And so I emerge
13 August 2011 06:27 AM Categories: Writing prompts | The struggle
But also: love and its loss and what the others are saying about me, judging my value by what I provide, saying that if I can’t do that, then what am I good for? Oh, it still scares me, love and its exit, its decisions about me, my value going down, down, like the stock market and housing prices, like interest rates. This is part of my shifting thinking, realizing that I am not a commodity, that I have intrinsic value, that sometimes love does a turnabout and it isn’t necessarily about me, it’s about chemistry and its lack, or the way history piles up on us and changes us and our viewpoints. It’s about someone else’s history and what they are capable of, too, something that is out of my hands.
It wasn’t until a few days ago, with all this practice at staying in the moment, feeling the fear without trying to buffer it, feeling the pain, too, that I realized this was part of my underlying assumption about myself, that my value was only in relation to what other people thought of me, to how they felt about me, that I had to keep on dazzling them (with words, with deeds, with a show of my goodness) to keep the feelings alive. My feeling of self has moved here and there, attached to those who attach themselves to me. Love and its loss means my creation and destruction. It’s no wonder that I avoid getting any deeper into it. Immersion into the other means potential death, my self reflected in black, fading into nothingness.
And under all of this was a self that I had submerged, something that felt ugly and wanting and bad, just plain bad. Well, she’s here, she’s scrubbing off the blood and dust, she’s exposing her wounds to the sun. Underneath it all, her skin gleams and her smile surprises and she has things that anyone would want to be close to, an agile mind, a quick step, a surprising viewpoint. She is me and she’s not perfect, but she has a right to be here, to exist in the world, and we’re still scared, we’re both scared, but getting stronger every day.
From the prompt "I am no longer afraid of it."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos.
Image of a Wonder Woman wall mural in Rio de Janeiro by Digo_Souza
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