Processing feelings is my default…
Or maybe I’ve conditioned it to be.
It can be exhausting.
And honestly, I don’t even know how healthy it is.
There’s a part of us that we all hide. It may seem necessary to some, but at what point is it harmful to who we are?
Of all the limitations and barriers we have outside of ourselves, there’s one freedom that no one can take away from you:
Your self-expression.
Unless…you do it yourself.
…
I repeatedly go back to my past in an effort to understand the way that I am. I do it with the sole effort of trying to find what changed my ideas about life and made me suppress who I was.
I’m constantly trying to free my own soul.
Everyone has instances where they rawly expressed themselves only to find that that momentary, authentic expression was abruptly unaccepted my a person or persons around us.
And what did we do with it?
We hid it.
We told ourselves that whatever that was, it was a threat to our acceptance of our loved ones or our community.
It happens to most of us when our identities are still forming. When we seek advice from the world on how to act “rightly”
Except, the world is almost never right about who you are.
Hence…self-processing.
It’s our responsibility as humans to unfold what others made us feel guilty or embarrassed about.
That’s where our soul lies.
What’s the term?
Be unfuckwithable…
The Memory
…
I revisit one particular event over and over, looking for what it could’ve possibly done to change my life:
When my father scolded and punished me for not doing physical labor with him.
(It’s petty and trivial, I know)
For context, my parents had been divorced since I was a year old, and at this point, I was 14 and having my yearly visit with him during summer break.
My father was an unpredictable bomb, constantly controlled by financial and relationship stress. And the scarce relationship we had made him more of a threatening dictator to submit to than a father to learn from.
There’s so much complexity to this situation…but it was an epic change in my developing character for a tornado of reasons.
Not only did it make me feel unsafe in the present moment, but it also made me feel that I was only worth something if I was being productive for other people. It took away the belief that I was okay as myself.
What made it worse was that I ran from that situation. Because I let my fear of my father take control of me, I not only lost the value of just existence I also lost the ability to stand my ground and stand up for who I was.
Which led to years of an inferiority complex and an inability to feel as good a man as any…no matter what I accomplished.
…
My deepest analysis had first led me to think that this situation itself meant that I was just afraid of men. That I was inferior to others and that I was only valuable when I was at the service of others…regardless of my own feelings or desires.
And that’s the life I’ve led until I started questioning them in my 30’s.
But just today, I came up with another theory.
(Can more than one exist?)
One that seems to more broadly make sense of my interactions with most people, not just on a competitive and inferiority scale…
I’ve been seeing myself as a burden to other people.
Because what I took from that memory was that I was a rock in my father’s already full bucket. And the only way to remedy that was to make myself useful. I needed to lighten the load.
The rest is history…
It shows up when I get an unease about the time that I dedicate to others.
I’m a person others have to tolerate.
I find all the reasons why I shouldn’t put myself in someone else’s space:
I won’t approach women because I won’t be good enough for them.
I won’t approach men because I’m not as successful/powerful as them.
I’m not capable of being a good experience for THEM. It’s made me avoidant and reluctant to most interactions that have potential for love or collaboration.
Even in what are supposed to be joyful and non-tension-related moments, I’m still trying to show up in the SERVICE of other people.
In order to be worthy of their space.
And because I don’t trust myself to be good enough with others, I see myself as a burden to them.
The very self-contained projection of what I thought others were to me.
A burden…
WTF?
…
The Analysis
What does this mean?
For me, it just means that I’m still too hard on myself. It means that I still expect myself to be something else for others before I’m anything for myself. It means that I still think more than I feel. It means that I’m not okay with who I am because others may not be okay with me.
It means the boy inside of me still has some fractional influence on who I am and ultimately, how often I spend time with others and how authentic those interactions are.
But how can we decipher what this means to you?
To what’s healthy for you?
It may mean that how mindful you are about your moments and experiences is highly important.
It may mean that you have a history that tore from you the very self-acceptance and value you have as a human.
It may mean that what you think is stopping you from living life courageously or with a give-less-fucks attitude may be something you haven’t thought of yet.
And maybe you too, like me, need to find out what makes you powerful and lovable and worthy of space.
At some point we have to let go of thinking we have to constantly be something for everyone.
We have to see value in existence itself.
…
Being Human
The very health of who we are is based on humanity. Not just in the individual, but in the collective us.
How we see ourselves matters. And how we see ourselves affects how we see/treat the collective.
Our worth is not the tangible truths: success, status, wealth, and our carnal achievement in the bedroom.
These are just the byproducts of our confidence and love of who we are and the pursuit of self-confidence and self-love.
Our worth lies in dissolving the indoctrinations and beliefs we were told(threatened with even) in our most vulnerable states of adolescence and maturation….then re-creating our own beliefs about who we are and knowing that humanity itself creates value.
You are a creature of love and empathy.
That’s valuable.
You are a catalyst of creativity and resourcefulness.
That’s valuable.
You are a human that needs and wants other humans.
That’s valuable.
You are valuable as you are, not because of what you create, but your potential to create.
And sometimes I think we have to see that in order to understand that we are not burdening humanity.
We’re not the leaf that so easily dies and falls from the tree. We are the leaf that gives life to the tree. And when we do die(we make mistakes, burnout, our become lost), it’s only because of season.
We’ll be back.
Essentially back.
Not a burden, but an essentiality.
Truth and Love, Reader.
…
If you like my writing and the things I question, you might( I mean…probably) also like the questions and conversations on my podcast, The Rebel Minded Podcast. Find it with the link below on Substack, or on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts.
There are so many great stories on Medium! If you want to have access to some of the best writing by thousands of creators, start your membership with the link below, which will also support my writing.
Remember…question everything!
https://therebelminded.substack.com/
https://therebelminded.medium.com/membership
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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