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I'm self conscious
I feel like I have so much love to give. Which means... what?
I'm sitting here in a bar alone while Led Zeppelin blaringly declares they've got a whole lot of love... And now I'm on the curb outside and I'm cold and in pain, feeling as though I'm holding a bottomless basket with gifts desperate to be given: love dying to be shared.
Yet grappling with the nagging realization that somewhere inside me I know... Whatever this emptiness is — this endless hole of love to give — it's not... quite... right.
So what is it?
Maybe...
Maybe it's something to do with the love I learned I needed to give — needed to give or else I'd be worthless: unlovable, in turn... a failure at my one job in this world.
As this thought occurs, I can hear the words of that very young, deeply pained part of me intoning its foundational belief:
"If I'm not here to find worth through the giving of love, then what's the point? ...Why do I even exist?"
All this while another voice protests with such earnestly vehement certitude that,
"No! If only I could give enough of this whole lot of love away — all of it! all the way! — then, then I would feel whole, complete. Full, somehow, in the wake of the emptiness of all I've poured out of me and into another."
I'm humbled and grateful to be able to say at this point that I've lived through enough life to know how woefully inaccurate these perniciously persistent voices are.
And furthermore, how ultimately damaging these prescriptions for me turn out to be when I let those parts steer the ship, as it were.
"So then, perhaps,"
A wiser inner voice chimes in,
" It's actually merely a matter of redirection..."
Rather than sending out never ending love from this bottomless inner pit in the hopes it will reach some impossible to find bottom — an ending point of satiation — acceptance of my inherent worthiness: like the Cowardly Lion's Badge of Courage received at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, externally affirming what's been internally true all along... Perhaps, instead, I might try to see what happens were I to try channeling some of that love to those dark gnarled up places inside of me... The unlovable ones lurking just out of awareness until they spring up to bring shame and disgust in the ugly face of their garish presence.
What if the love I'm seeking so desperately to give is the love these parts of me are seeking so desperately to feel?
I find myself struck... Both by a wave of intrapsychic nausea at such a trite Lifetime-movie-worthy platitude, and simultaneously by a visceral, embodied experience of the truth of it.
The simplest of realizations felt through me rather than simply thought of as though it's a brand new, never before conceived of revelation.
Maybe that's it.
Because I've experienced loving the, well, lovable parts of myself — at least from time to time — the proud parts, the parts worthy of a line upon my resume of qualifications for the job of Good and Decent Human Being...
But what about the parts I secretly fear might lose me that job?
The parts so riddled with shame that they cause pieces of my being to become so brittle as to threaten to break upon exposure when fully seen.
The parts that send a shockwave of adrenaline through my system upon the remembrance of their very existence within me, as though I've been caught — exposed — by and to myself.
What if...
This endless cyclical outpouring of love-for-worth could be interrupted by the intentional and repeated channeling of just some of that love toward those dark, shadowy inner places, carrying the burden of the weight of the shame of all the actions, thoughts, and feelings I have disowned. Torn my shirt in the face of. Cast out of the Club of Me, yet, which still lurk in the corners: unalienable yet unclaimed?
It feels desperately hard, to be clear...
There are some parts in there I really do not like. Do not approve of.
Yet when I think about it, it certainly does seem as though the whole, "that's not me" approach has led to much healing... or change.
So I suppose I might as well try sending a whole lot of love way, way down inside...
As these waves of realization dawn... I feel, out here in the cold, the tiniest ray of warmth piercing through the overwhelming pain and longing... coming back up from way, way down inside...
A little spark that feels like sunlight when it peaks through the clouds and you feel it on your face.
I think I'll keep trying to practice learning, imperfectly, how to love these disowned parts of myself.
Not approving of how they might act, what they might say. Not letting them steer the ship. But loving them nonetheless. Claiming them as best as I'm able.
And seeing if that ray of sunlight grows and who knows what else might happen.
I don't know...
What do you think?
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