For an exaggeratedly long time now I have been afraid of being too much. I’ve been afraid of expressing all of me and not being understood, of being rejected for my truth. I wasn’t always aware of this lingering fear of mine since it came in disguise, in subtle ways making me compromise who I was, making me a more edited, cropped and censored version of myself, both physically and in character. It has made me silent when I felt the urge to speak and made me speak when I would rather just have stayed silent. It has made me feed my absorbed insecurities rather than boost my inborn self-confidence. It has made me listen to others when I should have listened to myself just as it has made me full of myself, deaf and stubborn, when I should’ve listened to others. So here is me embarking and completing the journey of stripping myself of this fear to become who I am.
One would think it seems obvious that we should all simply be who we are but the harsh reality of it is that this fear of simply being is one that persists in most of us, sometimes even all the way to the grave. This I refuse. Now that I’ve began acknowledging this fear it seems more and more irrational for me to continue putting in such immense effort in order to be less of myself. In hindsight I think it was the conscious choice to be more of myself that aggravated things and set the war in motion; the opposing forces within me made the state of things unsustainable and I was brought to some sort of breaking point. It is no wonder that I’ve been exhausted, pumped out of all energy with nothing left to do anything that does not contribute to the resolution of the inner conflict. I have been so busy draining myself of vitality that adding a single thing to my list of burdens, however light they might have seen, would have caused me to crumble. It’s not that I’m week and nor do I carry more than anyone else, quite contradictory I am strong and I refrain from carrying more than what lays within my direct span of responsibilities. It is rather, fortunately so (though it might seem unfortunate to the outsider at first glance) that circumstances have led me to evolve in such a way that I have been forced to prioritize. I have been pushed to truly and wisely pick my battles, or more accurately: pick my battle.
And so, as I have been brave enough (because most of us know it truly does take courage) to go into this most crucial of battles, the one between who I am and who am not- yet who I have tried foolishly hard to be, I am gladly seeing the dawn of a ceasefire on the horizon. I realize now that ‘who I am not’ stands little to no chance at all at winning this battle of battles because, regardless of how fearful I might have been, there seems to be little to nothing at all that can possibly stop ‘who I am’ from winning this battle of battles. ‘Who I am not’ is slowly giving in more and more willingly, beat from trying to impose itself on a pure force of nature. As it turns out, ‘who I am not’ has been waiting for me give it some sort of sign that it is allowed to give up…
They say that it isn’t the darkness within that scares us the most but really our inner light that brings us most fright. Today I know this for a fact… just as I know that fear is something to be faced. So when fear has the upper hand, making us shiver from the mere thought of moving into it, let us think of it this way: facing the significant fear of truly embracing and embodying who we are really means to face, embrace and embody a pure being of light and love. Now, how scary can that really be if we don’t even think too much about it but simply feel it? Doesn’t feel too bad does it? Yet I’ve still been (and I know I’m not the only one) scared shitless to really encounter and accept this person that I am, intrinsically good and beautiful! Why? Because in some twisted way my conditioned mind had me thinking I would be too much if I didn’t hold back.
We live in a world where almost everyone does this automatically to themselves and so we too grow to learn to do the same. We dim our light and we cover up the most raw and pure bits of our being. All this as a desperate yet understandable attempt at being loved, though ironically when we do so we tell ourselves that we are not loveable just as we are. We send signals to ourselves and others that only once we are a little less of who we are and a little more of who we are not we can maybe be loved fully. Stupid isn’t it? Yes it is stupid because it is a lie, and it is a lie I’ve been longing to bust not merely in theory but also in practice. So as I am acknowledging, embracing and growing into the fullness of me, I intend to bust this lie. I am proving to both myself and others that I am loveable just as I am- uncensored and undimmed. Belittling and distorting myself further is but an act that I am growing weary of putting on.
Suddenly, being too much doesn’t seem so scary anymore because if I can still love myself untamed and raw, I need not worry of much else. Suddenly my eyes are open to see the beauty in the pure and honest being in others as well as in myself. And following, suddenly my heart is inviting to be loved wholly by others in return. So first, I’d like to thank ‘who I am not’ for putting up such tough resistance, making the winner even more worthy than it might otherwise have been. But most of all I’d like to thank the champion of this battle of battles.
Congratulations ‘who I am’, I now surrender to you.
You have won.
I have won.
ॐ serendipity 