I'm not honest about...

I just want to be done pretending. To myself. To you. To everyone. I thought I was. But, the ego is a sneaky thing. There’s a reason why purging it is called “death”.

I’m not honest about how much love means to me. I’m not honest when I tell myself I want to be casual. No, I want to want to be casual, but when has anything in my life ever been casual?

For all my experience, what I haven’t experienced is true safety. That feels kind of cruel. When you learned how to protect others at 4 years old and were awakened to the actual evil that exists by 6, it feels like you’ve lived multiple lifetimes in 36 total years on this planet in the vessel you call “me”.

My dreams are too big for this world

and yet

too small for what we call “life”.

I am nothing without the One that flows through me. This isn’t an invitation for compliments; it’s a truth statement about the way I experience existence. And for me, that experience is comforting— I don’t care if it strips my “ego” — I’ll be glad if it does.

Ego isn’t just “pride” or “confidence” — ego is your idea of who you are. And the more titles, roles, boxes, instructions we give to that part of us, the more we LIMIT who we could be.

I don’t want to perform. I don’t care about crowds. I’d rather have 3-5 people in my corner who actually know me and love me and care than hundreds who make me feel special. I don’t care about feeling special. I care about being loved.

Isn’t that what we all want, if we’re honest? Love. Isn’t every attempt at anything that makes us feel good just our brains and bodies trying to register the experience of love that we are so desperate for? We want to be wanted. We want to be seen. We want to be heard. We want to be chosen.

But, you know what else? We want to be invited. We want to be held. We want to be considered. We want to be appreciated. We want to be… loved.

They’re all forms of love trying to express itself. Even the desire for self-honesty and others-honesty is a craving for love. A craving that asks “if I stop striving, will you still love what’s under all the effort”?

Effort—

man. We all know different levels of this, don’t we? Especially those of us who grew up where love was conditional. Where the amount of love you received was measured by what you did and how good-enough the thing you did was…and the kicker— it was never good enough. Ever. So, you failed before you ever began. Destined to fail. Destined to feel rejection. Destined to live in the absence of love, perpetually striving, for a destination of good enoughness that you will never reach.

And then you take that concept of love into the world as you love and hear the “i love you” that you dreamed of. And you think- wow, I’m so loved. But are you? Or are you just loved better than you were as a child? Better than my childhood love… that was my standard. And I thought I had everything. Until I realized that what most people call love is a mirage based on conditions. It wants your body naked, but not your soul. No— love can’t handle your soul.

So then, love becomes body. But body is only one dimension of love. And when you know what it’s like at 6 to be told “i love you” by someone that violates your body the “i love you” that welcomes your body and forgets your soul feels to be its own violation.

I just want to be done pretending. To myself. To you. To everyone. I thought I was. But, the ego is a sneaky thing. There’s a reason why purging it is called “death”.

I’m not honest about how much love means to me. I’m not honest when I tell myself I want to be casual. No, I want to want to be casual, but when has anything in my life ever been casual?

For all my experience, what I haven’t experienced is true safety. That feels kind of cruel. Maybe that’s why I long for love. Because maybe love is really safety. And maybe safety is another way I long for love.

Photo by Alice Alinari on Unsplash