Share Bear
I am not the girl who gets the guy. I am not the gal who wins the race. I have no amazing talents or skills. I am so basic and simple and raw sometimes that it freaks me out. To be so vulnerable and to go about the world exposed?! It’s like I forget my armor, whatever it may be, and don’t realize it for awhile and suddenly: POW! Someone will touch me or reach out to me or tell me something that is so new or refreshing or honest that I cannot help but stop and try to find my breath again. People can be so beautiful inside that it is nearly painful to be beside them. You see them bare their heart and soul and you want to worship them like deities!
Yet we all somehow manage to find ourselves in a rut, no matter our reality or status. How is it that we can take something so precious and blow it away like so many quarters on Jolly Ranchers (the sticks). Do we simply lose sight of what is right and wrong? Do we forget what it was we dreamed or wanted? Do we simply change so much that it all loses meaning anyway? Seems all I do is ask questions lately. Mostly of myself. And by mostly I mean almost constantly. I can squash my suspicions for only so long before the need for them to burst forth arrives. And then I must decide to live with some sort of faux reality or be stuck cleaning up the mess!
I get ahead of myself and forget where I came from. That I shouldn’t want or deserve such greatness. But that is the struggle. I am constantly torn. Nothing comes easily. Why should I ever expect it to? I’ve always felt unworthy. As long as I can remember! Unworthy and awkward and afraid to believe. That’s me in a nutshell, scarily. I never felt accepted because I was always waiting for the other foot to fall ( it always did). Nothing seems to last. So I work so hard at squeezing every last bit of goodness from every relationship I have. I scare friends away with “thoughtful” gifts far too soon after meeting them. I am so desperate to return favors even when it makes life worse for myself. What do you call that?
Deep down though, I always believed I was meant for something great. I just never could figure out what that was. All I could ever do was talk. I would get into so much trouble for talking and never understood what the problem was. It’s probably why silence is so painful for me. Whoa! That’s actually it, I think! Nice! Another breakthrough! Ha-ha! But what we want or expect of people changes, too. As we get comfortable and more predictable with one another, we can lose what made them so special to us to begin with. This also includes forgetting yourself, duh!
I hand over my power far too easily and far too quickly. I see it now. I don’t yet know how to stop this, but I am working very hard on it every second of the last four days. I’ve already faltered once, but I don’t plan to again. I hope. Sometimes I push myself too hard though and lose my way and get lost in my head. I get into these thought circles and turn shit into something it’s not or forget that it isn’t whatever that was before. Time has become trivial. It all moves so quickly and slowly all at once. Time wasn’t moving for me at all and now I can barely hang on! I try to stay humble, grateful, hopeful and learn what I can while I can.
What was stolen from me long ago was not my fault. It never was. I did what I had to in order to survive and I need to shed the stupid and pointless guilt and shame of that. Sharing my story doesn’t make some of that easier, but it does help to heal the wound itself. I have been here before. In another life. Another time. I always get the boobie prize. I take what’s behind door number three. I get what I’m given and I am not allowed to ask for more/better/substitutions. I give and I give and I am taken from. I am always making do. I muddle. I manage. I learn and regroup. Then somewhere along the way I get like amnesia or something? What? Oh yeah!
The first 8 days of this year made me feel like what I can only imagine it would feel like to live and breathe as an actual Care Bear. I have to find that cheer within myself and learn to stop seeking it elsewhere. It’s a hard habit to break. It began when I was four years old, I was taught to do so. (That is hard to admit, let alone read.) I lost my rhythm and beat. But I’m starting to hear it again and my feet won’t stop moving and you know my hips will never stop shakin’! I remember what it was to dream and to believe in something. I remember the electricity in the air! Despite the end result of that electricity twenty years ago, I still hold the memories dear. To be reminded of them so suddenly is a blessing in disguise.
No-one who writes a line like “People can be so beautiful inside that it is nearly painful to be beside them.” Can be viewed as blah. Bless you and your ambition, we only come here once (re-incarnation excepted!)
If we cannot be the truth of ourselves, if we are always in hiding waiting for permission that never comes, what’s the point?
We are all created for something great, that’s at least being the best version of ourselves we can be, from that who knows? It doesn’t matter how many “Groundhog days” as long as you keep enough faith with yourself somehow, to know what is and isn’t what you mean/t.
In a way the difficulty of being true to yourself shows how easy it is to lose touch and to re-gain it. Underneath the surface, most people are experiencing that to some degree, (or have done).
A lot of people’s bad, desperate behaviour-towards you-shows how much they miss that place too.
Wriggles: Wow. I am speechless. Thank you for your sweetness and kindness and for existing in the same world as me. =)
Wow. This is beautiful. Honest. Moving. And I find that I can relate so, so much. You do a wonderfully articulate job of expressing the sort of “bell curve” (attached to another bell curve, and another, and another)… of being not just a creative person– somebody with something inside of them waiting to come out, who has been told with varying degrees of severity that no one is interested in the expression or (by implication) the character who would be expressing it– but also a person who has lived through abuse.
Being both, myself, I can so very much relate to everything you have said here. The highs and lows (and the sometimes devastating/completely destabilizing swings between them), giving away power and reclaiming power, giving too much and retreating or losing (or both), the bouts of doubt followed by those “manic” periods of believing that one is worthy and capable of anything (though I think (or perhaps I hope) that this “mania” is actually closer to clear perception of things than the doubt ever is).
I wish that I had a “solution;” I wish that I could make you feel like a Care Bear all of the time. But really, I think you’ve found the solution (or as close as we’re gonna get): to keep speaking your truth, regardless of whether it is shiny or painful or high or low or everything mixed into one. It is enough to keep speaking.
As always, thank you for writing <3
L.V.Newc: Wow, thank you! You’re so sweet. This is all so new to me and I feel so swept up in the emotions of possibilities. Thank you for reading and for your kind words, always. <3
What do you mean, you’re “not the girl who gets the guy”? You got the guy! You’re a married lady! 🙂 I’ve been trying to find the right guy for over 20 years and haven’t found him yet. You’re kicking my butt on that score!