Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

Some of you may not realize this, but really, I am very soft and squishy on the inside. It’s very cliché of me, I know, but my hard candy shell is just the armor I need to protect my soft underbelly. I know that the armor is often unattractive and sometimes scary. Fortunately or unfortunately… It is needed.

Ultimately I love how sensitive I am. When it’s not overwhelming, it’s beautiful to feel love and fear and anger and joy at the levels that I am capable of. If I had a little bit more control over it, I would not need my armor. But sometimes these feelings just become too much! They become overwhelming enough that sometimes I can’t work or be present for the people that I love. So sometimes in order to just get through the day, I put my armor on. I’m grateful for my armor as it allows me to do life on life‘s terms.

The problem with armor, though, is that sometimes I put it on and I forget that it’s on. I’ll go days and weeks and months wondering why I don’t feel connected only to find out that I forgot to take it off when I no longer needed it. There are other times that I desperately want to put my armor on because something feels too big, too much and no matter where I look I cannot find my armor. It is these days that I just try to sit with whatever feeling I’m having: Maybe I’m starting to love someone I don’t want to love, or I’m angry and powerless. It is in these moments that, if I’m willing, I try to look at what the fear is and it is usually that if I let this feeling go on too long, I will end up back on the mental health unit, people won’t like me etc… The feelings will overwhelm me to the point where I am incapable of doing life on life‘s terms. I don’t know why I’m so afraid of that. I’ve done large obnoxious feelings before and it was actually really healthy and helpful. I guess part of it is that I like my life today and I don’t want to lose it.

I want to feel ALL the feelings and show up for this life.

So today I sit in the discomfort. I will talk about it to a friend and then go use the energy from my discomfort to see how I can be of service to the word.

It’s ok to be soft. It’s ok to be sensitive. It’s ok to wear my armor. I’m ok no matter what.