how to be alone with yourself

  
PC: Paul Harkins*

| day #30 || #33costablues |
You know what’s ok?
Changing. 

And it’s hard because those closest to you don’t always accept it, friends and family won’t get it: like “But you’ve always liked ______.” “You’ve always done ______ this way.” You’ve never been that way before.”
But we are humans, we are complex, dynamic creations. Works of art. Changing, evolving, elaborately detailed, blossoming, meticulous through and through.
One wind of change I have felt in myself lately is a balance of introverted and extroverted-ness. I used to utterly loathe alone time, propelling me into the constant company of others, not one minute of time by myself. But as I arrived in my yoga class today, uncharacteristically early and very much alone, I laid down on my mat and just sat there, alone on my thoughts.
Ann Lamott used to say she treated her mind like a bad neighborhood and tried never to go there alone, but I did. I wandered into that dark space with no one but me and sat with myself. This kind of lonely mental wandering used to drive me up a wall. But today I kind of enjoyed it. And it hit me, this revelation: I’ve changed. And this is what it is. My need to be incessantly surrounded by others was actually my insecurity and obsession with deriving my identity, purpose, value and meaning from others. I wasn’t able to sit alone with myself, because I didn’t necessarily like who I was and what I found there. An anxious, insecure, empty, needy, hyper desperate girl dying for the validation of everyone else to tell her that she mattered. In high school it would be from my friends, cracking ridiculous jokes and acting up in class to hear that I was funny. In college I needed boys to tell me I was pretty. After college I needed my boss to tell me I was smart and performed well at work. It went on and on. 
But today, a soul in training, where I can still ask for little shots in the arm from others to boost my ego, I am sitting alone with myself and I rather like what I found there. My identity is rooted in the promise that I am absolutely loved by my Creator and that I am bursting at the seams with value and purpose, that my life matters and I am unique and one of a kind with nothing to prove to anyone else… as I recall these divine truths, I find that I am floating: baptized in freedom that only comes from Jesus. We all want to be free and one of the first steps for me is the severance of defining myself from others around me.
I am still very much extroverted but I have found freedom in letting go of the need to control how an entire crowd or a single individual perceives or receives me. The vulnerability to put it out there and just fully be fully myself is relinquishing the manipulation and control of someone’s response to me. I can be free and you can be free to fully just be.
Change can be terrifying, but there is something waiting for you on the other side. Don’t you want to pioneer some new territory? Courageously go in a new direction and I will meet you there.

  
PC: Wheeland Photography

#bebrave

#freedom

#heartwork

#writers