Being Me

Internally I am a being. I know things and feel things and see things within and around me in the world and in other human beings. I am learning recently about my inner being, and as I find myself becoming aware of my being I am learning to let it speak. For years I have discussed that there is grief in my knees and that I have a sensitive injured sensation in my solar plexus or third chakra. These sensations were and are both ethereal and physical. My knees would ache and I would know that there was more going on than just physical sensation. I could feel the emotional element to the pain and I wondered at how to heal such a thing within myself. The third chakra is about power and will, integrity and a sense of self. I know that I have suffered with identity issues since I was in high school, and yet I didn’t realize how much these adolescent tremors had followed me into adult life.

Recently I left my job of three and a half years at the Lopez Island Chamber of Commerce. I loved my job there and the sense of confidence that it brought me. I identified myself with my job in an unhealthy way, however. Part of this is because for years struggling with a mental illness I have longed to be normal. Normal to me meant working at a job, having a career, having an education. When I moved to Lopez nine years ago I began working at the children’s center and did for about five years. I then moved on to the Chamber of Commerce. I enjoyed the transition and the change in necessary skills as I learned the office and computer tasks of working at a desk. I also learned to deal in the service world as I started selling tacos at our taco booth around the same time that I started working at the Chamber. For years I had been in the early childhood field and I was stoked to move on to a more “normal” skill set. It is almost as If I had to prove to myself that I could achieve at something not spectacular. I needed to achieve at what I believed to be what most people could do.

This need to be normal cut deep into my skin of identity. I began to entangle myself too much with the identity of my job and the more I did this the more I lost my true self. Three years in a row in the summer I worked increased hours at the Chamber as well as the Saturday market and I was definitely achieving normal in my mind. Little did I know that I was sacrificing myself, and my pain in my knees and my little solar plexus began to scream. I denied these sensations and sensitivities as I continued to plunder along. I learned to zip myself up and bear the storm. I began to overachieve at being “normal”.

School has always been a trigger for me, and now I can see that work has become one as well. But it is not so much that, as it is that now that I have spent several months on the mend from a psychotic break that came from denying myself, I have started to rediscover myself. I am not getting angry anymore as I had begun to. I am opening up and healing these hidden cavities in myself that store so much of who I truly am. I am sensitive, I have a brain disorder. This makes me capable of achieving amazing things and also makes simple tasks essential suicide.

I am learning to let myself talk to myself. I have learned that unstructured time is essential. I have returned to embracing that I am a special being equipped with special equipment and have given up on the notion of ever being normal. In doing this I am discovering who I am for the first time in my life in a true way, and I am healing old wounds that I have around Identity and progress. This may not seem like progress, but I can promise you that it is. I will find my way. I may write a book or master the skill of self-care. But I will not be working a job any time soon and I am okay with that. In fact I welcome it because not having one allows for so much room in me coming into my true being. So here is to the journey of getting to know myself and letting myself be myself. I am so glad that I came to this place at the age of 37… I have a long life yet to live.