My Dark Side The Friend or Foe?

I don’t always want to see my dark sides…the parts of myself I’d prefer not letting other people see, let alone acknowledging that they exist.

I’ve pushed away from any sort of darkness for so long, at some point, I just shut down most emotions altogether, and learned to step outside of my body because it felt safer than acknowledging the fear that I was truly broken at the core.

The truth is, so much of what I was afraid to meet with compassion was just allowing myself to be human, to have an opinion, to feel a range of emotions, and to have limits.

There is still a lot of sorting to go through, but I’m still learning who I am in this stage of my life and maybe consciously doing it for the first time ever. I’m no longer just trying to hold on, I’m actually TRYING to be embodied, to be in the present moment and trying on compassion like a hat I’m not sure fits yet.

There are habitual moments during the day when I still find myself in that really uncomfortable place and instead of purposefully breathing and checking-in in with my senses, I go to that place of agitation and desire to get out of my body..that feeling is both so familiar and also deeply uncomfortable. I’m making progress but surely in those moments it still feels impossible to find patience and instead am more known to just berate myself and want things to be different.

I know that’s not where growth happens. I know resistance never brings peace, but when you’ve fought against a certain emotion for so long…I’m talking multiple decades…patience is really the best gift I could give myself.

I’m not always proud of my reactions and am still working to remind myself that I had a LOT of privilege growing up [insert princess mentality here.] I don’t like to see that. Ii’s not comfortable for me, but until I can practice meeting the darkness time after time with compassion and patience I’m going to keep living in this space where it’s hard for me to remember anything outside of how uncomfortable I constantly feel.

It’s a choice, it’s always been a choice. My body CHOSE to support me the best way it could when I feared my own humaneness. It shut down my ability to feel anything outside of agitation ultimately creating a misalignment.

You see it’s taken many years to realize I’m not broken. In actuality I’m quite normal…not special…not an outlier…I’m normal. I’ve just told myself otherwise for so long and felt like an “other” for so long and let other people’s voices sound louder than my own for so long..that I let myself believe it.

I used food as a practice of deprivation, bingeing, purging, and emptiness to help soothe the constant discomfort I felt being ME. I wanted to be anyone but myself, because I believed the lie that my tall, blonde, outgoing, laughing friends were all more worthy of love and acceptance than I was.

I believed I SHOULD be the one in the back of the pack, the wallflower to get picked last in the gym and by the boys…I believed men gifted me my worth, and women validated or invalidated it. My voice didn’t matter, because I didn’t believe I had one to listen to.

The truth is my eating disorder, the obsession, the control that came from it kept me alive and as safe as I could be until it didn’t anymore. Until my physical body was so bloated and puffy, my mind in constant fear of the next night, my emotional capacity taken over by the sheer disappointment in myself, that it was all I could do to get to the gym for my compulsive exercise. That isn’t a life, that is isn’t embodiment or self-respect.

College let me in on the secret that I wasn’t just lesser on the inside, but on the outside too. Our humanness is not something to be fixed, tucked, or deprived away. How was I possibly supposed to show up for my own life when I refused to meet my own basic needs? When do they teach THAT in school?

No one food is going to derail you, nobody size makes you more or less worthy. No outside voice should EVER sound louder than your own.

So I can make the choice of judgment, blame, victim, and shame. I can resist the uncomfortable feelings and let old stories and habituation win or I can stop wanting things to be different and slowly turn the wheel the other way. I can remind myself I’d rather choose compassion. If things are going to be uncomfortable either way, then why not choose the one that leads towards growth instead of the one that keeps you in the same place you’ve been for years. 

“If whatever happens on our unique [healing] path is exactly what needs to happen, the only real mishap is wanting things to be different. The antidote to any resistance, and the antidote to all obstacles, is practicing the paramita of patience. [..] Our challenges are essential to depending our self-understanding. Without them, we don’t learn anything. Moments of progress also deepen our self-knowing. Without them, we don’t see the trend toward positive change and peace with food and our bodies.” - Eat to Love Jenna Hollenstein

These words I know to be true. Lightness always comes after seeing the dark, another daybreak will always come, another chance arises to see yourself wholeheartedly as one. You are not alone. <3

Love and light, Kaitlin