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Everyone and their mom believes in “health” and “self-care.”
Scroll through social media and you will see loads of perfectly made meals that look nearly photoshopped, butts as high as the Empire State Building. You will see smiles with an otherworldly white bleached glow. Goddesses with headpieces on from FreePeople.com. You will see couples that never tell each other to “Fuck off.”
And we buy into this bullshit.
This buying in looks like talking about our latest diet that is saving the environment, the “downfalls” of pretty much everything we like to eat and drink. How we have it all together and do the right things, no matter what. We do this instead of actually talking about what in the fuck is going on with us.
We think if we work with a new energy healer, get our chakras aligned, fortune told, plus have a vegan meal, that we are set. Yet we still carry an aching that no amount of jade eggs can squeeze away.
It is called the ache of being human.
We were born with it.
No, it is not like original sin where there is something wrong that we need saving from. That there is something dirty about us we need clearing. Actually the opposite. We are built in with this uncanny ability to desire and hunger and want for deep mind-blowing pleasure. And it is this desiring and hungering that brings us an ecstasy and a pain that only being alive can bring.
We can numb it out with yoga classes, spandex pants (men you are welcome for those), goddess circles, sage, vegan pork sandwiches. We think we are “good” when we do another cleanse, but really we have never lost our good to begin with. We run rampantly filling our time with things that we think will quiet the nagging feeling in our bodies, that no matter what, we are not good enough.
Guess what? Everyone has this nagging feeling. Especially the goddess on her facebook taking a rose petal bath for her yoni, explaining how to orgasm ten times within ten minutes.
The lie is that doing anything different will make us better than we were before.
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I sit here in the parking lot at the grocery store down the street from my house watching one of the most beautiful women I have seen in a long time. She looks to be in her 70s, lines covering her face and her hands. Fluffy hair that defies gravity. All of the doors in her car are open as she walks out of it and stands in the empty parking space next to her. One hand on her hip, the other hand smoking a cigarette. And something strikes me deep about this woman, smoking, taking up a whole parking space just standing there. She is in her own world that seems quiet at the moment.
She is fucking brave.
It is brave to do the “unhealthy” thing in a world that is obsessed with doing what is right, healing, wholesome. While secretly doing things behind the scenes that most people have a hard time admitting to.
It is brave to let herself age, to choose for this moment to have a damn cigarette in peace, and not have to blog about it or feel bad about it.
Here I am picking through my healthy trail mix for the chocolate pieces because I wouldn’t allow myself just to get a freaking bar of chocolate. I feel like the lost one here.
I had to cancel all of my appointments today with symptoms that landed me in the ER. And I get there (after often doing most things ‘right’) and I’m told that nothing is really wrong with me at all. And I realize that no matter how much I do right, I’m going to be vulnerable to stress, anxiety, find myself unable to function well for a bit as I get my shit together.
And that’s okay.
I have a feeling if we all exhale, put on a pair of sweatpants, and cuddle up, we will have a lot more fun then bending ourselves into pretzels on the top of some unreachable castle that we were told we were supposed to want to live in.
So I go easy on myself today. I dream about the time video stores were open and I could leisurely walk through the aisles if I wasn’t feeling well and discuss film options with my lover. I sit in my car just watching squirrels chase each other around because for a moment my brain just won’t do anything else. I stop trying to make things “work” and I stop reaching for a moment, and just notice what is and just accept it.
I am deeply human.
I am often terrified.
I am pretty fantastic.
I am incredibly lonely.
I am exquisitely loved.
I am all of the things and that is okay.
I deserve love anyway.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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