Once Upon A Beautiful Life

Once upon a time, there was girl named Emily, who loved her life. It was beautiful. All around her, vivid fall colors burst like rainbow fire on the trees, the crisp Autumn breeze kissed her neck, while bees flirted with her cheeks. The birds overhead chirped mercilessly like feathered gossips, and flittered from branch to branch without a care in the world. 

As she continued to live the way she always live - the way she was taught - she began to become anxious about things she would normally be excited about. She worried about death from her planes crashing as she traveled to places she dreamed about living. She worried that not being perfect, or not having the right credentials, would cause the earth to shatter and the tides to change and cause tidal waves. She thought that not being or acting in a way she was supposed to, not looking the right way, or saying the right thing, would cause the moon to fall out of the sky, and the sun to drip molten blobs onto the citizens of Earth. 

She found herself avoiding feelings of uncomfortableness rather than acknowledging and dealing with them. She created caves she could dive into whenever she felt awkward. She constructed barriers like helmets and suits of armor that kept her from sharing too much. She made sacrifices - she took more than one for the team - that hurt her more than the people she was attempting to protect. Rather than being honest about how she felt, she kept her thoughts and feelings tucked away, only to have them emerge at inappropriate times and places. And that, often times, felt worse. 

She continued to find faults and weaknesses in others, rather than appreciating the things to love about them. She lost the ability to trust people around her, and care for herself when disappointed. She saw the same insecurities, the same pain, the same hurts, the same masks, the same defenses in others that she had, too. And, rather than forgive them and help… she decided she’d just deal with her junk on her own. She wanted to be an island. Quiet, desolate, and alone, depending solely on herself for love and belonging.

Emily wanted to escape these changes she was noticing and hide. She hoped that by running away to a private island, she would experience no feelings of being misunderstood, no worrying about what other people thought of her, no uncomfortableness, no anxiety. She thought she’d find peace. But that's rarely what she found. 

She'd run away by sometimes crawling into a good book and forgetting about what really bothered her, hoping it would go away like a tiny mouse finding food and hurrying back to its hiding spot. She'd run away by zoning out and watching tv or playing with her phone like a purposeless zombie. She wanted to filibuster her way through social gatherings in order to not actually talk about what concerned her the most. She wanted to run from her feelings by making light of them, and brushing them off, as if they were a piece of dandelion that happened to land on her shoulder. She wanted to pretend, and act like her feelings weren't important in comparison to others' needs and feelings. After all, that’s how she was taught; she knew no different. 

Except, that this all made her physically uncomfortable. 

Emily finally realized, after years of disbelief and doubt, that she had a choice. She started to understand the power of the words and beliefs floating around in her mind, that were masterfully planting themselves, and becoming facts. Some words  - these non-truths, beliefs and statements - were her own, some were not. Some were taught. “If I don’t act like ____, if I am not perfect, then I am not worthy of belonging.” Or, “If I show vulnerability or emotion, then I am weak and not worthy of love.”  Without her realizing it, beliefs like these had planted themselves, and they were growing and twisting themselves like suffocating vines around her mind. She was using them to paint this image of how she should be and what her life should look like.

So she decided to change it; to uproot these beliefs and plant new ones. “I am imperfect; I am a hot mess, but I am happy being uniquely me. I am most definitely worthy of belonging.” And also added: “Being honest, real, authentic, and vulnerable are traits of those who are strong, and while uncomfortable for a time (for some), they build more strength. I am strong, and I am worthy of love.” 

As Emily worked at the gardening of her mind, she struggled. She fought weeds that were difficult to uproot, and ached over the holes that seemed too deep to dig. Despite the hard work, she continued to maintain her garden, watering the saplings she planted, and marveled at the beauty that was and continues to be her life.