The Door Is Open

At one of my EMDR sessions, I came across these questions:

What if I'm a free spirit? What if all my rules and structure are a cage to me? They don't calm me down or help me feel at ease. I feel trapped instead, like someone's holding me under water. 

What if I'm a bird? Then walking isn't my thing. But I thought it was, so I used my short little legs to climb my life-mountain instead of flying to the top. No wonder I'm exhausted. There's a better way to do this. 

What if my cage door is open?

Then I thought about this:

Baby birds leave the nest before they know how to fly. They have to fall and hop around until they find it. They don't want to because it's scary...so much safer to stay close to the ground. But it's not a mistake to do life the way you were created to. So I tried saying the following to myself, to see if it felt true.  

It's safe to be myself.

It's safe to be the way you made me.

I can trust the way you made me. 

I'll find it much easier if I surrender/accept your design (of me).

I've lived my life idealizing one type of person: the focused, practical, strategic person. Brene Brown says we have to come to terms with the differences between who we'd hoped to be and who we actually are. Up until the last year, I was okay holding out hope to be that person and still making efforts to become her. But in the last year, it's become increasingly uncomfortable to alter myself. I used to be okay skewing myself around certain people who I thought needed me to be a certain way. But I just can't. Not anymore. I've never felt such a need to be true, true, true. Anything less is suddenly unpalatable.

It's now, when pretending and hiding become unbearable, that the leap of being myself and putting myself out there doesn't look as bad. Lately I've been taking little baby hops outside my cage. I've been exploring how life can look if I don't take issue with LOTS OF THINGS about me. Sure, I go back and sit in my cage sometimes. But when I remember the door is open, I also remember how good it was when I was carrying on out there, liking myself and all. "This is a comfort rut," I tell myself, "and I don't have to stay here."

Not when happiness is out there. 

Also crazy and unknown and wild. 

But also free and joy. 

And having tasted it, there are very few days when staying sounds good anymore.