I have been.
I have been so many things between my last writing and this one.
I have been happy. I have been sad. I have been alone. I have been suicidal. I have been on the verge of quitting my job. I have been promoted. I have been lost. I have been found. I have been connected. I have been confused, numb, hopeless, devoid, hungry, cold, hot, rage-filled, desperate, confident, unshakeable, and shattered.
I have been so, so many things. Tiring things. Exhausting things. Passionate and human things.
And at the end of it all, I arrive here.
I am.
Simply that. I am.
I have been waiting, avoiding, rejecting, searching, grasping, flailing, falling, sinking, drowning, dying.
I have known that I needed to write for months. Ox has suggested it over and over again, but inside I knew it wasn’t time yet. While I “wanted” to write, I didn’t WANT to write.
I didn’t want to sit with myself and hear myself. I didn’t want to figure it out. I didn’t want to understand or deal with pain and truth or any of it.
So I didn’t. For so long, I didn’t hear myself or let others hear me. The inner me. The me that’s been hiding soft, frail, vulnerable things for three years now.
One of my friends from work, a close friend, someone who in the timeline of my life is fairly new, but deeply loved and valued, gave me a book two days ago.
Untamed. I have already read it.
I have also read a book recommended to me by my dad. Unfuck Yourself
I have thought deeply on both books.
While Unfuck Yourself spoke to parts of me, Untamed touched things in my core. The words and messages in Untamed left me stripped of my outer armor and made me sit within myself. My inner self would cry out at points in the book, “This! This here! This is what I need you to hear. This is is why I’m dying inside you! This is why we hurt. This is why we feel unfulfilled.”
There was and is so much in that book. So much honesty. So much life. So much vulnerability. So much truth, about society, people, experiences…
And so here I sit.
I sit here, grounded, after a night of crying while Ox held me and I confessed to things I never thought I would confess to. Things I never thought I would share because they’re “dumb” or “stupid” or “fucked up”. Things that are too precious to me to risk the change of them being hurt or injured by rejection. But after reading Untamed I couldn’t NOT share them. These are my truths. These are my heartbeat and heartbreak. These things are why I keep going and why each day is agony.
And so, as we lay in bed, so far past our bedtime, we talked. We connected. I shared and cried and breathed and was held through all of the pain and vulnerability.
Me: I’m terrified of losing you. I’m terrified that you’ll die and I’ll have to figure out my life all over again and I don’t want to do that.
Me: When you say “I love you” I hear mom through you. I feel like she put you in my life because she knew I would need you. I hear her because you say it the same way she said it. With unconditional acceptance.
Me: Inside all of this is so small and frail and I want to protect it because I don’t want it to get hurt. I know not everyone will believe me. I know it’s not logical, but I know what it feels like inside me. I know it’s real for me.
And so I’ve said it. All of it.
I’ve admitted to it out loud for the first time. I hear my mom through Ox. I feel my mom through his hugs. And I’m terrified of losing that and I know people will read or see this and think that I still have issues to work through or that I’m fucked up or that feelings are dumb and logically none of this is right or ok or whatever other things people say.
I KNOW! Ok!? I ALREADY FUCKING KNOW!
And I type that with all of the internal rage searing through my body that I feel towards my evil inner voice which for so long has kept me from truly being me since mom’s death. From truly living my life and just being at peace with who I am. And I’m so fucking tired of it.
I’m tired of feeling like I can’t say things or express myself fully or be me because there’s something about me that’s too much. Too big, too small, too strong, too weak, too hard, too soft, too logical, too emotional…
Reading Untamed was very similar to when I finally read about INFJ personality types. I finally had permission to simply be. To exist. To breath. To think. To feel.
And so here I am, no longer hiding, searching, avoiding, struggling, flailing.
My biggest fear is losing Ox. The kittens would be my left vest, keeping me afloat through the destructive waves of grief which I know will crash over my life when he dies.
It will not my brothers, or my dad, or my friends or patients or my job which keep me going…
Saber and Dagger would be the two, tiny creatures that would keep me connected by thin, invisible, unbreakable strands to life.
Despite my grief and pain, they would need me to love them. They would need cat food so I would have to work to afford it. They would need to be fed so I would have to get up in the mornings. They would need and want cuddles so I would have to touch and interact with them; feel their warmth and their love.
I would have to do these things for them and so I would stay. For them. Because of them. And I would, in time, learn to live again just like I did when mom died. I would stay through all of the hard, all of the pointless, all of the lostness, and because I would stay I would eventually learn how to continue.
Another inner truth; I honor my mom and Ox by living. Dying would be so incredibly easy to do. Almost effortless when compared to living. I honor them by not giving up even though I want to. I value my connection with them enough to keep going. It’s worth the pain of being alive to have moments like last night where I can awkwardly, introvertedly word vomit all over Ox and still be loved. Unconditionally loved. Unconditionally accepted. Held and safe. Warm and unalone.
I’m done hiding. I’m done lying to myself. I’m done trying to force myself to be things I’m not or not feel things I do.
I’m done telling myself that what I feel is fucked up or wrong. I used to be my friend, but somewhere along the way, I stopped. I forgot how. I fell back into old habits. I’ve let them consume me because they are comfortable, familiar, known, and so much older and easier than the newer habits of self-love and self-acceptance I had been working on after mom died.
I have either not been there for myself or I have beaten myself down internally because that’s easier than trying to help myself grow.
I slept close to 13 hours between last night and today and for the first time in a while, I woke up not feeling dead inside. I woke up emotionally and mentally exhausted, to the point that I canceled my dentist appointment (woohoo! canceled plans are the best plans!), but I woke up feeling whole, cleaner, lighter; like I wasn’t carrying all these dirty secrets around inside of me that if people knew they would point at me in shame or disgust and reject me from the group because I was no longer acceptable.
I woke up not fearing unworthiness.
I woke up knowing that I am not unworthy. That is what last night showed me. If others reject me for being authentic and having the integrity, the loyalty to myself to stand beside and with my emotions, then that says more about them than it does of me.
I am still growing, learning, hurting. I am still becoming who I am. Constantly. Continuelessly. Tirelessly. I accept the death of my old self, my self before mom’s death. I accept that I am strong. I accept that I have pain inside my heart. I accept that we, all of us, are mortal and that life can be prolonged but death cannot be stopped.
I accept that I am flawed. I accept that I am whole. I accept that this new whole is different from my old whole. Nothing is missing; it’s that life is different and I do not fully understand all of those differences yet. That is what makes it uncomfortable. Because it’s different and unknown and as a human I crave the known and comfortable.
I am not and have never been broken.
I have been and am human.
I have been unlearned, undiscovered, unheard, unknown; but never, ever have I been broken and I finally accept that about myself. After over five years of listening/not-listening, or avoiding/searching, rejecting/accepting…
I accept I am different from what I was.
Different doesn’t mean bad. Different doesn’t mean damaged.
Different does not mean broken.
So here I am. Whole. Whole within myself, within my relationship, within my life. My mother is dead and I am whole, not broken.
I guess that’s the main thing I realized while reading Untamed. I’m not broken. I’m me. And me is a very beautiful, real, and messy thing.