My mind is so scattered with ten million thoughts, and I don’t even know where to begin with one of them. Do I write an affirmation? Or a narrative? Or an existential question for the universe? Maybe just random words again. I don’t know… My bravery to dive deep with any of it is totally lacking.
At this point 365 days ago, I was losing a lot. My jobs. My relationship. My plans. My dreams. My life as I knew it. Everything was flipped upside down, and changes were constant; most of the time without me even knowing it.
To cope, I went into a cluster fuck of content overload. My days and nights (especially nights) are still currently filled with Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat and even sometimes Twitter (yeah, it’s not great). Not to mention news sources, messaging, television, and movies. I quite literally detached from my life (as a fight or flight, trauma mechanism), and attached to the lives of friends, family, influencers, singers, actors, dancers, politicians, philanthropists, therapists, lifestyle coaches, fitness instructors… the list goes on and on.
I’m to the point where I don’t have a single identity anymore. I don’t know who I am, and just when I think I’ve figured it out, I step backwards or sideways or diagonally into a different box.
When I plan my days, it’s challenging to push away all of the ideas of what I think would make others happy, just so that I might follow my own intuition and steer towards some action of self-fulfillment and personal nourishment.
I want the world to see me as perfect and put together, while I see myself as broken and messy. I accommodate in an absolutely appalling, selfish way (it’s an ego trip for me to people please, which is toxic as fuck). I say yes to others for myself, and it has landed me with nothing.
I think this crisis has been a long time coming, regardless of the circumstances. I have been following the invisible rule book blindly since, well, forever. It’s easy to feel in control of your life when someone tells you to do something and you just do it…
But what happens when you say no thanks, and go a new way? Somewhere uncharted?
I don’t have the answer to that question. But I do know the more I play dress up, pretending to be someone else, I am only ignoring my reality; for better or for worse.
I don’t know if anyone has actually ever truly seen me without a mask on…
But for the first time ever, I am so keenly aware of my addiction to being someone else for everybody else. And when that shape shifter voice pops into my mind, telling me to transform so that I might be smarter, kinder, prettier, thinner.
More talented, successful, personable…different…
I can now say FUCK.OFF. This is the year of gut-following, bitches.