So here goes. My second blog post here and I have to tell you it is exciting yet has me shaking like a dog crapping peach seeds! Maybe because the stuff I want to talk about can run so deep and sometimes its hard to make the right words come out...so this piece of art combined with my words will hopefully hit the ball out of the park here.
It's not easy trying to discover who you are and let that inner person shine free. It is even more difficult to do that in a world that constantly tries to tell us what it wants us to be, instead of who we really are. When your flesh and blood tear your identity from you growing up it makes it even that much harder to find your core and let it shine.
Here is where I found myself the other day. I put on some music from my past, music I grew up with. This is a big deal for me. For most of my life I have been reaching to find me and just let me be me. Growing up in a dysfunctional and abusive home made this even harder as it was trying to assimilate and use me instead of celebrate me and let me shine.
So what I did was try and remove each piece of assimilation that I could. If it was music that my family listened to I would change it, I would never listen to that song, that artist again! If it was a style of clothing I was told to wear I would avoid it like the plague. It came down to discarding everything I could, so I wouldn't be reminded of the past, the pain, the guilt imposed, the abuse, the funny stuff, the happy times? What did I just say? Happy times? Yeah, in and around the chaos, dysfunction and abuse, there were times that we laughed and amazingly, enough, had fun.
Stripping myself clean of the tangible served a purpose at first. It was so confusing trying to heal from abuse at the hands of my parents and have the good things thrown in your face...like they were suppose to cancel out the abuse sustained. So I deconstructed and dismantled until all I had left was me..or so I thought.
After a while I realized that it was okay to like a certain song, or color, or feel fondness at the thought of the good memories. And in that moment I felt a sadness at the loss of what could have been for my biological family and a freedom, a release from the cage I had let the past put me in.
So getting back to the other day. I put on some music that I loved, from when I was growing up, and I sang my heart out and felt the happiness and the sadness. The happiness that my dad introduced me to some really cool music and the sadness that he has made such horrendous mistakes in his life that have affected everyone. And finally I felt FREE because it wasn't the abuse or the people that made me like that particular song...it was me the real authentic me.