For Cherry Muhanji - a true, ride and live friend, who loves me, just because. "When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier."
― Diane Von Furstenberg
One day my good friend said to me, "Well, of the men you have dated, they were all very nice, good people, truly. But none of them were fit to touch the hem of your garments." I stood stunned and frozen and looked off in the distance. "Wha-a-a-t?" I stuttered. What do you mean?" While I did not immediately understand her context nor meaning, I felt the weight in her words in that moment, in what she was saying to me. Whether she knew it or not, she was affirming for me what I could not affirm for myself, my value as a woman, as a being, as a soul.
That statement has sat with me for years, hanging out in the recesses of my consciousness, playing hopscotch with my mind at times, and at others, like the school bully, egging on fights that manifested in troublesome or problematic relationships. What those were is for another time. While I was initially startled by her declaration, then, I could not accept into my reality the possibility that what she said could've been true. There were too many messages I had received in earlier years which warred in my consciousness, ready to do battle with anything like life-giving and affirming real talk. While I never let go or forgot, I merely pushed the words to the back room in my consciousness, wanting to believe, and afraid to let go of the possibility that there could be truth in them.
Doing the work of personal transformation meant that I would eventually meet those words with real understanding. I would reach a time in my life where I would have to confront them, and myself.
That time is now.
Recent experiences have shone a light on my glaring sense of unpreparedness for that which I seemed to be seeking most of my life, and which I have learned, finally, I can only give to myself. Like most of us, I yearn to be loved, to be seen, to be valued, to be appreciated, to be desired. In fact, I do not personally know anyone who does not want these things.
"One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself."
― Shannon L. Alder
I have had to ask myself what would make me feel so desperate that I would deny myself in the name of love? What could cause me to feel like I would die if I could not have the certain someone of my heart, that I would reject myself? These are the questions always hanging in the background, and with which I came face-to-face recently.
There is that within me which is wounded from being rejected, abandoned and denied, first and early, by those responsible for my well-being, and then picked up by me to carry all the rest of my life. Carrying a sense of unworthiness with me, I met each potential love-ship with a deficit that I had no conscious awareness of. It was playing out in the background and sabotaging me with the artfulness of an Aikido master.
I know that many of us are in this place, and have moved through the world, some with seeming confidence and capability, others imprisoned and unable to move. And I know by now that most of us know that we are to love ourselves. It has become a kind of platitude in contemporary times. I know how important it is to love oneself, like most of us know it - in the mental sense. But living it, that is something else.
"You can be the most beautiful person in the world and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you, but if you yourself don't know it, all of that doesn't even matter. Every second that you spend on doubting your worth, every moment that you use to criticize yourself; is a second of your life wasted, is a moment of your life thrown away. It's not like you have forever, so don't waste any of your seconds, don't throw even one of your moments away."
― C. JoyBell C.
But I am confessing, this moment, that I can no longer mask my pain. I am at a special moment of transition in my life where I choose to risk the chance that I will not have on the outer what I must have on the inner of me, which is self-respect, self-value, self-worth, self-confidence, and most importantly, self-love.
I get it, now. I get it. To continue to ignore the hole in my soul will kill me. It will doom me to living whatever life is ahead of me in mediocrity, unfulfilled, and in sorrow. I cannot do this another day. Not one more day.
As I blot out, finally, the messages I received and have carried, and replace them with the concrete action of love, I change my life.
I am compelled to do this. And I will do it.
Watch me.
© 2018. Egyirba High. All Rights Reserved.
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