Owning Your Truth, Part I

This is what people don’t tell you about Love and relationships. How unbelievably messy they are. The other thing people don’t tell you about life in general is how messy it is. If you are living life correctly, the messes and barriers to greatness never stop. There is always another layer, another battle to fight, and a demon to conquer. And all of it is hard, but the result is always worth it.

That is me when I was around 2.  Thanks Dad for always capturing the memories 😀

One of my biggest demons is the ability to believe I am worthy of love. The friendship niggle I defeated years ago. I am now on to romantic love, and that is way more complicated to defeat. It is insidious, as most demons are, because they know us so well. The self-talk that one tells yourself is of utmost importance, and I have failed at that for most of life. It took a lot of fantastic mentors (thanks to Maria, in particular), personal growth, and soul-searching to really beat down the naysaying niggle that was constantly in my brain.

When it came to love, and when I finally decided to own my truth of being a lesbian for the world to know (fyi, NO one was surprised); damn did that demon come out to play. Trusting another person with intimidate details of my life, and entering the weird world of online dating. Attempted to be scammed not once, but twice within a month tends to put a damper on your self-talk when it comes to dating. It makes you doubt your choices. It made me doubt whether I would ever find someone that I would let my heart love enough to trust. The scammers were amateurs and never got that far, and I know karma will bite them in the ass.

I have never in my entire life really let someone get all the way to the point where I let myself fully fall in love with another person. Subconsciously it was the scariest thing that I could let happen in my life, to be that vulnerable. To let someone fully in meant that I would have to drop most, if not all, of my many emotional barriers. I wasn’t ready to do that. So I didn’t. I kept any romantic interests at an emotional arms-length.

I thought I had fallen in love once when I was in college, and for that time in my immature life, I was as fully in love as I would let myself be. Which at the time was until it got hard and until it got real (I was about to graduate). We were not right for each other, and quite honestly we lasted far longer than we should have. When I ended it however, I was the definition of a frigid bitch. I was cold; I was calculated; I was mean, and I hated myself for years for how I broke it off with her. It was the right decision, but the wrong execution. I think subconsciously one of the reasons I avoided coming to terms of being a lesbian, and subsequently coming out, for so long was because of the shame I felt over how I handled the break up. I wanted to avoid a similar event at any cost. So I hid behind a wall of sarcasm, casual flings, and non-committal relationships. The desire to cover up this vulnerability flaw in myself was deep. This included hiding my own happiness and being true to myself because my priority to myself was usually the last on the list until the past five years.

I was fighting my own war of unworthiness, vulnerability, and trust. I have been waging those wars for as long as there has been water in the ocean. Sometimes, one has to own your truth. Own your vulnerability. Own your passion for someone else, and put it all on the line. I don’t know how it will work out. What I do know is that I deserve to know where I stand. Sometimes you have to risk failing to truly rise to the your truest self. And it will hurt every time.

This is the universe testing me, I guess.  I am ready for it to not do that so much anymore.  Love is out there,  I know it.  It will be glorious when I find it.

Grief – Revisited

This has been a tough and emotional week due to the loss of a family member, one of my best friends mom passed away.  She was really like my mom as well. I no longer distinguish between blood and chosen families, they are one because they all have significance in my life. I have been numb for most of it, and still haven’t processed it all yet.  The crash hasn’t happened yet.

The funeral/viewing was yesterday. The family decided to have a private viewing where only a few were invited to come, and to spend alone time with Donna. It was more intimate than any viewing I had ever been to, and I think I finally understand the originally intent of a viewing. It’s not meant to be a mass of people going up to the deceased, and paying respects for a split second. It is one last time for closure, and to spend time with them privately that you might not have had a chance to do so. It gave me an entirely new perspective on funerals. I took my time with her. I spoke with her, and expressed my gratitude for her and her family accepting me as one of theirs. I also expressed my concerns, and to send her strength to her family that could use her fortitude. She was one of the bravest, most sassy, and stubborn women I have ever known. The service was informal, and kept as “light” as possible. With mingling until 1:30, and then there were eulogies given. It’s what she would have wanted. It was perfect. It was Donna. The room was filled with pictures, memories, and moments in time that were captured and shared by her husband John and other family members.

She fought until she couldn’t anymore. She gave us all she could give, and went out on her terms. She was ready. It reminded me so much of my Nana and her last day.

I have felt my Nana’s presence strongly in the past couple of weeks. I still don’t know what she is trying to tell me, but I am ready to hear it. Maybe Donna will help, too.

The Universe/God/Narnia has a plan and a reason, and sometimes that reason sucks at the time. I started to write an entry about the fluidity of friendships, and it has morphed into this. There are a number of friendships in my life that have become distant for a myriad of reasons, and some have already started to be mended. Life happened, choices were made, and we were all in pain for different reasons.. Sometimes you have to take care of yourself first because you are not capable of taking care of others. Learning that lesson this year was quite painful and hard. The grieving process has brought us closer together again.

It still hurts. All of it. I am sure it will hurt more in the next couple of days when it really settles in. I have cried plenty. I started crying at 9:30 yesterday morning and continued periodically until we left the funeral home at 2. I even sent a text to one of my best friends saying, “it’s too early for me to be crying.” She said, “Love. and it’s never too early to start crying.” I am crying now as I write this.

It was not that long ago when I rarely cried. And never in public, except for once.  It’s being vulnerable, real, and present. It’s about letting it all in, and then letting it all out. I held all my emotion in for so long because I didn’t think I was worth the opportunity to express my emotion in public. People bond via emotion, and I am realizing while writing this that Grief brings us together. If the silver lining is that this brings more amazing people into my life, and relationships to mend, I’ll accept those gifts.

Life and Love

I figured out what love is.  It’s taken me 36 years to figure it out, and I’m not letting it go.  It is loving yourself enough to own your identity, and it is the scariest thing I have ever done.  The handful who know me really well and whom I’ve confided in understand what I am talking about.

I’ve hidden myself in one form of another since I was around 10.  It was first because being weird in middle and high school is quite honestly just plain brutal, as some people know.  It was much easier to be quiet and meek than smart and bold.  In college, I found myself and surrounded myself with like-minded weird people of the best variety.  It took time to be unapologetically me, though.  Even then, I would consider it a relatively rare occurrence.

These are some of my favorite people on the planet.  Who helped show me that I was enough.

I reached a point last year where I was on top of the world, so to speak.  There was something missing that I couldn’t quite identify.  I finally figured it out and told my best friend.  She said literally, “thank God already.”  It’s the final piece of accepting myself.  The final piece of accepting who I am, and loving myself for everything that is me.  It is scary and amazing.  I am ready to do this.  To own myself, and more importantly to love myself on an entirely new level of acceptance.  This is not the forum to announce such things.  If you’ve read through the lines, great.   Just know that I am ready, I am coming, and most importantly, I AM ME.  If you don’t like it, I honestly pity you.  Acceptance is a human trait, and also the cause of the worst travesties of human history have occurred when not allowed.

EDIT:  I am a proud lesbian, and I am not sure why I didn’t think this was the forum to tell the world.

So it Begins

Where do
we Go
from

Here?

I don’t
Know.

This is what
I
Do
know.

Love
trumps hatred.

This is
an
Inflection
Point
for our
Country.

I never
Thought
it would
Come to this.

But it has.

It is
Our
Duty
to show up

Even
Bigger.

Be bigger
than
Hate
and
Repression.

be
Bigger than
Disappointment
and
Anger.

Be the
Light.

Show them
Why
We
Will
Not
Back
Down.

It’s in
our
Blood.

We are
not quitters.

We are
the
Beginning
of a
Revolution.

the
Revolution
of
Love
we
are

Echoing out
to the
World.

This
is
Our
Time.

to
Show
what can be
Done.

It is
our
Responsibility
to show
the world

We are
Better
than

This.

So
it

Begins.

Grief, Trust, and Belief

I am not a big trust person.  It takes a long time to earn it from me.  I have been working on steadily for the past two years.  Every once and while, though, I get this urge and almost necessity to speak with someone who I don’t know very well.  I did that tonight, and it was about something deeply personal for both of us.  I honestly didn’t know what would come of our conversation, which started about a family event this past week.  It was an open, genuine, deeply “real” conversation that was both terrifying and quite striking.  And it morphed from a conversation about grieving and that process to one of an oddly fulfilling personal awakening.  The cool part was it all stemmed from my friend Kayla’s firm belief that my Nana was immensely proud of me.

When you spend almost your entire adult life being closed off from the world, and to open yourself up little by little is a bit daunting.  It makes one vulnerable and exposed.

I have had people tell me, “you are such an inspiration.” And I would say, “thank you so much, and I am glad I was able to do that for you.”   In reality, I never understood why I was such an inspiration.  FYI, this is not me being modest, I honestly didn’t know.

Kayla, my friend and colleague, clued me in tonight on why I am so inspirational (her words).

I met her last year in Vegas, and she was brand new.  Apparently, I said no matter what it was, “Arbonne is amazing.”  To me Arbonne is not about the paycheck, which can be incredible.  It’s about the relationships, personal growth, and self-discovery along the way.  And that is why I am an inspirational being in Arbonne (this is what others have told me).  I have persevered much longer than other people may have, because despite some setbacks, I kept going.  Because I SAW the potential, I saw where I was going, and I saw what I could become.  I hadn’t seen that before really, EVER.  I didn’t believe in myself, and I relied on others belief in me until I gathered my own.  My personal definition of perseverance is doing something long after the excitement and what you said you were going to do has worn off.  I am a person of my word, and yes, this is a lot longer than I thought it would take.  It IS happening.  My Nana saw it in me the last time we spoke, and it has provided a fuel for me to get it done.  She was proud of me.  She saw greatness in me, and she believed it to be possible.

I didn’t know what this blog entry was going to be about.  I almost just free-wrote it, and this is what came out of my head.  It’s important part of this journey that I am on to trust myself.