I will fully admit I was a mess yesterday when I lost everything I wrote. I mean I really lost it. I was a complete disaster all day. I had no idea when I started this that it would be so important to me. Putting my thoughts down on paper and sharing them would become vital to my mental and emotional health. It was an interesting turn of events. I felt “off” all day and on the verge of tears…all day. I did not have my "A" game (I hovered all day in the D- area), everyone irritated me and made me mad. It was if in losing my written thoughts, that I somehow lost a part of myself.
Weird. Really strange.
When did I become so important to me? I have always been self-centered. I have always had a completely unhealthy dose of self-disgust and hatred (usually centering on my stomach area and hair – I am sure you have your own places on your body – those are mine). What is new is this sense of self as being a vital part of me that I need. I do not think that I really thought much about how I show up for me before starting this blog. I did not honor my commitments to myself. I would start things and end them with a great rapidity.
Thinking about this now, gives me a great deal to ponder. I have always been someone who honors commitments (not 100% of the time but mostly), I show up at work even when ill or don’t feel like going at all, I do my household chores weekly and do not let things slide, I show up for parties and events that I promised my attendance to, I do the work that is required and put the time in. On the whole, I am the kind of person that shows up for my life as it relates to others but have been totally MIA when it comes to doing that for myself.
On the contrary, I do not (until more recently) honor my commitments to myself. I can’t tell you how many times I have started a blog or writing only to allow myself to become subsumed by my commitment and obligations to others. When ill, I do not eat well. In fact, when sick, I eat sugar. A lot of sugar. Not much else. I allow my own personal chores to fall by the way side (manicures, massages, hair appointments) all have been things that I have historically neglected as less than critical. I still do not have a exercise routine that I honor. I hike but not with commitment, not with heart. Yoga is a daily practice but something that I usually cut because I am running late and need to move the morning along. Mediation practice is something that I have done for decades but only recently refuse to cut for the clock’s sake.
It is so clear to me how much I have sacrificed me to the greater “you”, even when “you” didn’t even ask! I have become the person most likely in my own life to throw me under my own bus! What the actual fuck? How did I not see this? I am almost 50 (I know you are probably like – God, can’t wait until her actual birthday so she will shut up about it) and it has just become apparent to me that I am present much more for the lives of others than I have been for my own. Where did I get the message that I was supposed to live for others to the exclusion of myself?
I think I just started out feeling less than. Unworthy. I got the message at an early age that I had to work twice as hard to feel half as good. It was all ego and posturing. It was crap. When I began this journey and commitment to be authentic, I had only a vague idea about where I was going and what I would learn. I am so glad. I don’t know that I would have continued if I would have known how much I would have to uncover, discover and discard about myself. I am amazed now when I look back how long I tried to have my own life but failed. I could really only live my life in relation to others, self care, self commitment was something I could start but not honor.
So today I write and realize that it has become conscious living for me. I need it. I crave it and when forced to go without it, I feel unstable, shaky and not me. I never knew that when I started this that I would address myself in a manner that would demonstrate love, care and kindness. I had no idea. I am so very grateful for this path. I am grateful to be at the center (well maybe, off center) of my life today. I am not under the fucking bus anymore. In fact, I parked that fucker over to the side and now sneer at it for how long it kept mowing me down. I can laugh at how much I was my own instrument for first destruction, then construction and now salvation. Life is much more peaceful when I am not at war with me.
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