Shadows need to dance with light,
"Step up and make a move," the light whispered, "or you can't enjoy this beautiful sight."
Fear, guilt, sadness, anger, laziness, had seemed to weave a tight knit layered carpet,
Hiding in the designs of life and projecting their mirage, a hustling market.
The light waited and waited long to embrace her darker self,
They were both one and met half way to face each other, dancing to the tunes of love thyself.
The inner child has been in hiding for long,
Too shy to come out to play with the world and make connections strong.
Her parents traumas bound her to be enclosed in layers within,
But things got harder to hide as her suppressed feelings came out true and seething.
She had to wear various masks to not reveal her true self,
Some she was made to wear while some she fit herself into, piling lies in her heart's corner shelf.
Shadows of self doubts, fears, anxieties cast on them, reality blurring in true sight,
Projections are not for real, the inner child grew up to see,
No need of masks or others approvals to witness her inner light, her heart rejoiced, finally free.
I don't have to keep up being a victim. My body is not a storehouse of others projections of their criticisms, worries and patterns. I allow myself to be free from this vicious cycle of wanting to fix some aspect of my health or the other with medicines because self care, self love and resilience goes a long way in helping myself. I understand that my sensitivity in overall body might have also triggered various health conditions sometimes one after the other or in quick succession or whatever is the pattern that my body has behaved so far. But overdosing my body with medicines has been a self sabotaging practice that I have done by picking up this pattern from my mother who feels like a victim and who tries to fix whatever part of her that's ailing through medicines(owing to lot of emotional neglect from her family) and has passed it on to me as a pattern as I unconsciously had absorbed it from her.
It's like I don't have enough trust in my body's ability to heal itself and so have to give that power over to someone else like my mother or the doctor who may know better and feel like even small issues that could have gotten fixed through certain awareness and mindfulness, cannot be taken up by me as I felt completely powerless in body, in mind, in spirit while manifesting this unconsciously right from an early age.
Now that this pattern has come to my light, I feel like what my mother feeds me is what I am trying to feed her back - as in how she had raised me on medicines is how she wants to be tended to that is via medicines.
I lost trust in my body and its ability to heal itself not because I was sensitive, but because I thought as I was told that I am a victim and so labeled myself a victim for life as I had assumed myself to be until today, and so will keep needing medicines one way or another as if I had signed up for this for all of my life.
When medicines and money are my mother's only cure, then there's only THAT I had gotten to receive from her and not acceptance of for who I am as I am as I had always deeply yearned to receive. And so this validation or rather invalidation (owing to her medicines) from her had deeply hurt me and had created a huge block in my head as if my body is some sort of unfixable, defective product that has to be constantly fixed and "pampered" with her standard of care which weakened my inner strength and resilience a lot and weakened my will to live to my standards whatever they be.
K dramas and now J dramas are what I am crushing on currently. It's such a teenagy feeling to watch young couples fight and find their contradicting personality differences and yet iron the creases with empathy, understanding, and typical mills and boon formula love. It's like you live in the clouds when you see stories gushing with making love possible despite mental health challenges and difficult parent/background issues which seem to be the flavor of how two people, hero and the heroine, meet each other half way through and find common pathways despite these conflicts to fall in love.
These dramas are like mild sweetened desserts which never go over the top sweet and yet make the viewers feel like they have been served the best recipe for happily ever after.
I live in such a fantasy myself and even if I am well past my 40's, the simple appeal of idealistic plots, honest communication, and simple yet layered characters who do their job well in the roles they play is a "I want to believe" vision to my sore eyes.
I wish our everyday lives were that beautiful, that sweet, or plain heartwarmingly simple and not be bothered by the burdens of the past. It's like I seem to live in a never ending tale of pleasant today when I am binging on specially romcom, or doctor/office romances, and the festive season magic adding its own year end charm in the kind of films other than shows the viewers gets to watch on.
2 eyes are not enough it seems!!
I am sick and tired of being told that others have it worse and that we are in a much better space because there's only space for just me singularly in my life and any shift in my perspectives in my mind is my responsibility and until then gearing this statement that others have it worse feels like people wish to cut short their listening of our problems and give a generic blanket statement for their lack of time and empathy.
In truth we are all equals as we are given a human life and no matter what be our sex, time on earth, religion, beliefs, goals and so on, we are here as souls in a human body and try and make do with what's given to us to our best knowledge and awareness and respond to life given to us to the best as we can.
Since we expect that our struggles should matter and that by comparing with others and sometimes devaluing their problems and putting ourselves up as the perfect martyrs, perfect victims and turning all obsessive, moody, judgy, cynical, critical and so on, we just buy ourselves the "gift" of staying immune to real growth which lies in acceptance of your problems as much as of others in equal spirit and not putting oneself down and minimizing one's struggles just to go along with the perfect martyr or victim, one way or another.
So, the projections don't work and neither does hiding oneself in shadows.
You owe yourself the right to hear your problems, your pain, your sadness out and give it all the space and processing and healing that it needs and do not wait on anyone to unburden it out for you and make you feel heard and reassured.
There's nothing worse not knowing the value of your struggles, your deeper reasons for putting up with others control and mood swings and your lack of awareness of where do you stand in your life, and your conjured images and dialogues about how valid you think you are in voicing your opinions, your assertiveness and staying in a loop of fake consciousness. And I am glad I have begun to understand the tip of this iceberg and as so many realizations melt away the blocks, it's a whole new sense of flow of my energy and perspectives.
My shadows have resisted my inner light and I have allowed for my real self to stay in darkness of my unconsciousness. I have waited for my darkness to go away as if I don't wish to take any responsibility for it and it's on others to understand or empathize and since I was "supposed to" empathize with my mother's mood swings, criticisms, frustrations, I got too tired to take responsibility for my own. Others taking control, involving themselves overly with my life and making me believe that I am powerless like the way my mother did has left a deep impact of self devaluation on me.
I am recovering from that "over protected" exhaustion and lack of motivation to get involved with my life and learning to embrace life with its unique challenges and also blessings. Because understanding the balance between our inner darkness and light is a beautiful and important step to make deeper connections with ourselves and there's no better or worse sense of connections that others make with themselves as honoring yourself, your journey, your life experiences matters a lot.
To want to stay involved in my life putting myself first and not seeking validation from anyone is my goal. Life has been really kind in giving me many an opportunity to get to do that but it truly came after not knowing how to do so and slowly finding a way through through my inner truth and a supreme energy's protection to see my journey through safely in every step of the way.
I used to think that by scoring better grades, being more beautiful, having better health, getting words of support from my mother, and being encouraged by my peers, landing the right job, having a kid and so on are all it takes to be on my life journey, but those were expectations too many and were not fully met with as it felt I could not meet my life half way through without all these coming to me to meet me the other half way. But the fact is that I am complete in myself as a creation of the supreme no matter what be my age, color, sex, caste, physical strength, mental health, material status and so on. I had stayed away from stepping on to the dais of my life waiting for the curtain to lift up from all these heavy, idealistic asks from others and kept living life by the sidelines as if I had deemed myself to do so.
What is truly within me shaping my life and giving me a core reason reason to live is not what I have gotten or how much I have lost, but how well connected am I with my honesty and sovereignty and that's been work in progress but something I have not lost sight of.
It's how closer I inch towards this all preserving, all pervading supreme energy, it's that fulfilling - as if my brokenness has meaning, my inner strength to survive through the old getting wiped off from my heart, and a newfound energy to embrace moment to moment and hopefully will reflect in future as the future is nothing but a beautifully connected set of todays happening and it's not a predictable loop like we make it to be, but a wave of highs and lows that we bring ourselves together to navigate and go with the flow.
Our ability to trust ourselves and our inner truths is a courageous act and holding on securely is the source of our roots and self growth.
We are here on earth for a short while. Our learnings are the real deal and not the drama we think we need in order to bypass the truths within us. Do we need this body in order to remember how hard this journey has been so far? I bet so many of us would agree that others too need to be reminded that we had tough lives and that it's our "responsibility" to make others aware of it. And this is where our loop of drama and stagnation starts - a cocoon of sorts protected by our ego in order to justify that this loop is our belief system and the self righteousness is means to stay stuck in it.
All the struggles that make us grow up in life are needed but if we are going to be "me, my pain" all the time, then we are bound to get stuck and even bored with having come all the way despite our hardships. Do we think to release these knots so that we can lighten up and create a newer space for growing or outgrowing our old beliefs? What old patterns collapse while our physical lives exist is in fact real manure to help our newer, evolved and updated modes of thought patterns to arise and navigate through our lives from a different perspective.
I thought being devalued by my mother was the only means to coexist with my mother as she is justified to throw her criticisms and anger out at me for being too sensitive in health. I let her walk all over my space hampering my space for individual growth. That amount of trespassing is injurious to one's emotional and mental health and there's no better way out than honoring and protecting my space for what it is.
Emotional abuse is not okay. Trespassing another's space is not okay and calling it protection is completely not okay. I needed protection from overprotection and giving up of my self confidence, self worth and believing in self doubts so much so as if I need that in order to adapt to my mother's criticisms.
You are enough by yourself. You don't need any validation of any kind from others to determine your self worth. My actual healing doesn't come from medicines, doctor visits, or regular checkups, but healthy, wholesome self belief that I am alright despite whatever comes my way and I am responsible for being alive and present to challenges in whatever shape or form that maybe. It's not over yet fully until you give up and also when life shuts down on you on your time of death. But until then life exists not just as a routine and compulsive habits to keep boredom at bay, but understanding through various seasons of time that we can give ourselves second chances for real and lasting change. And our ability to be kind through our efforts, falls, picking ourselves up slowly and learning to ask for help wherever needed are some means to manifest the second chances time and again.
And if you treat your life as seen through the eyes of others, then you won't be able to meet yourself in the eye. Your vision, your opinion, your beliefs, your need for changes, they all matter. You are worth it.
