I’m beginning to understand new shades and hues of this darkness. I’m starting to see that there are shadows within the darkness, not just one blinding and stumbling blackness. Now that I’ve seemingly found a lamp in this darkness, the bulb is flickering back on revealing how the shadows aren’t exactly what they looked like in the complete darkness. I have spent so much of my life in darkness with years here and there with the light flicked on, but the majority of the time it’s stayed relatively dim, making it difficult to truly trust what I’m seeing and perceiving.
I’ve recently exposed a corner that I thought was filled with shame and guilt, but now as it’s starting to become more visible, it’s actually an organized cabinet filled with times where those that were supposed to protect me, have hurt me and it’s not wrong that I, a human with emotion, to react strongly in those moments. I’ve also exposed an area that I thought was a safety net, where my feelings were validated and my perceived reality made sense within this corner of my mind, only to reveal that I was being surrounded by skeletons of unrealized wrongdoings, not wisdom. All of this leads me through rediscovering perspectives with new filters and lenses. Sometimes those discoveries have made me realize that I SHOULD feel sad about certain things. Sometimes those discoveries opened my eyes that I needed to acknowledge the details where I failed to fully see the overall image, and one where I MUST accept fault to be able to appreciate the lessons that were available through the trial.
I’ve always been a very observant person, sometimes to a fault. I recognize consistencies and inconsistencies, breaks in patterns, minute adjustments in tone or body language, etc. Certain things are very easily predictable when you understand their patterns, and I’m learning that inconsistent patterns predicted or an outcome predicted due to a pattern that’s recognized, should always be considered. Being told to not believe factual evidence that is proven over and over again is ignorant and destructive to all parties involved. I’ve had moments in life where I have predicted an outcome before it came to fruition in the exact way I imagined it to, but then still doubted each and every time that’s happened afterward, even though I prove to myself time and time again to trust my pattern recognition and gut intuition.
I think that we can prevent a lot of pain in our lives when we are willing to accept painful truths or painful patterns that need addressing, but we want to believe they will right themselves because that’s a less painful solution to the problem - and they never do. With the ignorance of these internal discoveries or realizations or downplaying their significance, the amount of distress and upset we causing ourselves is unnecessary, because, honestly, we should know better. Yes, there can always be unexpected breaks in patterns that have no observable prediction, but I’m going to simply speak to the parts of ourselves that we have been brainwashed to dismiss and question - while blindly accepting “truths” given by others without careful consideration to their authenticity or intention behind the admission.
I’ve been called naive ever since I was a young girl. I’m the kid in school that believed everything you told her, even if you were laughing while saying it. To me, I’d never be dishonest with information, so why would they be dishonest with me? Guys, I’m not kidding about the extensive and ridiculous things I’ve believed ten toes down I’ve had to overcome the hard way. For example, I wholeheartedly believed that hay bales that were wrapped in white tarp during the summer were farmers growing marshmallows because that’s what my Nana and Papa told me one summer on a long drive when I was probably about six years old. Nana and Papa would never lie to me, so I never questioned the authenticity of the statement - there was no room for error in my mind. However, growing up in my formative years in Albany, OR where there are plenty of “farm families,” it took me excitedly telling my friends about the marshmallows we drove past and they quietly stared at me in complete disbelief that I wasn’t making a joke. I’ve ALWAYS been the weird kid solely due to my blind acceptance to everything that was told to me. But, you know what, eventually people just thought I was doing it on purpose and that I should do stand-up comedy - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
For a handful of years, I appreciated my naivety because it makes life feel bright and exciting and worth exploring. It gives a childlike lens into the world around me and makes learning and discovering stimulating and intoxicating - it’s almost like I can’t get enough information to fill the empty bookshelves of wisdom within my mind. Gaining new information and knowledge was a hyper-fixation for me. I couldn’t read books fast enough. I couldn’t ask for enough extra credit assignments because I wanted more opportunity to comprehend everything as thoroughly as was available to consume. I learned coding so quickly and so thoroughly that my MySpace page was customized in every single way you could. HTML was my second language. This innate enjoyment of facts has been long forgotten within myself until recently, and it’s one of those things that I’ve rediscovered as I have taken time to process and work through knots that have ultimately affected the quality of my life. In this tunnel-vision of naivety, colors are so vibrant, so glorious, so beautiful. Life has meaning, beauty is found in the smallest of details and joy is contagious. Learning is for the wise, blind acceptance of truth was never something I was very good at - I asked all the questions all the time. You know that stereotypical student who raised their hand first in class for every question? That was me. Genuinely, learning was like my video games.
But, the more you endure through life, the reality of this world slaps you in the face so hard that your mind blocks out the memories of the beauty because acknowledgment of the disappointment and pain that fills each day, no matter how much love you pour into your environment, is a fact that you can never fully remove. Those grass stains from living life are embedded into the physical fibers of the cloth, never able to fully make disappear. Each time I take the time to carefully work stains out of the fibers, there is wear and a slight tinge of change to the area. Eventually, those small tears and scrubbed stains become so immensely frayed, distorted and discolored that it becomes unrecognizable from where it originated - it becomes completely changed and forgotten and dismissed as naive, not as a gift of enjoyment of this life.
I succumbed to the belief that my former perspectives did nothing but result in pain and embarrassment. Instead, to survive this world, I adopted the belief that I must become strong and resilient and never show weakness, never ask for help. If I did ever ask for help, I’d ask for help soothing a symptom, but never asking for help stitching the exposed flesh wound closed. It is wildly easier to ask someone to meet you for drinks, or hide within busy-ness, or hold it together long enough to make it into your front door in time to slam it closed before the tidal wave of sobs arrive, so you can temporarily forget that your heart is bleeding out and you only have metaphorical moments to live if you don’t deal with it. To actually admit to yourself that you aren’t mentally doing well and life feels like it’s spinning so much faster than your gears can go and no matter how hard you try, you have to make the decision to say “STOP!” or allow it to keep going, but you can no longer complain about it because you are choosing to not change the situation which would result in a changed outcome, if you’d only be willing to do that.
Well, unfortunately I ignored myself so many times and for so long, even though I knew better, that I found myself dissociated from physical reality and was entirely within a perceived reality built in my mind from previous traumas and experiences. My inability (or refusal?) to trust myself ultimately resulted in a type of naivety that wasn’t beautiful. Trusting in anything outside of my gut and my consistently correct pattern recognition always led to despair. I’ve writhed in internal pain so strong that giving birth is incomparable, sobbed so hard blood vessels in my face have popped, felt despair so heavy that it truly felt like there was no way out. The loneliness in that place is deafening and empty. Color no longer exists, meaning is futile and joy is vulnerable. To see outside of the pinhole of vision you have is near impossible. To recognize that there is anything outside of what is visible in this filter of reality feels ignorant and childish - this is what “real life” is. The acceptance of the gloom due to it’s pattern consistency is a very scary place to reside.
Simply attempting to formulate into words the heaviness I’ve sat in causes my hands to tremble and my heart to race. I have sat face-to-face with this heaviness in complete submission to its weight. The thought of enduring a moment longer of this debilitating and mind-boggling pain is so overwhelming that it’s almost natural instinct to act on the impulse. To not act on it feels like a cowardly attempt to be a false martyr. Why endure a moment longer when everything is futile?
Staying within this theme of naivety and ignorance of individual Truth, maybe that’s the point. Maybe every time I have succumbed to the lies of this world, it has been because I didn’t believe in my own individual Truths. Someone else once told me that they were wrong, and I believed them even though the pattern consistency never failed, and their advice had. The naivety of Truth isn’t a bad thing. Rather, naively following Truth has only ever led to colorful realities and prosperous experiences. The most soul-filling moments in my life have been when I was leaning on Truth outside of my own realities and what I have been told I need to rely on to establish my value. When I am able to blindly and naively follow where I’m wanted and where the color remains, these “flaws” actually become strengths that bloom each seed into a garden of prisms and beauty.
The areas of myself that have always felt inadequate or “not enough” or “broken” or just plain wrong, have actually been the areas that, if left vulnerable and naive, are what makes each detail of physical reality colorful and “juicy”, instead of the gray and pain and futility it naturally is filled with. Contorting myself to fit a mold that doesn’t actually exist in nature (human and otherwise) only leads to stumbling and bruises and blandness. Each and every time I have tried to be whatever version of human I think I’m supposed to be at any given moment, I am left completely exhausted and overwhelmed and confused. At times, the sacrifice of my own Truth has led to different forms of abuse from a variety of different people. When I stand in who I know myself to be, it becomes impossible for someone to damage that Truth. However, the moment I question my Truth, even for a second, I’ve already lost.
In this discovery, I saw that standing in my Truth led to natural boundaries being set with those around me, and with myself. Seeing Truth for what it is allowed me to see what Truth was not making it easy to remove myself from it or to create dynamics within and around it that still fits within what is True for me. This applies to personal habits, personal relationships, inner dialogue and every facet of life where I may have allowed mistruths to pretend to be Truths. Creating these boundaries, no matter how big or small they may have been, creates a space where I am able to curate an environment that matches my Truth, even if the Truth is a small pocket within a mistruth. The ability to distinguish Fact from fiction, or even being able to pause within a moment to listen to what’s True and what’s false, is a gift that is sorely underutilized.
For the majority of the last several years, I’ve done myself a disservice by blindly misconstruing mistruths as Truths simply because that’s what I’m being told by people I trust that’s the Truth, even when every single alarm is going off in my body alerting me to move forward with caution. In the times where I respect what is True for me and make decisions based on those principles, I enable an environment of safety and confidence and understanding which leads to the best performance I am capable of for any given task or experience, and an authentic adventure in each moment.
Time and time again, I have laid awake at night recounting every single mistake I made since the last time I laid in that spot earlier that morning. I’ve ruminated on the times I put my foot in my mouth, the times I tripped and made a fool of myself, the times I reacted before I considered the reality and the times I chose selfishness over servitude towards people that I care deeply for. I can look at these times and excuse each correctible decision based off any sort of thing I feel fits for that situation. That’s easy. I’m really, REALLY good at explaining myself through poor decisions. Has this EVER made poor decisions ones that I am proud of and want to repeat again? No. Quite the opposite.
When I sit and allow life to happen to me and I do nothing to alter its trajectory or the symptoms that are leading to an inescapable life-changing diagnosis, I have no one to blame but myself for being a passenger in my own life. Every mistake, every consequence, every stumble was warranted and deserved because I wasn’t choosing Truth, which very clearly has always protected me from these outcomes. You would think that after the 795374837596th time of bashing your head against the same spot on the wall, you’d learn not to repeat it again. But, no. Apparently, I am one of those people that have the gift of repeated exposure of consequences before the lesson is learned. Do I also have the ability to learn multitudes of things from others when I find it interesting? Most definitely. Do I have the ability to somehow choose the most painful things as the things that I need repeated exposure to? Yup. And you all wonder why I loved wine so much. #selfmedicationisnthealthy
Are many of the things I had to learn the hard way in relation to not listening to my own Truth and blindly accepting the truth of others as my own Truth? Yes. This has honestly been the hardest lesson to learn - that the goodness I see in others is a beautiful gift, but only when I’m listening properly to where I should place it. If I live within and listen to my Truth, I find a lot more opportunity for authentic joy in any given experience, even if it is through darkness. The joy doesn’t equate to happiness, but more of a confidence. An acceptance and Faith. Even when I’m stumbling through a moment, I am fully aware that there is a clear path to safety if I just follow the same route that worked each and every time prior.
This darkness is just light clouded in heavy fog. It’s time to use the dehumidifier - back to my Bible.
Xo,
Jessica
