What I thought I knew was always true. Why did I avoid myself?
It’s taken me a long time to understand who I am. Maybe I always knew, but I rejected myself. Maybe I was taught that the only way to survive was to be something other than who I am. Maybe I’ve learned now, that the only way to really live is to be authentically me.
Spectral Moon, 2013. Oil on hand-stretched canvas by Michelle Rose
I was an artist, I was altruistic, I was empathic, and I was happy. As a child I was lucky to not experience too much trauma. But the suffering I encountered was too subtle to be detected, and so it carried on much farther into my adult life than it should have. I was allowed to explore my many creative facets, but I was also expected to excel at everything I did, and to follow a strictly straight path.
As a teenager I wanted to rebel more but I was stuck. I was deeply entrenched in a programming, a coddling, a conditional love and a subsequent uncertainty that I could make it on my own. Although I had learned to entertain myself, to do things my way, and to expect no other emotional support, I felt a subconscious fear that straying too far would be my undoing. In fact, it was the opposite.
Staying tethered to my upbringing, and allowing that fear to limit the risks I took as adult kept me relatively safe, but also pushed me into dangerous territory in a subconscious effort to prove, one way or the other, spitefully, ruefully — that I was either suffering within imposed limits, or thriving despite them.
I couldn’t shake the things that made me me, but I tried to work within established boundaries, somehow unable to see the other side. The viewpoint from freedom, the perspective of possibility was illusory. I tried so many times to release myself, presuming I had reached autonomy, but my power was just out of reach. Always there, but never apparent. I was rewarded in some ways, but not truly satisfied with my work, or my life.
While I thought I had found my own agency, I had merely traded one set of chains for another. And that’s not to say that life in general does not have its ever-present, immutable chains—indeed, one must work to survive in this world — but I still have not been able to shake the beliefs that work can be fulfilling at the same time, and that we all have a unique set of talents that society not only rewards, but needs to function optimally.
Sometimes the very thing we need to push us into epiphany is a threat. So I tested the waters recently, and spent a period of time avoiding my true work entirely, giving of myself and earning a living, but knowing I could be doing more.
When I stopped pretending that I had everything I needed, that the edge of fulfillment was satisfying enough, I realized that I had not even gotten close. Moreover, in fooling myself into this belief, I had dug myself ever deeper into a dark hole. Yet even that hole appeared bright when it was the only thing I could see. It was only when I explored the depths further that I realized there was so much room above me that I’d been clouded from grasping.
The journey has not been easy, nor will it ever be, but somehow I’ve given myself the license to climb, to know that there is vast sky above me, to know that I can soar within it. What used to feel like risk I now understand to be a farce. The real risk is not scary at all. The real risk is daring to be me in a world that I once thought wouldn’t embrace me — but now I know it’s exactly where I belong.
It’s only scary because I was taught not to believe in myself. I was taught that I wasn’t welcome as I am, that being me was dangerous. But the more I practice self-trust, the more I become aware that I am everything I’m supposed to be, and the more I’m shown that the love is here within me, reflected back when I show the world who I am.
Ancestral Force Meets Heavenly Reverence, 2020. Oil on hand-stretched canvas by Michelle Rose
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Thank you for reading, I hope this entry helps stimulate your senses and look forward to the future.