May 9 Daily Entry -- Giving The Birth

I feel like I am giving birth to myself right now.

In a past life I taught English to non-native speakers, both children and adult. One young woman that I taught had received a college scholarship in the U.S. but spoke only about five words of English when she arrived. No one around her spoke her language, so even though speaking English was difficult for her, she had no choice. At this point she was learning English by brute force.

One day as she struggled to express herself she groaned and put her head down on the table, clearly frustrated with her inability to communicate. She looked up and told me "speaking the English is like giving the birth."

This is how I feel right now. I am learning to express myself--my true, uncensored self--for the first time since I was very small. For years I've been told that I'm too much, that I'm not doing it right, and that I need to be another way. Everything I do that feels right or natural is different from what others do, and therefore it is the wrong thing to do. I need to squelch all my natural instincts and reactions and act in ways that are not native to me.

I have done this for decades, and I have been painfully unhappy. And so I have decided that I will no longer pretend to be someone I'm not in order to be accepted. This only creates the tension and hypervigilance stemming from the fear that I will slip up (because I don't really know how to be someone else) and I will be seen for who I am and that I will be found wanting, rejected as a human, abandoned and shunned.

It is difficult to be myself. I have been told so often that is wrong, and so it feels dangerous. But in order to ever be truly understood and accepted for who I am, I must share my inner self. And so I am pushing myself through the discomfort. I am finally pushing my inner self out into the world. And if the world doesn't want me, I'll survive anyhow. I'm going to do this, even if it's painful, because this is the only way I will ever feel at peace.