Owning Myself

Yeah, so… I’m still riding the themes from yesterday’s post on the metaphysics and the mundane – I mean, insofar as I’m rapidly reaching a point where I don’t care if people believe that I experience these paranormal and metaphysical happenings.

I realized that this … condition of not caring if other people believe me translates to all other areas of my life, too. My friend Deborah calls it the state of Zero Fucks Given. My life coach and friend Krissy Van Alstyne says the same thing.

This is called authenticity. It’s called owning your shit. Living your truth.

It doesn’t mean giving the finger to everybody on general principle – it’s a lot more than that. Any immature idiot with a rebellious twitch in his ass can give society the finger and claim he’s being an original. Being contrary and rebellious just because isn’t necessarily living your truth.

Living your truth and being authentic means – first and foremost – that you take 100% responsibility for your life and where you are in it. Sure, some circumstances beyond your control may have brought you to a certain place in your life, but you are 100% responsible for how you respond and the decisions you make to move forward from where you are now.

Owning your shit means you know, 100% down deep in your soul, that you have the power and the obligation to change things if you don’t like them. This means also owning your issues – your darkness as well as your light. Owning your bad habits, your past, any trauma, any self-destructive or unhealthy behavior that doesn’t aid your progress as a human being.

Taking responsibility for ourselves in every way means also honoring the parts of us we tend to reject because maybe society says these parts aren’t cool, or maybe our loved ones/friends don’t understand these parts of us. Just because people don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Like my paranormal stuff. A lot of people in my life and society as a collective don’t get it. But some do - and some, whether they personally get it or not, still love and accept this part of me.

Those folks are my tribe. Their acceptance of me is deeply comforting and just … lovely. Their acceptance helps me feel confident and loved.

But it’s not really their responsibility to accept me. It’s mine.

It’s my responsibility to own myself, to accept every part of me – parts I like and parts I tend to reject for one reason or another.

I just find that, as I dig more deeply into myself and uncover all these parts that have been hidden for decades, it’s so much easier to accept and love these parts of me. It’s like the discoveries I make and the knowing-ness I start to feel about these parts of me makes it easier and easier to love myself.

And the hidden parts that I’m uncovering - I find I want DESPERATELY to open them up, to allow them the space to be seen in me - whether or not people understand, whether or not they approve.

I want to open them up and let them be seen because they’re mine. They’re me. They belong to me, they’ve been buried in me for sooo, so long. I don’t want them hidden any longer. I want them out in the open, I want to hug them close and … I dunno, claim them. Publicly. No shame. No dissembling. No hiding.

The only times I feel truly … FREE… truly PRESENT … is when I take these parts of me and hug them close without giving a shit what others – even those closest to me - think.

It’s only when I show up like this that I feel that deep joy inside – the kind of joy too serious for tears, too holy for words.

Feeling free, feeling truly embodied, feeling fully PRESENT and fully ME feels so much better than the constant currying of approval and acceptance outside myself.

So.

MUCH.

BETTER.

And quite honestly, I find that trying to fit into others’ expectations, prejudices, etc. is EXHAUSTING. It’s just not where I want to spend my precious, limited energy while I’m in this body. I want to spend my energy on what feels good, what feels free, what feels ME.

So… I’m grateful for this dwindling interest in what anybody thinks of me. Acknowledging my truth and fucking CELEBRATING it with myself feels better than the constant struggle to fit in does.

For those who maybe haven’t found that strength within themselves yet, this is for you. Your truth and your strength is there, inside you.

It’s in all of us.

The greatest thing you can do in this life is find it and set it free.

You need it and the rest of the world needs it, too.