I feel like I’m undergoing a huge transformation in my life, at least my inner life.
My outer life is the same as it was a few months ago, when I was feeling out of sorts too much of the time, unsettled, confused. I had a lot of happiness in my life but I was unhappy too, and feeling emotional pain, sometimes really intensely, way too often. Even if it balanced out on the positive side of things the hurt and the darkness were grinding me down.
And now things seem to be changing inside of me in a beautiful way.
I still have the same job and daily routine. I drive Des to school, I go to work where I absolutely bust my ass, I try to go to boxing twice a week, I do my best to relax and play as much as I can with Isa and Des when I get home, and hopefully I end the night taking a walk with Julie around the neighborhood before bed. There’s more to it than that, but overall my day to day is just like it was.
It’s crazy how good I feel right now. It’s a familiar feeling as I was always a happy kid, but it’s a distant feeling too. Back then I smiled all the time and laughed a lot. And for much of the rest of my life I’ve felt optimistic, enthusiastic and grateful to be alive. That all seems to be coming back now. Not so much the constant smiling, at least not yet. But the inner feeling of consistent happiness and even lightness has returned.
I think I know why but I’m not sure. I’m also feeling a bit skeptical about the whole thing, not because these feelings don’t seem true but because I’ve had good stretches in the past decade that ended up with me headed right back to a dark place. Sometimes those dark places were darker than ones I’d ever been to before, and it was honestly unbelievably difficult to keep discovering darker places. It was dispiriting and scary too. It’s unfortunate but true.
Right there though, that last paragraph I wrote, is why it feels different this time around. It’s why I’m here writing about it and not just feeling it all by myself. It’s why I’m not only hopeful but also optimistic that this is an honest to goodness transformation unfolding in my life.
Simply put, I’m being true to myself and not hiding who I am from the world. I’m being honest, sometimes brutally honest, about how I’m feeling, not just now but in the past. I’m pushing through the shame and fear that kept me bottled up for so long. But pushing through is a bit misleading, because before I got to pushing through I first had to see the shame and fear for what they really were, and what I found when I started seeing things clearly was that the shame and fear were based on nothing but lies. Lies I was told, lies I read, lies I had come to hold as true because I never knew any different. For the most part, I don’t think these were malicious lies, and now I can see how some of them were passed down through generations until they made their way to me. But they were lies nonetheless, and they convinced a young boy that the world worked in a way that it actually didn't, they convinced him that his pain was something to be ashamed of, and worst of all they convinced him that the pain would magically go away if he just kept holding his head up high.
Five years ago in this blog I wrote about how it’s okay to feel exactly how I feel. At the time, this felt like a revolutionary act. I had just started the blog earlier that month because I knew I had things to say, things to share, things to let out, things to unload. These were things I was feeling incredibly deeply and had been feeling in some cases for decades. But I rarely if ever talked about them. I was too ashamed, too afraid.
But then I began writing this blog and bit by bit these feelings and ideas started coming out into the world. Some of them I’d discussed in private settings, with Julie, or with my therapist, or with a close friend, but even then I was often overcome with fear. And other emotions got stirred up too, like anger, like resentment, which bubbled up in ways I couldn't really understand.
Blogging allowed me to put these thoughts, feelings and ideas out into the world, and that was good for me. The fact that it was out there was important to me, even though hardly anybody read it. I slowly started building momentum, gaining confidence in expressing what I felt inside. I also started finding my voice and discovering the words to describe what for so long felt impossible to explain.
When I wrote the post about how it’s okay to feel exactly how I feel, it felt so true and so liberating, but also so rebellious, because I was saying the things I always assumed were not to be said. I felt more than a little scared to publish it.
Thinking back on this now, it’s kind of hard to believe this was such a big deal for me. Most people I know are pretty comfortable feeling what they feel and expressing it. But even basic feelings made me feel tremendous shame, especially if they involved any kind of negative emotion, or difficult experience I’d been through. On the outside I was a successful guy with a public presence, but on the inside I was still a little boy. And the fact is I didn't have an outlet to talk about these things when I was younger. So I repressed feelings, I buried them, I didn't act on them. I also developed a clear sense that it was somehow wrong to discuss them, at least if they related to me.
It wasn't lost on me that other people talked about these things, even the same people that made me feel like it was wrong for me to do it. But I just accepted that arrangement. I was young and had no other frame of reference. I wanted to be there for them because I liked being there for people, it made me feel special and good. I was also secretly hoping they’d reciprocate and ask me about my deep feelings and make me feel seen and heard.
One thing you don’t realize when you bottle everything up is that you allow those feelings to own you. Your feelings aren't you, I know that now, but when you keep them in and don’t release them they become a big part of who you are and how you present yourself to the outside world. You don’t say things or do things because of the fear of revealing what’s inside. You make lots of small decisions to supposedly protect yourself and you end up changing yourself too, little by little, you end up bending towards these feelings that have caused you so much pain. You create patterns and habits and without knowing it you’ve become a different person than who you were born to be.
I see this all so clearly now. These feelings that started coming out in this blog kept on coming out in drips and drops, sometimes through writing, but more and more through conversation with people I care about. Every once in a while I’d also find myself sharing things I’d never shared before with someone I didn't know well or didn’t know at all, but for whatever blessed reason they gave me an opening to share and be myself and I took it. What started as drips and drops ultimately started pouring out like a river, and slowly, over years, a new pattern began to emerge, a pattern of honesty, of self respect, of being true to who I am. And it took me to dark, dark places as I began to see through all the lies I’d believed, all the lies I’d built my life upon.
But then something magical happened, and it clicked quite recently in fact. I began feeling proud of those things that once caused me so much shame. I realized deep down with all of my heart that I’m a good person, and it doesn't matter what anybody else does or says when it comes to my feelings. I’m a man now, I’m not a little boy any longer, and it’s on me to own my feelings from this day forward, regardless of the lies that held me back for so long.
There are no rules I have to follow when it comes to my feelings. I can trust my instincts, which are good and honest and generous and true. I can also embrace my pain. I’ve been through a lot in this life. We all have. But I have too. I’ve been to hell and back many times in my life and I can’t hold that in any longer. I’ve experienced tragedy, the death of young friends, the death of a child. I’ve had my heart broken by people I trusted. It’s all part of who I am, the good, the bad, the terrible, the beautiful.
I love who I am.
That’s what I realized recently. And I won’t let lies get in the way of that.
I love who I am, including all of my pain and my faults.
I love who I am, and that makes me feel so so good.