EGG AND HONEY

The other day, someone was talking about when she felt she was her best self and of course it made me think about myself. The first thing that came to mind was an image - sitting here with the laptop on my knees, letting my mind wander until something interesting appears and then setting myself the task of figuring out what I think and how best to articulate it. Figuring a thought out and articulating it go hand in hand; they're one and the same thing. So sitting here, hooking on to something interesting, making the effort to understand it and then how best to say it - that's when I feel I'm my best self. The self I want to be, fully engaged, in that place where self-consciousness has faded away and I'm one with thought and articulation.
    I look at the date of the last entry here and I wonder, if sitting here is my best self, why have I let so much time go by? Why haven't I been making the effort, taking the time to do what gives me the most pleasure and silences all my doubts and fears? But tonight, something says, don't ask that question, don't delve into what will only lead to self-criticism, bad feeling, guilt. Just be happy you're here now and connected to the pleasure of words and expression.

The past few months have been filled with examples of how much fear has fallen away. I've lost that terrible shame I used to feel at being hurt by soneone in my life. The fear and shame of acknowledging vulnverability made me see myself melting away to nothing, like the wicked witch melting until only her hat was left. I thought to be vulnerable is to surrender control, which is only the illusion of holding it together. In the simplest sense, I was afraid not only to show what I felt but that I felt anything at all.
     Just now, that fear is gone. Some people have hurt me lately but I'm not ashamed or in fear of showing that to them. I feel what I feel. It's seems impossible that I should have come to this deep acceptance, of myself and the world around me. I think of the past, even the not so distant past, and see myself filled with trepidation, with the awful suspicion that who I am and what I feel is wrong and/or any one of another hundred negative judgments. 
    Now, that egg I've imagined so many times, the one above me cracks open and releases something as slow and golden as honey and which pours down and washes over me. That liquid is a comforter, literally, the comforting voice, which says again and again, it's all all right. It's all right...it's all right.