wisdom

Freedom From My Inner Critic’s Bullshit — Why I’m Not Fucked.

 

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Sometimes I’m worried that I’m fucked because of everything I’ve been through.

Sometimes I feel scared that the scars I hold, the wounds I feel, the rawness that’s here, isn’t ever going to heal, soften, integrate, or become something I can notice rather than feel all-consumed by.

I fear that it runs too deep, it spreads too wide, or that it’s all way- too-big.

In these moments, my inner critic is almost always holding a megaphone to his lips, making these worries feel even more real.

He takes acid with my inner psychic and they drink heavy liquor together, until they’re boozing and tripping in my mind, telling stories of my future, and attempting to publish theories in my library that lives inside.

These stories and these theories that I’m fucked not only become vividly real, they also become a future prediction that I can see.

In these moments, I fear that the silence I held for all these years — until two and a half years ago — won’t ever be broken in the complete way it needs to. That I won’t ever find ways of healing and opening in the way I need to.

Or I hear stories from my inner psychic of how the silence will break all and completely, and take me tumbling with it into a hole of overwhelm and disconnect from the sanity that lies within me, and the sanity that lies in the world outside of me, no matter how insane either me or the world, feels.

The funny thing is, though, these things have happened already. My silence has been broken, and is continuing to be, it just hasn’t been broken as much as I need it to, yet. But that’s natural, that’s normal, that’s healthy.

To not let patterns or habits be broken all and completely, to not tackle defense mechanisms head on, but to let them fall and change, gradually and softly, gradually and safely, confidently.

I’m learning it’s safe to talk, it’s safe to trust people, it’s safe to need. I’m learning it’s safe to be the one at the party, on my knees beside someone who loves me, hand holding my heart as she beats, saying softly, ‘I’m not okay’.

And when my silence did break for the first time properly — when I began my journey with therapy — it broke in a way that I burst through my four walls of silence, falling into a rabbit hole, where I tumbled and tumbled, and the world seemingly tumbled around me.

The traumas in my life began to run through me like toxic waters.

Memories and images sat on my face and my chest, leaving it seemingly impossible to breathe or to see without seeing them. The memories caused riots throughout my body, leaving stillness or anything other than wild waters, impossible to feel or be.

I had left the riverbanks of my Known, and was being swung forwards into a life where I would swim in a river I had been yet to be shown how to, but a river I innately knew I needed to.

So the thing I fear in these moments my critic is yelling I’m fucked, and my inner psychic is tripping out stories that it’s true, has already happened — my silence was broken and I survived.

It was incredibly painful and scary, but I survived.

This truth makes their future-tripping and theory-throwing even more ridiculous and hilarious, and not-able-to-be-believed, yet I still do believe it sometimes, because they’re convincing motherfuckers, and what they say seems so incredibly real.

To not believe them would be to allow myself to feel completely free, which feels fucking scary, but I’m beginning to really believe that I deserve freedom from their bullshit.

I’m not fucked.

I still have resistance and a deep knot of anxiety around all that has happened to me, to all the sections of my story — and the inner girl in me can’t help but feel sick or want to curl up in a ball and hide away when I think of the magnitude of it — but something’s changed recently.

I have the same reaction others have had when I’ve told them my story, or parts of my story.

I feel shock, compassion, sadness and admiration for the wounded part of me telling me her story. My heart aches and offers her deep unconditional love, and my body fills with warmth, support, and respect.

I realize what others have told me is true: my sanity is a sign of my strength. And it’s never going away. It can’t just up-and-leave without me one morning after a stressful and painful night of grief. And I can’t do the same to her: I can’t decide to not take her with me when it all gets too much.

She’s here with me because she, my sanity, can’t abandon me.

I’m learning to love my crazy — the crazy I find living in this nutty society, and healing from my youth and early adulthood of trauma — but I don’t have any axis II living inside me.

So that makes my friend, Sanity, a companion on my journey, no matter how much distance feels between us, or how far from home she’s seemingly roamed.

I do feel scared when memories unfold or catch me deeply, but I am increasingly seeing that I can hold my story.

I can hold all that has happened to me, because I’ve already lived through all it and survived it, so I can live through and survive — and thrive — from this time now. This time of healing and letting my wounds speak.

This time of breaking my silence all and completely, however long this time takes.

I do still fear losing myself completely — I fear falling from the riverbanks that I’ve now formed, on which I can swim to and take time-out when my internal waters feel wild — but I know now that to get incredibly messy and fall apart, to leave the banks of the known, is the beginning of a rebirth.

Always.

Because even when I was seemingly losing myself completely, I was finding myself entirely.

Sometimes we need to lose all ground to find what keeps us afloat. Sometimes we need to skinny dip with all that has been before, and the fear of the unknown of what we’re swimming into, to be able to figure out what ground we can hold and what ground we need to let go.

Sometimes we need to be with the weeds, the fishes, the fellow river swimmers, to find what keeps us nourished and healthy.

Sometimes we need to immerse ourselves in the wilderness of the earth and the world inside us to learn the tides and how they turn, so we can find our feet and figure out what stroke we want to swim.

 

*****

10 tips for how to keep an open heart from breaking every day.

{You are not. You know what.}

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Amani Omejer

Amani Omejer

Amani lives in Bristol, UK. She can be found enjoying herbalism, swimming in rivers, surfing, laughing, and talking about life with friends or anyone who will listen. She is a firm believer in telling your story in order to heal. She is currently writing a book. Connect with her on Facebook or take a look at her website.
Amani Omejer
Amani Omejer