Own Your Truth: How To Express Your Needs When Every Part of You is Screaming [Not To]

Also known as ‘how to make a blog post as SEO-unfriendly as possible to ensure that no-one reads said [personal] expression’. #nuances

Also known as ‘how to make a blog post as SEO-unfriendly as possible to ensure that no-one reads said [personal] expression’. #nuances

… but anyway.

Things haven’t been easy.

Things haven’t been easy, because life isn’t easy. This is natural, normal, and even — dare I say it — ‘healthy’.

I am not in crisis; I can take care of myself; I am coping.

If I wasn’t, I would ask for help.

But, still, things haven’t been easy.

Like every other human being on this planet, I find it hard to be vulnerable.

Actually, that’s a lie. Let me rephrase:

Like every other human being on this planet, I find it hard to deal with being vulnerable.

I find it scary. I find it overwhelming. It threatens the stability of who and what I am — or present myself as. It threatens me.

Like every other human being on this planet, I am — or have the potential to be — my greatest asset and my biggest weakness.

As always, ‘it’s not what it is, but what it represents.’

Context is all.

Your, my, our vulnerability is not — and was never — ‘the problem’.

What matters is not what it is, nor its extremity, but how you deal with it.

Or don’t deal with it, rather.

How you deny it, disconnect from it, deflect it; how you pretend it doesn’t exist.

How, resolutely raw, human and misguided, you lie to yourself to free yourself — only to constrain yourself further.

I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve got the t-shirt.

I just don’t want to wear it anymore.

And so, I don’t.

It really is that simple.

Except, it isn’t; it’s f***ing terrifying.

It involves doing things that I’m not used to; things I’m not [yet] comfortable with. It necessitates me getting comfortable with myself —something that was, for so long, a completely alien concept.

I have to state myself. I have to ask for things. I have to learn to trust and to listen. I have to question status quo — actively, rather than passively. I have to be prepared for rejection and disappointment at every opportunity. I have to be strong when I just don’t want to be.

I have to be honest, and I hate it.

But it lets me feel.

It lets me live; it lets me love; it lets me smile — for real.

It has allowed me to find (or cultivate) a sense of purpose and meaning that I would never have believed was possible.

I have never been so vulnerable.

And yet, I have never felt so at peace.

Beyond fear lies freedom.

Thank God I took that leap.