I tend to experience every emotion at 1000% and without any mystery I show it to the world in full color. Vivid expressions etched like a map straight to my heart. A live wire, I give off a lot of energy. I’ve been told it’s intimidating. But I prefer to think it’s just the uncommon realness of a free spirit that dares to show up and look you in the eye.
I don’t know how someone pulls the lottery to be born this way, but I did. I don’t know how to be any other way and I’m not sure I would even want to be. Being the way I am makes me feel alive, fully in my life, fully involved in feeling my truth in every moment.
Recently, this blog has mostly chronicled moments in which my truth felt sad or heavy—suitcase wheels rolling in the wrong direction, failure to launch, words said too sharply, words not said at all, dogs crossing over, boys growing up, parents aging, friendships fading, marriages ending, grief, loss—I was feeling it all and you read all about it (thanks for that, by the way). When I experience disappointment I turn to writing to help me process and feel connected. In retrospect, maybe, I overdid it.
But here’s the truth. Those moments, those experiences, those emotions were very real. And I lived in them and felt everything they had to offer. But the truth can change and we should acknowledge when it does.
Do you know how it happened? Was it when you least expected it? When you weren’t looking? When you had given up? Was it a slow burn or a big bang? Was it all of those or none of those? When did you know? When did you realize that all the emotions you were feeling and showing the world were the result of a truth that changed and in the process changed you?
Maybe you don’t know. But I can confirm. My truth changed and all kinds of new emotions are etching a map straight to my heart. They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. We know who we are, but not who we may be. No longer a mystery, it’s time to show up and find out. I’ll even look you in the eye while I do. Dare me.