stillness

I haven’t written anything in months. I have been staring out my bedroom window, wondering when things will get calmer. The older and older I get, the more I value stillness and silence in my life. The more I value bigger experiences, seeing new places, and working on being a better person, not for anyone but myself. I realized how much I care about things and the people in my life. But I started to care about the wrong things. My heart started getting consumed with things that were only bad for me. I lived every day in constant anxiety, my heart racing, and my head spinning and I often wondered what peace feels and looks like. Stuck between what is and what was.

The thought that you could be anything but yourself has always walked across my mind. But even more so, the thought that you have to be more than what you are, more than what God created you to be, is something I think about constantly. We are taught as humans that your ability to perform well, how well you can fit into other people’s boxes, and playing up to everyone’s imagination of you is one of the only things that will determine how truly worthy you really are. People have always applauded me for doing this so well, of molding myself into anything anyone wanted me to be while masking who I really am inside. In many ways, I am scared of being myself because I have spent so much of my life caring too much about what people think of me. But I am learning every day that there's bravery in being authentic. There came a time in my life when being called fake was the worst thing in the world. I cared so much about being authentic that I kept forgetting that my whole life I was living behind a wall and there never came a time when it felt comfortable for those walls to come down.

The thing that I always think about is how much stillness, solitude, and silence have helped me sow together the fabrics of my life that have always felt too torn. It brought me the answers that I needed in order for me to feel any type of stability in my life. There’s a sense of grounding you feel when you start to break away from the boxes, the cornerstones, and the walls that have always surrounded you.

I have lived with the notion that in order for me to be accepted, maybe I need to be more. But existence has always required us to be more than what we are without realizing that we are just enough. Accepting that was a battle, but it was a battle that I had to fight for, for so many years. But for the first time in my life, I am winning.

Writing in a lot of ways has helped me realize that authenticity doesn’t just exist within the confines of these pages but in the world around me.

Yes, I cared a lot about a lot of things in my life but when I started to focus on what’s really important, I realized that caring about the wrong things can drive you down a long and dark path.  That oftentimes keeping a brave heart, wide open can become your salvation, and in a lot of ways it has. But without bravery there is fear and I have let fear rule my life for far too long and it has suffocated me.

I couldn’t breathe most of the time but I was also incredibly tired because I was using all my energy on things that never truly mattered. It was easier just to exist. But I didn’t want to be more than what I already am. I didn’t want my mere existence to be something where I am working towards an image that was really never me. As I got older, getting to know my own heart has helped me realize that the people who could never truly see you for you are the same people who will never feel your heart because oftentimes they never care to. The opposite can also be said about others, there will also be people who see a glimpse into your heart, and all of a sudden your hearts are connected.  If there’s anything I learned in the process is that my heart and my presence is like the moon and the sun, one of this world. There’s no one else I can be better than myself and yes it may take a brave and open heart to be authentic and real, but it is that bravery that exists in a world full of performers and imposters, that will show you how truly one of a kind you really are.