A Rush of Blood to the Head

I have spent my entire life up to my 25th year missing the point. I have spent exactly 9,125 days treating myself as the little girl who knows less than the majority of the world around her. I have remained innocent, quiet, subscribed, controlled, and told how to be by every single human who crossed paths with me. Whether they meant well, told themselves they did, or sought me out for selfish desires, everyone has tried to teach me or shape me in some way. I am tempted to take the stance of the victim and feel as though everyone but me was aware of this dynamic, feeding into it, attempting to manipulate or control it. I would be doing an incredible injustice to myself if I allowed that victim-oriented belief to simmer inside my brain for another moment.

You see the belief that no matter what I do or where I go I will be greeted by others who are attempting to mold me into their own version of myself may seem seductive and attractive to a spirit weighed down by the weight of the world around her, but I know in the depths of my being that this is not true. I am an active participant if I refuse to take responsibility for the runoff of others drowning my own soul. That is when I began to notice the point. That was day 1.

That day looked like an incredible amount of anger pouring out of me. I seethed from places I hadn't yet witnessed. I felt a burning buzz vibrate in places that had yet to feel active within me. I felt life spring up aggressively from places that I had yet to discover even existed within me. I discovered new life within myself on day 1 and more than anything else, I was pissed.

My body ran hotter than usual. My skin radiated a flame that would end up raging for weeks and weeks. That flame was a miracle that would set my entire world on fire, burning away each and every square inch of myself that has ever chosen to comply without asking why. Every speckle that has silenced herself in the face of others. Every molecule that has lived the role of a victim, never in control, never able to escape or end their suffering at the hands of others. Their shaping. Their unfortunate, overrated conditioning and layering that has suffocated them until this very moment. This heat that emanated from my flesh and my spirit was hot and powerful enough to burn through many of these layers at once. The most important layer that caught fire was the layer that held it all together. Enclosing me and suffocating me in a bag of my own design and choosing. A bag that contained the false belief that in order to be loved and accepted, I had to sell myself entirely. A belief that almost killed me.

So I stood on a nearby mountain and watched those layers burn. I watched closely for days, without removing my roasted eyes from the heat. I watched in awe as the structures that burned down within me revealed my own role in diluting myself and making myself so small that I was barely visible to the world. Then came the grief. The shame. The absolute disgust with myself and the life that I have lived with my head gently tucked beneath the soft, safe cotton covers. Using that thin membrane of seemingly peaceful shelter, draped with denial, the decision to hand out invitations for my own oppression was made. I didn't know it yet but those 9,125 days that I spent buried safely in my own sheet and pillow fort were all building up to the moment that it would be mercifully torched to the ground. All that time I was beckoning a call to my deepest and truest self to wake up and see the ugliness that has built up around the outside of my fort. It was time for me to hold space for the truth so I called it in with all my power, from beneath those light sheets of mine.

The truth steamrolled in, running over my life and my reality, as it does when one calls it in with such fervor. But it was not the end. It was only the beginning and the discoveries that were on their way, close by and ready to unravel within, would paint the surfaces they were called in to paint. The surfaces they were meant to cover with their truth and importance. After the fire within me raged and destroyed as much as it could, when the skies rained ash and the sun disappeared, when the thoughts that would usually get swallowed found their voice, when the space I had confined myself to exploded outward with no bounds, that is when the excitement of becoming met the tension of unbecoming. That is when my body hit the ground and disintegrated before my very eyes. That is when I chose to rise.

I have been met by many destabilizing and uncomfortable realizations in this life. Perhaps the most horrific to come to my attention was the realization that I have been giving myself away, in teeny tiny pieces, to people who neither deserved those pieces, earned those pieces, nor had a right to those pieces. You see, those were my pieces to give away, but I was never meant to give them away to someone outside of myself. The fear of going through this life, through this unforgiving world, without being loved, without being accepted, and without being supported by someone outside of myself, left me feeling empty. Worthless. Unlovable. The longer I waited for salvation, for redemption, for oxygen to flow through my lungs, the longer I believed that I couldn't attain any of it until someone gave it to me. Until someone gave me permission to feel loved. Until someone gave me permission to be loveable. Until someone proved to myself and the world that there were things within me worth loving and celebrating.

I waited for 9,125 days for someone outside of me to tell me I was worthy enough to be my full, authentic, extraordinary self in this life. But on that 9,126th day, I woke up to a fire that could only go out on its own. A fire that would end up simmering within me for the rest of eternity. A fire that can never be extinguished; not by any exterior force, not by any other human or being, and certainly not by myself. Not anymore. I waited 9,125 days for that fire to be born inside of me and I called out to Gods I did not worship for the truth to be ignited beneath my world because although I knew nothing of the painful truths within the walls that would soon be engulfed in the flames of justice and universal balance, I longed for their existence. I depended upon it.

My fires have not gone out as they simmer on with the help of an unrelenting truth and a never-ending journey into the ash that it creates. That ash is the life, the world, and the reality that pushed down on me like the pressure of an inner explosion. The truth that I begged and prayed on my hands and knees for was the spark that lit the flame. The flame that solicited the explosion. The explosion that rearranged my world, my being, and my energy. I am bigger, I am bolder, I am hotter than ever before. I am free from the layers of untruth that have been told to me, by others and myself. I am released from the need to trade abuse for a tiny drop of love and acceptance. I am no longer chained down by the belief that whatever form of love, no matter how tainted and poisoned it may be, will quench my thirst for worthiness. I don't need a false or fraudulent love to define for me my worth. I don't need a fragile man, who hates himself with overwhelming shame, to dish out partial, imitated rations of love and whisper to me that the more perfect I become, the more love he will give me. I don't need the acceptance and validation of anyone to feel loved and accepted. Not the person who judges all from their sheltered tower, not the person who casts shadows over others because they think they must dim all the light around them to experience their own shine. And most certainly not the person who thinks that no matter how selfish and hateful they are, I am bound to continue working myself to the bone to extract love from them. I don't want their love. I want love from myself.

So I end on this simple note: where there is love, true and empathic love, I will never feel as though I must control or extinguish the flames of my fire. Where there is kind and compassionate love, I will never feel as though I must be better to earn it. Where there is vulnerable and authentic love, I will never, ever, EVER have to question my own truth or my own self to feel it. Not for a single moment. I will feel safe enough to embrace the truth within, no matter how hot the flames burn. I will feel supported enough to know that I am worthy, just as I am. I will feel seen and accepted enough to know that there is never a thought or a feeling that arises within that is not meant for this world to hold. How do I know what this love is supposed to look and feel like? Because on day 1, when my entire being burst into flames, I was met by a small girl sitting crosslegged with her head bowed in the dead center of the flames. When I asked her who she was and how she was still alive, she replied with an unwavering voice, "I am Jilly, and nothing can keep me from showing up for you. Not even the flames of hell are enough to burn through the love I have for you. The scorching heat and yellowish-orange glow reunites us once more. If you sit down with me in the middle of these flames and take my hand, I promise that I will never leave your side". So I sat down with her and now I get to carry pure love with me everywhere I go. I don't need to search for it, beg for it, or trade my worth in for it. I am Jilly, and nothing can keep me from me. And my sweet friends, I AM LOVE!