afraid of making mistakes, or not meeting expectations. Not being accepted, or praised. I had to become very much "okay" with being alone and still in love. And once I did I realized that I am never alone. I am connected to God. I am connected to those that love me, I am connected to those that don't. But it took all that. And now, I do believe I am ready to fly. To speak a little more freely, clearly, loudly. To love a little bit more openly, honestly, authentically. And to do both even when it terrifies me. Even when I feel the consequence will leave me alone, especially when it feels that way. Because it never does.

The thing I think I carry with me above all things is this notion that the ego is always conspiring for safety and the Self is always conspiring for freedom. Sometimes those things align, and sometimes those things repel. And when they repel, as they often can in love and in career or anything that requires risk, trust, faith...I want to lean into freedom and leave the issue of my safety to God.