I'd really love for you to come with me on a journey to what feels like the most vulnerable part of me, which I used to guard, hide, and protect for many years.
I don't know who you are, but I am feeling you right now, and I feel deeply connected to you as I write these words and allow the wounded, fragmented, and afraid parts of myself to unfold here.
About 5 years ago, exactly at the time I wanted to pursue my dreams in the world and make a massive impact through my "personal development platform that would replace Facebook" (I called it this at that time), I started to become conscious of the largest fear of this of my lifetime's: a crippling, petrifying, sickening fear of being seen by the world.
I felt sick in my body at the mere thought of someone seeing me, really seeing me as I am, without guards or alterations. The horrifying sensation of vulnerability that that thought ensued was as sickening as the worst food poisoning experience a human body can have.
I don't know why I came into this life with this being the greatest fear for me to heal. But I trust whatever Source-energy plants and moves through me. And right now, that is the desire to expose to light what has remained buried in the darkness within me for as many years as I can think back; my raw truth.
Entering a new relationship this last month, many dormant fears and insecurities have come to light. All of them stemming from the root fear of being seen as I am, raw and exposed, heart-naked.
Yesterday, the relationship was a cause for many of these fears to come to light. I felt immobilized because the sensations were so strong. I felt a great need to sit in it and allow the energy to run its course.
In the process, I felt an urge to begin writing my unedited thoughts and feelings to the new man in my life. That is what I want to share here.
This is really for me. It feels like the next step in my expansion and healing, to let all the dark hidden corners of my being be shone in the light. And hitting "publish" for anyone to find and see is a liberating sensation, to what once used to be a crippling one.
I also know intuitively that exposing our fragments and afraid parts helps the collective heal. We are all one, and we all experience the same thing. If I show you the pain inside me in desire to heal it, I help you heal the pain inside you. Many did this for me on my path.
You may read it and wonder how it's even a big deal at all. To you, it might be natural to show your unguarded heart. For me, it used to be like torture. Even now, some of it is so cringey to read that I have an out-of-body experience and feel myself moving in my chair and my heart tightening. This is precisely why I have a desire to hit publish. I want to get so comfortable with this cringey sensation that it no longer holds any power, and eventually dissolves into nothing.
Here it goes, copied and pasted. I feel a nervousness but it's with excitement. A part of me desires to be laughed at, criticized, judged and rejected. Because those are the greatest fears behind the fear of being seen, and if in receiving it I can stand peaceful and still, I have become precisely the being I choose and consciously have worked to be.
A lot of feelings and thoughts are coming up. I was sensing this within myself and really desiring to have clarity on all of it.
I sat down, journal in hand; “I want to know what I am feeling, needing and how to express it clearly”
Nothing was flowing, feeling a bit scatterbrained. I sat in it.
Some things began to emerge:
There is shame around what I am feeling and needing, and it makes it hard to admit it to myself, let alone give expression to it.
Then a few minutes later,
And I judge myself through your eyes “Why is she so emotional? Why does she need to talk about the relationship so much?” “Ooooohhhh my god, here comes yet another fucking conversation…”
There is that lingering fear floating in my energy body.
Without conscious awareness, to protect myself from this shame and judgement, I dance around the words, alter them, shorten them, prolong expressing them, or withhold them all together.
These fears began for me as a child growing up in Iran and later in the West, when what I observed caused me to depict masculine energy as superior, and the feminine as inferior. I unconsciously submitted to the conditioning of seeing women as annoying, needy, emotional, dramatic, repulsive.
Being logical, controlled, kept together, angular, stoic, mentally sharp, needless, capable, and directive was “good,” "right" and "accepted." Being flowy, illogical, circular, playful, emotional, incapable, dramatic, unstable, uncertain was “bad,” …no, more accurately “ugly,” “repulsive,” and “disgusting.” “There is no time for this disgusting, illogical, dramatic non-sense. Pick it up. Get it the fuck together.”
This started as a young child, and was repetitively and explosively reinforced daily through every reality I was in. School, friends, peers, family, my parents and their relationship dynamic, both of my grandparents and theirs, media, shows/movies, etc. “Girls are inferior, weak and gross. Men and masculine qualities are superior, strong and admired.” That was the message.
I wasn’t a conscious being at that time. I was the reactor rather than the observer. And without being aware, I began to adopt the more accepted forms of being. Hiding my feelings. Being stoic. Doing things even though my body didnt want to. Striving, hustling, determinedly over-working. Achieving.
But what has hurt my spirit the most in the last decade is shutting down and hiding every time those natural, true, vulnerable parts of my natural "messy" feminine essence rise: emotions, needs, and desires.
It has been my work in relationships (and it seems to mainly come out in my romantic relationships) to undo that conditioning and allow myself to be as I am, no alterations of any kind. And no judgements, either. Just pure beingness. In my evolution, I’ve been finding more ease with the former, but the latter -- judgements -- haven’t been healed and dissolved yet.
As I give my consciousness to all of this now…. I see that this exact conditioning is the root of many other insecurities I am seeing rise within me in this relationship.
One, I judge myself through your eyes that I am relaxing through life, lazily. Even though it has been my CONSCIOUS effort to grow into surrender, wisdom, and presence, and in the truest part of my being know that this is the highest way to exist, and how I want and choose to exist, I feel my own projected judgement that I am “not doing enough.” (I feel my little fragile ego wanting to bring to light that she used to be a manic and ambitious go-getter. She wants to ensure that she’s accepted through others’ eyes by bringing that old and probably dead version of herself to light)
Masculine is superior “doing a lot, accomplishing accomplishing accomplishing”
Feminine is inferior “dancing in the forest aimlessly”
The afraid little girl within needs reassurance that that doesn’t bother you. That if I want to just meditate, write and read all day for a week straight and gaze out the window pondering existence, or go shopping and buy 5 new shoes with zero logic but because it felt good, that that's okay with you and you have no judgements/disapprovals of her “not doing enough” in the world.
She needs reassurance that if none of my effort, attention or desire is on making money or creating societal success, but on doing whatever feels good to me, it won’t bother, or better yet, repulse you. That it won’t annoy you or to be the sole provider. That you won’t judge the fact that I specifically love the feeling of being provided for by my man and always desired that to be my relationship dynamic (which in our society today is so frowned upon and judged). That it is an arousing feeling for me to rely on my man to provide because being in his masculine essence of protecting and providing, I look at him with admiration, appreciation and respect.
There is a conditioned part of me that fears your judgement and disapproval of all of that and desires to hide it.
Second, it's also this conditioning I haven’t fully healed that makes me feel a degree of repulsion around your friendship with ****. She, in the perception that’s been created in my mind, is the exact depiction of everything I’ve learned to loathe about the unevolved feminine. She is everything I am terrified of being and involuntarily worked so hard as a teenager to suppress. Clingy, needy, blaming, illogical, zero self-awareness, insecure, empty, needs constant validation, dependent, incapable, whiny, childish, immature. The judgements go on.
And none of them have anything to do with her. What I see in her is my own unhealed parts being reflected back to me. Because all of those judgments exist in ME.
The way **** has behaved (or more accurately, the way my psyche viewed it), is the exact picture of what my ego learned to stay muzzled up and restrained for starting at age 12. That little girl within me is TERRIFIED of ever being perceived as that because it meant she'd be unaccepted and unloved. So it’s been more safe to shut down all together.
I’ve felt repulsed by **** ever since that weekend celebrating your birthday last summer. We were only friends at that time, and I had no emotional ties to you. I felt repulsed, but it wasn’t my life, so it didn't demand my attention. My thoughts about it dissipated the moment you left.
Now that we have moved out of our friendship and into being lovers, a magnifying glass has been put on your dynamic with her. I notice in my body I feel an energy of repulsion about what the little ego perceives as a co-dependent unhealthy relationship, and I notice the ego wanting to do exactly what she judged **** for doing; making illogical and unreasonable demands at you, “Choose me or I'm 'not your best friend anymore'” (sorry but that was funny).
I watch how my little ego reacts to the way she sees you fearfully dance to ****'s guilt-inducing “illogical” demands of dropping everything and giving her your full attention and service, and that's the only way to show her she is important and loved.
The ego gets grossed out, repulsed, and irked because she’s learned to react to that behavior with punishment, not reward (which she perceives you give so abundantly every time you bend to her will). Perhaps because that is what the little girl in me received in the past, punishment for behaving like that? I’m not sure, but probably.
This feels therapeutic to give definition to what was vaguely floating in my energy field unnamed. I really want to highlight that none of this is REAL, it is just what I am watching happen from a distance in my psyche. It’s not how I genuinely feel.
How I genuinely feel is simple, and was already expressed; I need to be priority. And I need my man to have and hold firm boundaries with me and with everyone, because I need to respect him.
I am deeply grateful for ****'s entrance into my reality because it has shown a light on what was dormant yet needed healing within me. When I think about her with logic and spirit, I feel great compassion, because I, too, would be riddled with fear at the thought of becoming second to someone I used to be first to. My ego would feel precisely the same fear, and probably even more.
I am so thankful about how much trust and knowing I have in you.
I love that I know you’ve already got it handled…. Like… Everything... All of it.
I love that I know I don't even have to say anything.
Even though this writing wasn’t meant to turn into this, I have gained clarity around what I feel comfortable with, completely independent from what I’ve written above about ****.
I want as much as your free time as I can have. I am a a girly girl who values her romantic relationship above most things. I want time with my man. Even when we were friends I wanted time with you. Now that you're my man I want all the time with you. I want weekends with my man. I want every night to be cooking with you, talking, laughing, lounging, making love.
I want to feel certain in choosing you.
How I feel certain is, when my man is certain, and single-mindedly claiming me, and sees me as the best thing since sliced bread.
These past few weeks, the two times I caught myself feeling afraid were both times I didnt think you were certain, or I didn’t feel special to you based on some passing comment you made. This is hard for me to say because I feel embarrassed, almost cringed by it. I’ve worked hard my whole life to appear unemotional, un-needy and independent. But the truth is, like a 5 year old girl, I need to feel special. I need to feel like I'm the only girl in the world to my man and that whether I like it or not he's chosen me and is pursuing me and building the relationship.
I get so much security when I hear your love for me, when I hear that I am special to you, your vision for our life together and all the things youre doing for our relationship. And like a 5 year old girl, I need to hear it often.
This is all I have written. Some of it was excruciatingly hard to say. But I am going to continue doing this because, in honesty, I only care about my healing. I only care about becoming and being, in full, who I choose to be; the uninhibited self. The true expression of me.
