Afraid

Afraid to reach out. Afraid to be vulnerable. Afraid to be judged. Afraid to be me. I have been there for a long time until I realized that people know the mask I put on, not the real me. They love me for what I allow them to see, not for the “real me”. Afraid to lose people around me. Above all, afraid to be alone.

Until one day when the mask fell to the ground with a loud “thud” and crumbled in million pieces. Moxie was with me when that happened. I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw the “real me”, raw and vulnerable. I had all sorts of feeling and emotions, dreams and regrets. There was pain and joy in my heart. But above all, I saw something that I wanted to hang on to – a glimmer of hope and joy.

I tried hard to build the mask back up with no success. I glued it, painted it, added sparkles and new features. It simply did not work anymore. The mask was done. Moxie looked at me:” You can do this, you can really do this”. The glimmer of hope came back. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Looking for approval from others and trying to people please was not important anymore. Questions started swirling in my head like a slow forming tornado “Do “I” approve of myself? What do “I” believe in? Do I have to be like everybody else? Do I have to agree with everybody else? What is important to me? What do I want more of in my life? How do I get more of what I want? How do I forgive myself for things that I’ve done and I’m not so proud of? How can I go out there in the world without my mask on?”I had to sit with all the questions and figure out where to start.

Mother Nature yet again came to my rescue. She showed me many times the cyclicity of things. Some trees have beautiful crowns in the summer, perennial flowers have incredible blooms at times and we, humans, admire their beauty in that moment. We all know that after a while, trees lose their leaves and flowers go dormant for a while, only to come back into their beauty the next year.

Aren’t we, humans, the same with trees and flowers after all? We bloom, then we take breaks, we integrate what we learn, we spend a certain amount of time in solitude, only to come back and share with others our beauty. And I do not mean the physical beauty, I mean the beauty we each have inside, our gifts and talents, our strengths and love, our empathy and support.

Nobody tells a leafless tree in wintertime “you’re ugly”. Yet, as humans, we may not be so understanding with other humans when they lose” their leaves”, or better said, “their way”. Can the gifts inside you help me when I lose my way? Can we be there for each other with love and compassion, with simply “presence” when we are ready to shed our leaves and masks? Can we refrain from judgement, advice giving, and the eternal “you should” when one is transforming? What if we try it? What if the only thing we need sometimes is another human to guide us and help us find the answers ourselves? The answers we all have within. What if we go out in this world with less fear? What if we try authenticity for a change?