i was afraid of failure. i couldn't look into its eyes without recoiling back into my shell. i couldn't endure the pain associated with failure. i was afraid of pain too. we grow up thinking that life is suppose to be effortless. that happiness is the ultimate goal, and that we must do everything in our power to attain it. what if i argued that the purpose of life was the complete opposite? what if life is about failure, pain and fear. we haven't been taught to accept our negative emotions. we have been told that we must fight against them, we must push them away into a corner until we can't see them anymore. i've said this before and i'll say it again: pain is an unloved child. like a child we must nurture our pain. we must allow ourselves to carry it, to feel it and to hold it. how can we erase something before we even get to understand it? understanding our pain is the key to healing. for a long time i chose to suppress my pain into a corner. rather than look into its eyes, i would push it beneath the surface of my soul so nobody could see it. more importantly so i couldn't see it.
we must accept our pain. we can't be afraid of getting hurt. in order to understand happiness we must understand pain. how do we understand the concept of darkness? it is because we have been exposed to the concept of light. in actuality, our pain and our happiness balance one another. they work together instead of against each other. once you understand your pain, you will understand how to be happy.
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growing up in south asian culture you are constantly bombarded by the idea that a woman's place is in the kitchen. she must cook for her husband, take care of her children when her husband is away and make sure that the house is clean before her husband gets home. her life revolves around a man. she has no identity, no sense of self. she is trapped within her own home. her financial dependence is manipulated by the man that she is with. he can treat her however he pleases because he is the "man of the house", the one who pays the bills and shoves them down her throat. watching so many woman suffer inside of their own home is something i've grown up with. it became normal to see that the only thing that mattered in a woman was how well she obeyed her husband. at this point in my childhood men disgusted me. i hated them because they were never there for me. i was threatened by their "power". how can a father love his daughter if she treats his wife like that? no, it isn't hard. i was tired of hearing excuses. just because a man is stressed out doesn't mean he has the right to take his anger out on you. that excuse wasn't good enough. this is why i became a fighter, i was easily threatened by anyone who tried to cross me. to get ahead in life i thought i had to become more masculine. whatever you lack in the home is what you will look for outside of it. i lacked a masculine figure that wanted to understand me, so i began to look for him outside of the home. i craved a masculine energy that would nurture me instead of threaten me. i wasn't looking in the right places though. i attracted insecure, manipulative guys who, much like my father growing up, didn't understand me. there was even a point in my life where i became that woman. i was dependent and i allowed him to manipulate me. "what you put up with is what you will end up with". i then began to understand the dynamic of these women. it was the most insecure i had ever felt in my life. i cried every single night, was stressed every single morning and forgot about everything in between. to love someone who doesn't know how to love you is like a slow death. i became hollow and numb inside, it had to get to that point for me to finally set myself free. i was going out into the world with nothing to lose, because emotionally i had lost it all. this happened two years ago, but this is the story of so many women today.
love yourself first. there is no man, no woman, no thing in this world who is capable of loving you as much as you. strength isn't masculinity. i had it all wrong. strength is me. it is being able to look myself in the eye without fear. respect yourself, so much so that you are able to say no. that you are able to let go of people and things that no longer serve you. that you can go out into the world with nothing and still feel like you have everything. that girl inside of me is gone and she is never coming back. the stem curls out of the seed. the leaves unfold. the roots intertwine with one another. we are like plants.
i share a deep affinity for mother nature. she continues to feed even when she is hungry. one of the most humbling experiences of my life has been watching my avocado plant grow. i remember the first moment i saw its roots poking through the water. i was watching life unfurl itself, i was watching the beginning of existence. there are so many things that i have learned from mother nature, the most meaningful lesson being : you are a miracle. like a plant we grow. the breath of life awakens the soul from slumber. to exist is a miracle. when we open our mouths we take our first breath. when the plant opens itself up it takes its first breath.everything in this world is interconnected. when you learn to see everything and everyone as a reflection of yourself you create empathy. how could i hurt you if you are an extension of myself? if i hurt you i am hurting myself. like a plant we begin as seeds. where were we before we existed? where was the plant before it bloomed? but i watched it grow, it existed as a seed before it knew it was alive. i was passing through life with my eyes closed. it was easier for me to be unhappy and afraid. those labels stuck to my skin, i was too weak to peel them off. for so long i put myself into a box of who i thought i was suppose to be. i cut out the parts of me that overflowed, i suppressed the parts of me that wanted to breathe. i was a fragment of a person who felt stuck and vulnerable. i felt like i had to be this person because she was the only version of me that felt comfortable. i found comfort in my pain and in my sadness, so much so that it became a part of who i was rather than who i wanted to be. these labels that we put on ourselves damages our ability to evolve and to grow. i chose to limit myself because i was too afraid of my potential, afraid of being too much or too creative or too spontaneous. what i have learned from life is that we must be able to surrender to the idea of who we think we are. if we continue to stick these labels onto ourselves we inhibit our ability to become something greater. we must acknowledge these labels, and we must understand that we can rip them off at anytime. we aren't stuck.
healing takes patience. if there is anything that i have learned in the past year it's that healing is a choice. it is easier to give up on yourself than it is to heal yourself because when you choose healing you are choosing to be introspective, you are choosing to look at your reflection and all of the things tied to it. you are choosing to look at parts of yourself that you have kept hidden and tucked away because you were too afraid to acknowledge their existence. as i continue to heal, i realize that there are so many wounds that i have left open. wounds that deal with my childhood, wounds that deal with insecurities and fears. wounds that i didn't even know existed. everything around me began to hurt because i allowed pain to finally enter my life. ever since i was a kid i could remember suppressing my feelings and my pain. i was afraid of being "weak" and "emotional", so anytime i felt angry or upset i would isolate myself in a room and cry. actions not only speak louder than words, but they communicate your emotions. me isolating myself was a reflection of how i felt alone. those thoughts manifested into my reality. i felt like nobody could understand me, and unconsciously i put myself in a position to be misunderstood because i never tried reaching out for help in the first place. i carried my past with me, so much so that i allowed it to define me. i wasn't happy and i still don't understand what makes me happy, which is the point that i am trying to make. there is no such thing as being "happy all of the time". there is no such thing as being "completely healed". if anything, the only thing that matters is that you are better than the person you were yesterday, my mother use to tell me that the only competition i am in is the one against myself. even though i have done everything to heal myself to attain this idea of "happiness", i still feel empty. now, there is two ways to look at that: 1. i need to fix this or 2. it's okay. this decision will either make or break you, because if you choose the first one, you will always be in a loop. if you choose the second one you are resilient enough to recognize that pain is okay. we as a society try so hard to change and manipulate our pain. we do anything that we can to get rid of it. i believe that pain is an unloved child. the moment you learn to love your pain is the moment that you will be free from it. acceptance is the greatest form of healing.
we are all reflections of the universe.
when you take a step back and think about your existence you begin to realize that everything in this universe is interconnected. your external reality is a reflection of your internal manifestations. life will be miserable if you carry darkness inside of you. life will be whimsical if you carry light inside of you. i remember hearing the concept, "pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional." your reactions are more important than the situation. you can't control the situation but you can control how you look at it. your perspective and perception is something nobody can take away from you. i use to think that i had to settle in life, settle into who i am suppose to be, settle into the limits i put on myself. it took a long time for me to realize that none of that is real. if there is anything you should take away from what i am saying, take this: you have a choice. you are powerful. you are full of potential. the moment you start believing it i promise you, your world will shift. in that case, i suppose you are controlling the universe. we are all reflections of the universe. as a child, i never knew what boundaries were. i had a big heart, and i believed that everyone deserved a bite out of it. vulnerability and ignorance is a dangerous combination. i lowered my expectations and allowed them to walk over me, step on me and destroy me. i was a child unaware of how cruel the world could be. the people i loved were the people that hurt me. i became afraid of opening my arms and reaching out for help. i lowered my gaze, afraid to look anyone in the eye.
i didn’t know what was wrong with me. for so long i believed that i was a monster. i sealed my mouth shut, but my pen was still moving. i wrote about it because i couldn’t talk about it. about all the pain and all the baggage i had carried since i was a little girl. i no longer look for healing in the people that hurt me. pain is an unloved child. i was too afraid to face it, but when i did, i saw the most beautiful thing. pain was me as a child. my inner child was reaching out to me, looking for love and looking for help. i neglected it the same way people were neglecting me. i picked up my inner child and carried it in my arms. i looked into its eyes and tears rolled down my face. this is who i have been looking for. i loved people that couldn’t love me or themselves. you are not your wounds
everyone's shoes are battered and bruised we have all touched the abyss of hopelessness the dreary sounds of loneliness pain tried to suppress me undress me from the beautiful truth of who i truly was suffering is a choice you must bleed light onto the world because you are love and light everything is an intuitive illusion
no single human experience is the same there is beauty in knowing that i am a once in a lifetime a miracle child nothing can hurt me unless i let it i truly am both the creator of my life and the creation of something greater God
wrapping his arms around me and showing me that there is beauty in the world even when i am wounded by it Mother Earth nourishing me breathing life into my soul cradling my dreams so that they could manifest into reality The Universe for spinning my soul with the saliva of stars, the milky galaxies and oblivion for drawing me in her image and showing me that even darkness can be swelling with light |
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