Recently, I have found myself recognizing patterns. Breaking open. Like rubbing against something for years and then finally breaking the threshold, the pressure, the cracking of the pain.
I feel like for the longest time I have made myself smaller, crumbling in the tiny space I allowed myself to be. To be good. To be liked. To be lovable.
I repeat the same patterns, the same people, the same lovers. Looking for the way to break through the cycle, I repeat the cycle. That’s on me, not them.
From 2019 to 2021, I was in trauma therapy. A long night. EMDR and anti-depressants. I worked through every single detail of the pain I experienced too young. I looked it right in the eye, once a week, for 45 minutes. Then I left. I left Paris, I let the bridges burn, I packed up my entire adult life and was gone.
Since then, I liked to tell myself, I have done the work. Crossed it off the to-do list. Effective, perfect, done. I am good now. All light, no shadow. What I was really doing was covering the patterns. Outrunning the fear. While having a great time. Avoid feeling what is real while bathing in the sun.
I silence my own voice. Even in my own journal, I catch myself using pompous and pretentious vocabulary, feeding my pattern’s narratives, veiling what I really feel to avoid feeling it. Hiding in words. A lot of smoke. Comfort in distance.
I like to say, I adapt, because I am a hypersensitive Pisces. I float, I swim, I feel everyone else’s feelings, I take them on as my own, I let the waves wash over me, I let it happen silently. I don’t raise my voice when I should, I don’t walk away when I should, I don’t say ‘fuck you’ when, really, I should, I pour empathy for others, not enough for me. I please, I set a boundary just to move it if it’s inconvenient to someone else.
I am fluid. And fluid is beautiful. I love deeply, I feel everything, I am a 5/2 MG. I can cry because a flower is beautiful, or the sunset, or the ocean so magnificent and powerful. I am in awe of life. It doesn’t feel natural to me, putting a blockade between me and the world. Boundaries to me feel like stopping the flow when I crave life so much, I want to feel it all.
Hence, my boundaries are like driving hundreds of miles through the desert and suddenly there is a red light. Obviously, most people would ignore that. But boundaries, I now learn, are not really for others to respect, but for me. Self-respect. Preserve the fluidity, but master the art of directing it where it naturally belongs.
Nothing changes, if nothing changes.
A few months ago, I went to see a healer in Bali, a Balinese woman. Don’t believe half the things people in Bali tell you about healing, darling, she said. I do believe that some people are more sensitive, more attune to other realities, frequencies, lights, shadows, than others. Whether that is ancestral wisdom our western societies have forgotten or whether it is a gift reserved for a few, I don’t know, does it matter ?
She saw some of my past, and starting crying, because of the darkness, she said. Then she told me you are swimming in the ocean, but you can’t see the water, it is right in front of you, but you can’t reach it. To reach it, you have to step into your confidence. You will never be perfect. That’s okay. You don’t have to be good. You just need to be you, darling. Everything else will follow.
By the time I went to see the healer, life had cracked me open. The rug had been pulled from under me. I remember walking around KL tears running down my face. My heart felt fully open, not in a good way, more like an open-heart surgery and someone forgot to put me under. Again, I did my best to hide in the shadows, fix the problem by doing all the yoga and green juices and good routines, and tell myself I am okay again.
Ironically (does the universe have a sense of humour ?), the more I run, the more present the patterns show up all around me, hitting me right in the face. Like something deep within me activated itself under pressure, and now it’s all bursting and burning and crashing, and all I can do is sit and watch it burn. Embracing the unknown, because the known has become too small. Writing essays on here is a breaking of patterns. A place to replace patterns and pleasing with potential.
Sometimes, in your worst moments, you find yourself deeper connected to your core than when you are happy. Maybe you have to crack the bones to the marrow to remember what you once knew. Allow the cracks to let in the light. Sunrise. Eclipse.