coughing up my truth on a thursday night

I’m starting to speak my inner world in front of people I love. It’s been scary, and not very clear, so maybe it’s been more like coughing up my inner world than anything else. It makes me think of all the friends and family members I’ve wanted to protect over the years I’ve been alive. Makes me think of the many stories I’ve had to create to calm others down, all the instances I’ve had to lie to keep the peace, or have done backflips in my brain to save others from the hurt and the pain, even though it’s not my responsibility.

Well, I don’t have to do that anymore, because I’m just me, and nobody else has to feel the depths of my pain because I’ve already felt it, and my own pain is my responsibility, and not anyone else’s. And others’ pain is their responsibility, and nobody else’s. It’s weird to get to a place where you feel safe in yourself, knowing you don’t have to rely on others to give that safety to you. That’s where your real power comes from. It’s freeing in a way. I have never before felt like this, like it doesn’t matter what a single other person out there thinks because of the love and validation I’ve found within me. And I know others won’t really understand what that means or maybe feels like, until they work to constantly have this feeling within them, too. There’s a lot that goes along with it. It looks different for everyone, based on their energy.

Writing and reflection and being a keen observer has helped me with cultivating this. Writing has continued to be a safe place over the years, being able to cultivate this awareness within myself. Noticing what I do, and why I do it, and how that relates to others, as well as noticing others and what they do.

I don’t know why, but a vivid memory comes to mind of when I was in high school, and there was a certain scary situation happening in the house I was in, and I was needing to do backflips in my brain for me and a certain little sibling I was trying to protect from the drama. They were pretty young at the time, but they were a genius, so that didn’t matter. I remember us sitting on the floor, with someone yelling at both of us very intensely about something we had nothing to do with, and I just started furiously writing on a journal we had there behind us, so in this person’s strung out state of emotion, they wouldn’t notice.

We were taking turns talking to them, and turning around and writing to each other on the pages there. We were passing it back and forth, working to get a story straight, to find something we could tell them so they would leave the room so we could feel safe again. We were working to find the peace. And we were able to, using that journal.

Writing has always done that for me. It makes me safe in myself and my experience. When everything outside is too loud, and the static of the atmosphere is buzzing in my ears, and there are people saying too many things that I can’t really hear, and the world is blaring, wanting me to conform and change and mold to it…

I defy, and I write.

And what I know is that maybe nobody will read this, because I won’t share it to my social media page, because writing this blog is not about what I am sharing with people, it’s about my expression, and what I’m experiencing right now.

It’s maybe somewhat about idolizing her, and how for the first time in my life writing is scary and not safe, and I don’t like that feeling, and how I don’t know what to do with that sentiment. I still can’t handle the mirror, and I am trying to control it, knowing that’s not going to work. I have to let it transform into what it’s meant to be, which is something I’m very unsure of. Likely something I’ve never experienced.

Perhaps for once it’s about what I’m not writing. What I can’t admit to myself. What I can’t let others read. The darkness has been easy to write about. Reflecting on the pain is how I’ve survived all my life.

I wonder if I’ll finally be able to tell the story of my rise, and if so, let myself bask in the light of it.

I’m not sure it’s something I can really do, but I hope so. It would probably feel really nice to express something like that.