I started this Blog a little over a year ago, in 2021, and I wanted to be more active on it, bearing my soul. With the year I have experienced, I now understand that I have only been scratching at the surface. My initial purpose was to share my journey and create a space of possibility for myself and knowing that someone else out there will resonate. It seems very apt, though, that I only share when I am ready to “Talk from my heart.”
I have lived with many loaded, negative, gut-wrenching emotions most of my life. I have suppressed these emotions when they have surfaced, creating the implosion within or eruption to burn and wield my fire outward to harm others. Keep them at a distance. You may be able to resonate with this; both options have the potential to destroy beauty, love, and connection with yourself and others. I have craved this very thing I have pushed away. These beliefs have created layers of patterns of reaction to events and actions of others in my environment, real or perceived. My take on the story is mine to deal with, but I blamed others for how I felt. I have had so many questions. I am sure you have too in your experience. Why am I so sensitive? Why are others causing disruption? Why is this stuff resurfacing? Why am I still trapped? Why is everything in my life an uphill battle? Mostly I blamed others, though, if I were to be transparent.
I have developed the strategy to act out of character or keep my opinions to myself to be accepted and popular. However, the latter was never so much of my need, tongue in cheek. It may be yours too? I share this with you today, for your loving reflection. I am not there at this point, but I was. It has taken much effort to shift some of these patterns.
Honestly, there are more layers than I initially believed or felt prepared for. I have often felt tired along this journey. That is how I feel today, exhausted to the core. I often wonder why I chose this life of opening wounds to heal, when so many others haven’t. I feel incredibly grateful for each little gift I have been given, irrespective of how difficult it may have been to step back from the pain and observe my next shift on my road back to me.
The path I have walked has primarily been me feeling restricted and boxed in by circumstances that are ‘beyond my control.’ I thought that I was a lifetime prisoner to circumstance. I am beginning to learn that knowing how I feel is the only way to know what to do next. It is from these hurtful, frustrating, depleted feelings that creativity is born, and thankfully, I am starting to realize that, albeit slowly.
I have set my intention for the opportunity for me to make emotional denial almost impossible. It is what it is. Hard cold fact until I believe differently about the same situation. I am feeling these emotions now raw and base. What can I do to understand that there are no expectations that serve me? These expectations I learned to create in my childhood of myself and others have caused so much pain all these years. It is time to free myself from expectations on this layer I am working through now.
My way is causing more stress and anxiety. That state of embracing the moment where I can be myself, pain or peace is all judgment. I came here to experience what it feels like to be myself. I embraced the role wholeheartedly, playing judge and jury and issuing the sentence. Time to let that pattern go.
The word Freedom was always an enigma. The song “I want to break free” by Queen always resonated deeply with me. I sang out of tune as loudly as possible and stood on tables in alcohol and drug-induced melancholy about my life’s mission to be free from the chains. Peacefully and with enormous gratitude, I sit here writing this blog with a smile forming, 1818 days sober, and with the realization that despite my sober mind, I have continued to strive for something I had no idea I already had.
Yup, you guessed it. Freedom. It is a choice.
I can continue to ignore and suppress my needs and desires. Those that my soul has been underling and highlighting in neon colours for decades, this is a choice.
It is safe, familiar, and often a cosy choice to ignore that I can have all I feel I deserve. What do I believe I deserve? My beliefs have allowed me to stay angry and hurt and push people away from me. That is beginning to sound like hard work to me. This juggling act of simultaneously being connected and suppressing my connection to myself.
In the last stretch of my life, the realization is that it is now or never. I intend to free myself from the pause rinse and repeat pattern I have mastered.
Don’t get me wrong; I have not been hiding in the shadows for years; to the contrary. I have created the internal struggle. I have endured almost unbearable moments that I wish to forget as I held on to those old debilitating beliefs to keep myself trapped. I feel sad on some level that it has taken me so long and yet today again there is a space to let go again, painful as it is to both feel and give myself the permission to be free.
I have made the following choices in this moment to open my mind to the possibilities of what could be, irrespective of where I may find myself or what I feel.
I have set the intention for myself to release the old pattern I am aware of now in this moment. It is with an inner knowing that I am finally free to make that choice. It is all up to me. The question is will I, or will I grab on tightly just in case? I am free to do either.
Thank you for witnessing my process. This is akin to thinking out loud and realizing someone heard you.
What is your intention?
Until we meet here again from my heart to yours.
Much love.
Marléne
https://talkingfromtheheart.com/