Why I’m OVER me
When something happens, it takes time to process. For me, staying open means putting it out there, and you are part of that equation. I’ve stopped keeping you at arm’s length. I’m opening for a hug, and if you come close, you’re gonna get grabbed, squeezed, and pulled into the process of me working toward my better self.
Here’s the deal: we can only fully realize ourselves in our connection to a larger whole. Expressing love and care for others cements our place in the web (and I don’t mean the internet), because living in community is the natural inclination of most creatures on Earth. And it’s a healthy one.
If you’ve read my earlier post about the thing that happened to me that changed everything, you know I am woke. Not politically woke — that happened years ago and was a device I used to delay doing the necessary work on myself — but woke at a heart/soul/gut level.
Being woke means being present for every moment and feeling.
And because I’m woke I cry.
A lot.
At least three times a day.
This from a woman who (until recently) hadn’t cried in YEARS.
And was proud of her stoicism and saw it as a point of cultural pride.
I understand now that I cry when I feel the truth.
It’s not a head-deciding-what’s-true thing but a visceral reaction, a flush of something that I no longer supress or block out — which I used to do because embedded deep in the bedrock of my existence was a thick layer of fear. (That has largely dissolved. More on that in a future post.)
The crying is spontaneous, and it’s not pretty.
It’s screw-up-your-face-as-if-in-pain ugly, but it’s honest.
(I’ve stopped wearing makeup because of it.)
For others, sensing the truth engenders a different physical response.
(For my friend Alice, it’s a zing through the neck.)
I’ve spent much of my life mostly shut down. But I faked being open very, very well. (You didn’t know, did you? What a good liar I’ve been. Especially to myself.)
All that’s gone. Done. In the rear view mirror. Don’t-look-back-because-you’re not-going-that-way gone.
Now that I am a flapping flag, a revolving door, a wide-open chakra, a flowing river of feeling, I am establishing a daily practice to be accountable to the truth (as I sense it) and transparent as to what makes me cry.
I have gotten OVER me, and I intend to stay that way. OVER is an acronym I created to remind myself of the need to be:
O — Open
V — Vulnerable
E — Emotional
R — Real
OVER me echoes what I said in an earlier post: You can’t control how you enter the world, but you can control how you leave it.
So that means you’ll see social media posts, probably on Facebook, detailing The Daily Cry Fest. It’s my public promise to myself for transparency, honesty, and integrity.
Some of my cry fests will seem stupid. You may lose some measure of respect as you witness me being sloppy and silly. That’s okay. I’m not drunk. I’m totally sober. I’m just woke. Just fully, freely me.
If you like what I am becoming, I appreciate that. If you don’t, you may want to move along — nothing to see here that’ll interest you.
And that’s okay too. Because as I’ve been telling myself, even when it’s difficult and hard, it’s all good.
Photo by Tessa Rampersad on Unsplash
