This is one of those mornings where I’m staring at this screen, and I can’t seem to find the words to express to you what I’m thinking about. So I apologize if none of this makes any sense at all. Maybe I’ll make a point by the end, but right now, I’m just writing because I need to.

Last week was fantastic. The week before was fantastic. This week, I seem to have slipped backwards a little bit. On the other hand, maybe it isn’t backwards – maybe it’s just forwards motion that doesn’t feel as great.

One assumes that moving forward with a healing process or a biggification process means that it’s going to feel better and better.

It’s not. Some days, it’s going to feel like shit. Like today. Today, I am frustrated, seething at the edges. I don’t want to do yoga, I don’t want to do anything, I just want to sit here and vegetate.

Maybe I’ll even give myself permission to do that.

There’s lots of stuff roiling under the surface today. Old annoyances that had stopped bothering me are bothering me again. Old hurts that I thought I’d healed are twinging and aching again. I don’t wanna talk about it, but at the same time I do.

It’s like playing tug of war with my own head.

Allowing

The fastest way to  move through icky spots is to allow yourself to be there. (No, that is not my own insight. Those are the words of a beloved friend. She knows who she is.)

I’m actually really, really terrible at this, the allowing. I have trouble facing the ick. “Can’t we just make it go away?” says my brain. Sorry, brain. I don’t think we can.

I have this story going, like we all do, where if I just ignore all this crap, then maybe it’ll go away. I think I’m past that stage though. I’m knee deep in ick and I’m just going to have to face it. The struggling only makes it worse – it’s like quick sand. The more you struggle, the faster you sink.

Being loud

It turns out, unfortunately, that the true me, the person whose been hiding out inside of me all these years, is actually kind of opinionated. And loud. And stands up for herself, gets pissed off and says things that may get her in trouble.

This makes me highly uncomfortable. When it comes out, I have this overwhelming urge to immediately apologize. Sorry I spoke up, not my place, shouldn’t have said anything, I’ll just shut up now.

But it’s getting harder and harder for me to hold my tongue, especially when I feel like someone else is being unfairly judged or bullied. It’s like this other person rears up inside of me and starts talking. She does scandalous things like tell the other person that they’re wrong. That they’ve unfairly judged someone. That they’re being a jerk.

Good god, who is this person? Is this me? This can’t be me. It turns out, the person I’ve always wanted to be kind of scares the crap out of me. She’s going to get herself in trouble one of these days, going around being all opinionated and loud and brave.

Shame, shame, shame

I’ve got a whole lot of shame coming up this morning. Maybe that’s where the frustration and anger is coming from. Maybe it’s the new me getting pissed off for feeling ashamed for so long.

There’s a battle raging inside of me – the old patterns versus the new. The old me is used to shame and feeling guilty and wanting to hide. The new, truer me has very little patience for it. We’re fabulous, she shouts. We’re amazing! We should have no shame. We’re great!

The old patterns nearly have a heart attack every time she says that. We are not amazing, they scold. We are small, shameful and the reason everything goes wrong. We are the big bad wolf and we should hide so that we don’t cause anymore damage to anyone. You keep going around with an attitude like that and someone is going to get hurt. And then whose going to be ashamed, hmm?

Sigh.

I kind of just want both of them to shut up for maybe two seconds so that I can think clearly. Really, how many people can one person have inside of them at once?

And beneath all of this ranting and battling and conflict, no matter how loud it gets, I can still hear this one still, small voice inside that whispers, Please, can’t I just be me?