Here Today

It’s been an interesting last few weeks, months, years… lifetime.

I’ve been MIA. It wasn’t until recently I realized just how MIA I had really been… and for a really long time.

Recently, my life has flipped upside down. Maybe right-side up is a better way to put it. It’s a bittersweet truth that often the times the events we view as the most traumatic, as the most damaging, or the most life-changing, always end up being the most self-transformative.

For awhile.. I lived within a part of myself that existed to protect me. I have lived in this part of myself for many years. Not always - there are moments where I am truly here and nowadays it's more often than not - however, a majority of my daily existence in even my recent past was spent in a part of myself that was functioning on an old, faulty, system.

One night about a week into the move… I found a letter. The letter was from my father. I had read this letter before… for some reason though, it decided to find me that night in an old box of memorabilia I had moved to my office. I re-read this letter… and what I found was a realization of something so important to my state today and forever going forward.

In my mind while I was reading this letter, it was like I was observing a younger version of myself reading it. I could separate my ways of thinking now, versus my confusion and ways of thinking then. This letter...addressed from my father to a younger version of myself, gave me incredible insight into the inner workings in my own father’s mind. It gave me three perspectives : 1.) His mindset at the time, 2.) versus mine at the time, 3.) versus my mindset now.

It might not make any sense, but it makes sense to me. It makes sense to me like this:

I realized, that until that very moment - where I could separate the three different ways of thinking - I had still been living like I was in that mindset at that time.

Again, maybe that doesn’t make any sense to you, maybe you don’t get it in the way that I do, maybe you get it, but it’s in a different way that I get it, either way… It was a profound realization for me.

Building this house was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done in my life. Just like when my parents got divorced, or when I was fourteen and my dad and I weren’t getting along, or when I was sixteen and my mom and I weren’t getting along, or when I was eighteen and my dad took his own life.

I had been living and I still sometimes do live in a state of mind that leaves me in fear. Fear of loss… fear of rejection… fear of abandonment… fear of love. It all sounds so simple when you lay it out, but going through that… living in a state of mind in which you know something is wrong and want so badly to figure it out… yet not being able to put your finger on it… is a terrible feeling. As I said to my hairdresser today, “Hearing something and even saying you believe it, is significantly different than ACTUALLY making it a part of your core beliefs”

I believe she inclined to agree.

Another thing that kept me in that cage of confusion was my ability to drown myself in shame. I have lived surrounded by so much shame it has consumed me. Until recently, I don’t even think I truly knew WHAT shame actually felt like. I just knew, that most days, I had this intense, awful, feeling hanging over me constantly. Like... I am just sitting around spinning my wheels in my brain, searching for something. Like… I want something but don’t know what… or I know what I want but it seems impossible to achieve… or no, I don’t want to do that because I fear giving up and letting myself down… again… or I want this but this stands in my way, or this isn't right, or the timing's not right... a million excuses I let shame limit myself to.

These are all thoughts that stem from that feeling of shame. I was ashamed that I sometimes live in fear. I was ashamed that I feared not being enough or doing enough. I was ashamed that I feared failing and being ridiculed. Even if that seems irrational, it is the core belief… and it all stems from some event or situation in my life in which I also felt that way… and those parts of me made a home inside of me and never left. I realized this shame has been holding those parts back from ever truly healing.

That’s what I did that day I read that letter from my father. I let go of maybe just a little bit of what used to be everyday for me. I let go of things that no longer served me. Unfortunately for me and for everyone, the day I read that letter so many years ago… I let his words and his energy make an imprint so severe on mine that it left me stagnant. However, here today, so many years later… I read that letter much differently now…

Now I see. I see things a bit clearer. I feel a bit more connected. I am a bit more confident. I have a bit more courage. I am much more calm. I am bursting with creativity. I have found more compassion than I ever thought possible… and I am as curious as ever.

Here today, I am me.

I hope today, you are you -

Separate from the parts you had to create to survive.

Peace out,

Parallel Society