EXPECTATIONS - THE MANY FACES OF ME

Have you ever felt that pressure of showing up a certain way?

Like because you’re loud and opinionated, people are always looking to you for your opinion. So you give it, even when you don’t feel the urge to express the words. Or because you like to let your hair down, people expect you to be the life and soul of every party. So you drink it up and boogie on down, even when your body is telling you to go home and rest. Or because you’ve had some wild experiences, everyone assumes you’re up for anything. So you jump on board even when your heart is not fully aligned. Maybe you’ve always been the quiet one, people predict you’ll be a push over, so you save yourself the conflict and just do what you’re asked.

External expectations can be fucking exhausting.

I have moulded and changed over the years, too many times to count. I am grateful because changing means I am learning. I am inhaling information and moving towards another direction. I can’t sit here and tell you that direction has always lead me to a better place, because it hasn’t. But it has lead me to exactly where I needed to be, to learn exactly what I’ve needed to know. If you haven’t already noticed, I’m big on learning. What is life without lessons? Stagnant. Motionless. Numb. Lessons are opportunities and I like to grab opportunities by the balls, if they align to my desires, obviously.

I don’t want to be put in a box.

Yet I am guilty of doing that exact thing to other people. Categorising them like they’re songs on a playlist. Expecting them to sing the same tune when I click play. Feeling uneasy when they express themselves in a way I wasn't expecting. The predictability vanishing, making me feel unsettled; initially. Then I take a step back and remember all of the versions of me I have been. The innocent, the neglected, the bully, the arrogant, the druggy, the whore, the broken, the brave, the healer, the sad, the lost, the empowered, the lonely. So many different versions of me, so many pivotal parts of my life, shaping me into the woman who writes this today. Who the fuck am I to place any expectation on anyone?

I am nothing.

I don’t mean that in a sad, I don’t love myself or cherish my life kind of way. In nothing, there is everything. In everything there is nothing. We are both nothing and everything simultaneously, I find it baffling and fucking beautiful. I know this may go over a lot of your heads and I’m not mad about it, I’m hoping you can find some sense in my nonsense. Life is so precious and we tend to make such a big deal over things that don’t matter in the grand scheme of life. We place worry in areas that we will never remember in years to come. Filling ourselves with anxiousness, taking ourselves away from the present moment. Our joys are where we place them. So many us are fragile about our identities. Allowing our ego's to deny us our truths. Placing more value on how people view us rather than focusing on how we FEEL about ourselves.

We wear masks and then wonder why no-one sees us.

We let our brains convince us we need to move a certain way, be a certain way, because when we led with our hearts in the past; it caused us pain. Pain is a part of life. Pain is a seed. Pain has pointed me to salvation on more than a few occasions. I don’t consciously seek pain, but when it shows up, I let it in. Knowing when it has overstayed its welcome has been hard to navigate over the years. Pain can be addictive. I’ve not been shy in telling you all that I have episodes of depression. They usually come when I ignore my true feelings. Whether they be sadness, loneliness, rejection. A part of me actually fears feeling good and deserving. What if once I inhabit these feelings, they are taken from me? Using forms of escapism to feed my usual emotional cycles, the ones that unconsciously feel safe. The good feelings here are temporary and only lead to lower vibrational emotional outcomes, but they are familiar. Escapism only works for a certain amount of time and then there my old friend is, knocking loudly on my door. Reminding me that it is more than okay to feel all of these things and that I should stop running from the emotions that wish to exist in that moment.

Judgement day is so not fucking needed.

Many of us cannot allow our emotions to just be. We hyper-focus on them in hopes to find answers to our questions. Energy in motion. Emotions DO reveal what areas we need to work on, but we do this weird thing of punishing and judging ourselves when we feel them. One of the most liberating tools I have learnt on my journey is just to let myself be. To feel the pain and the sorrow deeply, with no fucking judgment. When we give ourselves this space, we create the opportunity to re-shape the conditioning behind the emotions. To find laughter in the anger, joy in the sadness and excitement in the boredom.

This is what it means to be human.

The last few years I have been shedding my skin. Rustling through my feathers to understand what parts of my old selves I'd like to keep, and those that no longer have a place in my life. There’s aspects of me that I truly adore and love. Other aspects that I have a love and hate relationship with. A couple that have been holding me back and deserve to be demolished, yet there is something comforting about them. I no longer have the overbearing internal pressure to be ‘this’ or ‘that’. I want to be a sprinkle of everything. I AM a sprinkle of everything. We all are. Some days I am soft and gentle. Holding space for people, and myself with empathy and compassion. Other days I am a recluse, sharp tongued and savage. Tired of peoples bullshit and my own, not willing to show lenience. The savage periods help me reinforce boundaries. I could be in one of these modes in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Or even seconds apart.

Am I the saint, or the sinner?

I am both, and I am learning how to be unapologetically myself. No judgment of myself. Our egos are there to protect us. To keep us strong in moments of doubt. To keep us confident in moments that scare us. The issue lies in the stories we tell ourselves. This is why knowing your truth is vital. Some of us have a warped sense of reality - this is where the sociopaths and narcissists dwell. On the other side of sociopaths and narcissists, we have the over-thinkers and the over-analysers. Those who reason upon reason until they diminish their own spirit. A healthy ego is a healthy life. Knowing when we should push and when we should pull. When we should move and when we should remain still.

Our brains are both complex and compelling. The body is like a supersized and highly advanced computer. Constantly downloading, processing and predicting information. Our senses are our antennas, picking up all of this data which is then stored within our body, but primarily it is stored in our brains. The brain is the processor, the thing that allows us to make memories and connections with our experiences, learning from them so that we are prepared and do better the next time a similar situation unfolds. It is our survival tool. The problem in our current age is that there is soo much more to process. The original survival skills our ancestors needed for hunting and gathering, have now transferred into a space where we no longer have the same kinds of day-to-day threats. So our brains are doing what they have always been designed to do, but have become overloaded. With shit that doesn’t really matter.

We’ve lost touch with our instincts.

Our intuition is our most powerful ally in this life. The voice that is so quiet yet holds so much weight. If you are not in touch with your intuition, you can be lead astray. And in a world where we are continuously overthinking, the voice becomes quieter and quieter. This is why learning to listen to your body is essential. It is our truth. Knowing when to unlearn the survival techniques you put in place as a child - through no fault of your own, you just didn’t know better at the time. Is CRUCIAL for our quality of life. I could rabble on about more of the scientifics here but I’m going to save that for another blog.

You’re allowed to shape-shift.

Theres something tremendously sexy who you ‘think’ you are and slowly merging into the hidden aspects of yourself. The truth is, many of us bury parts of ourselves through fear, shame, guilt and embarrassment. Thank your fucking ego, the lil slut. Burying these parts is not helpful if you wish to live a fulfilling life. You are merely cutting off circulation to your soul. If we want to truly understand something, we must be brave enough to face it. Dance with it until our feet feel raw. Fighting it just reinforces our fears, pushing us further away from bliss. To live is to be accepting of both the light and dark. It’s not easy, but it is totally fucking worth it.

My sacred whore self is resting at the moment, she’s exhausted. I am now playing with the soft, introverted side of me. She’s emotional, she’s anti-social and she’s gentle in her approach. I’m enjoying spending some time with her but I do have a few naughty unreleased blogs that may make an appearance for the members soon... they're not for the faint hearted.

Until next time, Lovers

SIS xox