What is this all about?
So, here I am again. Another do-over. Another beginning. Another start of something.
Life keeps doing this to me. Or, should I say for me. You’ve probably heard the saying by now: Life happens for you, not to you. I always had the belief that life, or rather some perverse entity, enjoyed fucking me up. It got pleasure out of watching me suffer. Then one day I realised that it wasn’t life doing that to me. It was ME doing it to me, and in the last few years since that realisation things have changed inside me like I never believed possible.
I have to admit, though, I sometimes miss being ignorant about all of it. I wish I didn’t know what I now know. I would like to remain oblivious so I can continue on with my shitty life without knowing how much better it can actually be. I say that because the darkness within is still quite a prominent force. Its shadow steps into the light I have been working so hard to illuminate, dimming almost every ray. And, it’s fucking hard. It is hard work to keep on changing all of the fucked up and shitty things about yourself that you hate. There really was so much to hate. It is so much easier to remain as is. To just keep going as you are even though you can’t stand how things are.
Every day I wake up and it is there. Belittling me. Berating me. Annoying me. Yelling at me. Giving me reason after reason as to why I can never ever be truly happy with who I am.
But! Thankfully I have learnt a few tricks these last couple of years. One of them being this…
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
I scream this at my mind when it is really giving me a hard time. When its relentlessness has worn me down. When I can no longer take the torture of its mean and nasty words. Because I DO NOT have to listen to a word it says. My mind is wrong most of the time, if not all the time. It doesn’t want me to succeed or feel good. It wants me to stay put in the misery and pain I have wallowed in for most of my life. I just can’t anymore, though. I know what it is like on the other side of the pain. I have felt good. I have felt happiness. I have felt joy. My mind keeps on taking all of these things away from me, like a parent takes away a child’s favourite toy when they have been naughty. Except I haven’t been naughty. I have been getting myself into a good feeling state. A great feeling state.
I just can’t get it to last. I have gone back into the darkness ever so slightly but this time it feels different, when I allow it to feel different. When I allow it to be what it actually is and not listen to the fucked up bullshit my mind keeps repeating to me. I have heard the same nasty words every day for the past 40 years. I have believed these spiteful and cruel words as if they are the only truth that ever there was. This voice has held me back in so many ways. I have felt insignificant and lacking because of the lies it keeps telling me. I have lived my life attached to a very short string of cruel and awful words, never permitting myself to grasp any further than my reach would allow.
What is the truth? What direction do I point my focus to see the truth of who I am? My compass has not been able to settle on a direction my entire life. The needle has spun out of control and bounced from one direction to the other, leaving me feeling doubtful about where I belong and why I am even here.
The one thing that is giving me the focus I need right now is writing. It feels a little weird to be doing this. To be putting my inner most thoughts out for the world to read. However, the timing is perfect. Everything has aligned. All of the pain and the misery, as well as the fun and the intermittent happiness I have experienced are now my points of reference. The focus I need to silence my inner critic and tell it to fuck off because I deserve every bit of happiness I have been denying myself all this time due to me listening to the only voice I put my trust in.
We all have more than one voice inside of us.
I call my other voice my Loving Voice. She is my true guidance. My North Star. The One who knows why I am here. The One who settles the needle and points it in the right direction. The One who has led me to writing this column. Against my will, mind you. I say that because I have been down this road before. I have started this exact thing a few times under many names. (This sums up my life). They never felt entirely right but there was a truth to them. A sense of something that needed to be done. It just wasn’t the right time. Or all that it needed to be. Sometimes we have to start something to know it isn’t right. Sometimes we have to have many different versions before the right one lights up.
Who knows what will become of this but if I don’t do it then I am doing myself a disservice. I am ignoring my loving voice, the one who actually wants me to do things that make me happy. And, writing makes me happy. It always has. I lost sight of that and I didn’t write for about 20 years. My teenage years were spent trying to write the perfect teenage romance novel. Girl meets boy, they fall in love, deal with all the trials and tribulations of being a teenager and then live happily ever after in their perfect lives and their perfect bodies. I never quite finished writing any of them. I wrote a few depressing poems but I couldn’t stick with anything because of how I felt about myself. That voice in my head was on high volume. It was all I could hear.
So, here I am. Hoping you find some comfort in these words. Knowing you are not alone in your fucked-up-ness and that you do not have to listen to that screaming voice inside your head anymore. That you can turn the volume down so you can hear the voice you’re meant to listen to. Your own loving voice. She is there waiting to be heard.
Life is experience. Life is painful. Life is fucked up. But in all of that there are lessons. There are teachers. There are reminders of what we truly are. This column will be all of that. In my experiences and my painful fucked up history, I will share with you the lessons I have learnt. The teachings I have been taught and the subtle and not-so-subtle reminders of where I have come from and why I am here (you, too). The stories I share will be different to yours, they will be the same as yours, they will encompass so much emotion and they will turn your focus to a new existence. A reality you may have not considered before. A truth you can vaguely feel but aren’t fully aware of yet.
So, here I am. A teacher. A reminder. A truth teller of her own words. You may not agree with everything I say, and that’s ok; I only want this to expand your awareness of who you are and what is going on inside your own head.
I actually really have no idea where this will lead, what it is fully going to be. I only know I am going to do it. Let’s see where this takes me (us).
In the meantime, keep on shouting “SHUT THE FUCK UP”.
P.S. Each week I will also give you one little exercise to do. Something to help you listen, learn and love.
Start listening to your thoughts. Become more aware of what is going around and around inside your mind. How does it make you feel? What would you like your mind to say to you?
Write it down, talk it over with your partner or closest friend. Talk about it with yourself. Open up the lines of communication between you and your mind. Be honest about what you really want to hear.
If you’re feeling brave, comment below and share your thoughts. I reckon you’re not the only one with so many fucked up thoughts.
