Those words fell through my mouth as I was speaking to a friend recently. I was in one of my counseling-not-counseling sessions. I said them for her and then immediately knew they were for me too.
“Thank you for protecting me. I’m ready now.”
That’s what you say when you realize that your past self has been fighting some battles to keep you here, to keep you grounded. She has been putting some shit off, holding it at arm’s length, with the hopes that her effort will save her from future pain. But what she does not know is that if she does not let certain pains happen, she doesn’t get to grow, and she’ll just have to encounter that same pain again later. So counterproductive….and yet, she is just doing her best to take care of the you that you happen to be right now. I am so grateful for that woman. She continues to fight for me to be here and have whatever goodness I am able to experience.
But there also comes a time when you should stop depending on her to get you to the next level. For better or worse, she is selfish and short-sighted. She does her best and, yet she fails constantly. Instead of letting her make all those decisions for her and the me that I am right now, she needs a job in which she can find success. Instead of defending me (which she is shit at), I need her to start sowing seeds of awesomeness so that my future self can start living the life we are all waiting for me to live. I need her to start making me more interesting. I need her to start saying yes to kismet moments so that we can start moving towards the beauty that I am certain is just around the corner. And yes, that is going to make her a little uncomfortable from time to time, but she rarely got anything she REALLY wanted in her comfort zone.
So, say it with me now, “Thank you for protecting me. I’m ready now.”
I’m ready to experience the pain that will come from doing a myriad of things terribly but, someday, my future self will be living in a completely different world. All because my past self was brave enough to “swear to the (possible and very likely) pain”…again.
-A
Eating My Way Through It 