Freedom

"I say love me, hold me.
Love me, hold me.
'Cause I'm free to do what I want, any old time.
And I'm free to be who I choose, any old time"

--The Soup Dragons, "I'm Free."

Once I saw Maya Angelou on Oprah. She was 72 years old and she said something--I can't quote it exactly--about how she wanted to learn and change and grow and refine herself every single day, and that when she stopped doing those things, it would be the day she died.

I think of this often.

I think about my personal journey of self-awareness and self-refinement, and how I have often aimed to just "get it right." How I would love to wake up one day and think, "Phew! Got it!" And the world would open itself to me in a completely different way. It's a laughable aim when you think about it, but it's one that I can't deny. It's akin to wanting to wake up one day as someone else.

A decade and a half of emotional abuse taught me this. Taught me to wish that I was someone else. Taught me to believe that I wasn't "getting it right" by just being me. That I had to fix or change or sculpt myself in some different way to be acceptable to others. To be acceptable to myself.

Rationally, I comprehend that "getting it right" means loving myself and accepting myself as I am. I can expound on self-love and self-acceptance and their importance. I can tell other people they must love themselves first. I can help them do it. But If I'm being honest, I've personally only had glimpses of it.

I've denied to myself and to others what I have known for a long time: that my natural, primal, basal response to certain situations is to identify rejection from others and then unworthiness in myself. I've longed for that not to be my reality. I've prayed to wake up one day and have my baseline be "I'm awesome," like a flip was switched and the self-hate was just over. I have wondered what its like to just feel the love... for me.

Lately, though, a light has been shining on a path for self-acceptance, and I'm taking some cautious steps in that direction. It's scary, but kind of exciting. The light is this: accepting the fact that I have a baseline of "I suck and everyone hates me" is my liberation from it.

For too long I've tried to crop out the ugly stuff. I've tried to deny this part of myself. I've blamed others for keeping me in a box of perfection; maybe I constructed that box all by myself? Sure, I learned how to make that box because I was taught by others how to hate myself, but if I made the box, then I can destroy it.

For me, "getting it right" isn't pretending to "get it right." For me, freedom comes from accepting that I went through some pretty shitty experiences and that I have a regular tendency to panic that I am being rejected. Rather than denying it when it is happening or having a shame spiral that this is in fact my baseline, allowing myself space to acknowledge those feelings, to honor them as real even if they are usually unfounded, to analyze them and indulge in them *briefly*... I begin to accept myself as I am. I break out of the box of (false) perfection.

And then I get to choose how to be.

I've come a long way to get here. When I'm not (exhausted, cranky, sick, scared, what have you), I'm usually rational enough to stay present and evaluate the reality in front of me. But life loves to throw fun challenges at us, and I'm undoubtedly going to often be exhausted, cranky, sick, scared, or what have you.

Perhaps it's possible to accept my whole self: Fun, loving, caring, giving, energetic, adventurous, ambitious... and occasionally self-loathing and anxious.

Yep, that's me.