The future is waiting...
Still. Can't move. Trying to take a step forward, any step, even a small one, forward. but nothing seems to be able to move, at all. Paralyzed with fear. Paralyzed with self-doubt, self-loathing even. questioning everything. How could I be so painfully jealous of my best friend? How could I not experience joy and celebration for someone whom I love so much as he experiences things I myself have been praying for him to experience?
Just because I want to experience them, too. And there's some part running in me that thinks because he is, I won't. It's such an ugly part of myself. It's a part of myself I feel ashamed of. It's a part of myself that is screaming for care, for attention, for love.
I have a sneaking suspicion it's related to the part of myself that wanted so badly to retreat today. From everything. From everyone. I have a sneaking suspicion it's related to the part of myself that is terrified of any kind of change. The part of myself that questions every choice and every thought that crosses through my human brain at any given second. Why hasn't this happened? Why did that? My guess is it's the part of myself that shuts off creativity and talks me out of every risk I have ever wanted to take. The part of myself that is always, so, oh my god, so tired. I have a sneaking suspicion this is all what's at the bottom line of my jealousy and rage from today to begin with.
not taking the risks I so desperately want to take that may create the life I so desperately want to live.
Oh, had I not mentioned my rage? Oh yeah well, see, that's what happens when I over-commit and over socialize as I tend to so often do with all really great things and really wonderful people. Of course. This is what makes it so confusing and cunning. Because a lot of the time by saying yes to that which I genuinely want to do, and believe me 95% of the time I genuinely do, I am saying no to my commitment to that risk I am not taking. I am distracting myself from that life I want to be creating.
Now, I'm not saying I should lock myself up in a tower and plot and plan and lay out a perfectly concocted life. and then expect it to unfold exactly as I need it to and then be devastated and even more enraged when it doesn't. No, that would be stupid. Besides, I'm much more conscious than that. Aren't I? No of course I'm not saying that. But I am saying the future is created in the choices I am making now.
The future is waiting for me, and has been, diligently, for years.
The future has been waiting for me to know there is no wrong choice—not ultimately anyway—no major mistake I can make that will diminish my worth or lovability. The future has been waiting for me to know that even if just one person likes my art, even if that one person is me, that's enough. The future has been waiting for me to realize that even if one person or lots of people don't like my art, that's ok, too. Like assholes they say, everyone's got one. everyone's got their own taste and it doesn't mean I'm not uniquely talented. it doesn't mean there's no place for my voice. it doesn't mean I am a horrible, disgusting, worthless human.
(Yes that's where this amazing brain can take almost any road to—that I am a horrible, disgusting, worthless human. Sounds fun, doesn't it?)
The future is waiting for me to say no to being over-socialized in service to distracting me from doing the thing I most want to do. It's waiting for me to say no to more training, no to more classes, no to more bells and whistles, no to all of the billions of excuses. It's waiting for me to say no to the parts of me that are afraid to fail.
No sweetie, don't you understand, it's true what they say, failure does not exist. Only learning, only growing. This is what the future is trying to tell me.
It's telling me I am beautiful enough to have a man fall in love with me. I am smart enough to maintain a conversation with said man over a glass of white wine and a meal without having to sleep with him right away to prove it. (If I want to sleep with him right away for fun, that's an entirely different story.) It's telling me I am amazing enough to take the time to get to know and discover and choose into life partnership with.
It's telling me that now is the opportunity to take that time with myself and just because there is currently no partner in man form at this moment in my life, that does not mean I am a disgusting, horrible human being. (See, there it is again.)
The future is telling me I am enough. Right now. As is. Wholly and completely. And that it is time to claim that and create from that space. The future is waiting for me to claim it.
So what am I waiting for? What in the name of [fill in your higher power's name here] am I waiting for?
I don't know the answer to that.
but i imagine it lies in this paralyzing fear and moving in spite of it. And I have an inkling it's the parts of me inside that don't believe they are enough who can't seem to move. Who feel they have to perform, always. Who feel they have to be someone for others or others will go away. It's the part inside that fears being left alone. And those parts hurt. And those parts are scared. Not only of failure but of getting that which I want. What if that doesn't change anything? And the truth is, it probably won't. Because these parts are operating under the misbelief that having things or people will make them whole and complete.
They have forgotten that they were never not whole and complete, as they are, the whole time, completely. They have forgotten that they are love. And so I will remind them.
I will remind them by being kind. I will remind them by saying no, by taking time and space to get to know myself alone. To get to know my talent and love my talent and own and acknowledge and prize and express and celebrate my talent. My talent and my being. and my inherent loveliness, my inherent beauty, my inherent lovability. I will take the time to know these things, intimately. I will say to the parts that feel disgusting and horrible, oh sweetie, I understand. but this is the furthest thing from the truth. I will say to the parts that feel put upon by what they perceive as other people's expectations of them, darling, that's love, and you can love right back without saying yes.
Yes does not equal love. Nothing equals love. Love is love is you is them is we is love.
I will say to the parts that get jealous and enraged, I get it. Let's go cry or beat some pillows or make a jealousy map to see what our deep down desires are. And then let's celebrate our best friend's wins. And we will, we do. We celebrate his growth and expansion. The results of the extreme willingness and patience he demonstrated while tilling the soil of his life, of his perceived stuckness. We celebrate that he is out of that trap now and actually allowing himself to receive of the blessings of the joy of the flow of this thing called living.
I will say to all of the parts, this is the ebb and flow. we will be there again, too, in the joy, in the flow, and we will be jealous again one day as well, enraged, sad, lonely, all of it. And no matter how ashamed we may be, I will be here to love you. all of you.
I will love the parts that think they need to wait and I will love the parts that forgot who they really are and I will let them breathe and cry and scream and sleep and I will love them. And I will love them when they say yes and I will gently urge them to say no. and I know when they are ready, they will. And I will be with them, holding them, healing them, melting any hardness or protection around them. then when it's time, perhaps right in this very moment because sometimes all it takes is a moment....
Together, we will move.
We will take that first step, and then the second, and then the third. And we will fall and we will get up and we will move, forward, without waiting, into the future that was always there, with open arms, ready to receive us all along.