It started off as a nerve in my arm that felt as if it was pitching of some sort. Then my upper back started pulling together in a muscle-spasm like pain. A few days after I started experiencing cold shivers, which then made me see the local general practitioner. There wasn't enough evidence shown to point to the problem, but a few days later a rash appeared on my left arm. One thing led to the next and then bam, they came to make a home on my arm! I constantly got cold and hot really quickly, my body felt weak and the medication had horrible side effects. Well, the worst is over. I still look like someone who was attacked by the black fog in Hunger Games and I am losing my mind by being indoors all the time.
I would like to believe that I am an extrovert with introvert qualities, so all this little-to-no-human interaction is not doing me well in the most part. However, one thing I can say for sure is that my head is buzzing with deep thoughts. It is so amazing, I think Amanda Cook, one of my favourite creatives, she sings in one of her songs the following words: "Some things you can't know till you're still. In the silence. Where your spinning thoughts slow down". And this proves itself to be true, even to us who are external processors.
Life has a way of changing us, especially when we find ourselves in the hustle of every day. If not evaluated or introspected on a regular basis, we would find that there are certain seeds that are growing inside of us that we do not like. And before we know it, these seeds have formed trees and roots that are painful to dig deep for.
I have recently started therapy at my church and this experience has been short so far, but good. Therapy has taught me to process, but also to look at the things I am not looking at. Both positive and negative. In one of my first sessions, it was really hard for me to think of positive things for what was asked of me. (Sorry, privacy agreement here). I started to realise that as much as I was an optimistic person by nature, in my head I had pessimism growing like slow poison.
Bringing this back to the present time. While being in this house for days on end, I have come to know that I am deeply unhappy because survival was always the posture of my heart. This is why anxiety and fear came to stay. I have been living in this posture for years and somehow, somewhere it became a part of me. So no matter if I was having the time of my life or with the people I deeply loved and cared for, in my heart I was happy, but my broken soul was smothering the true joys of the moments of life. I would find it hard to express the joy, unless if by the other person or people, they would pull this out of me until the moment passed and we all went back to normal life.
I find that this looks different for a lot of people. Sometimes we cannot have proper eye-to-eye and meaningful conversations with people (and I am not talking constructed conversations only, but day to day) due to the fact that we are battling inside. It is not because we are introverted or extroverted. It is not because we are always busy with our phones. We use these as excuses not to engage because we are afraid of what people will truly see, feel and sense when we engage with them without any distractions.
Vulnerability is one of the values I hold dear to my heart, but it is the one value that scares me most times. The vulnerability to oneself, especially. The moments you have to come to terms and pull back the reins of your mind. These are the moments that we are naked where it is just us, with our thoughts. The really dark ones, and the really childlike ones. The dreams, the aspirations, the fears and the brokenness.
This is so beautiful because we are complex. A world within a world.
Let's take out these few days, weeks or months to engage with those we love. But also to engage with ourselves in such a way that we start to recognize the places of brokenness within us, think about healthy ways to journey through the healing so that we can love the ones we have been honoured to walk life with, in a wholesome manner.
Love Ro
Stay healthy
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