Vulnerable Truth
“Initation”, 2023, Mixed Media Photo Collage
Today is the Lion’s Gate Portal 888 - which in numerology & astrology marks a threshold for all of us. A door is open for us if we choose to walk through to a new life in whatever form that might take, that embodies the vision we hold deep in our hearts.
I wanted to share a reflection paper I wrote last year for school & the aesthetic response I included. This seems so relevant for me presently. Looking back I can see how this has been a slow and steady process of uncovering & unlearning which has led me to release old imprints. We have the power to rewrite our storyline, to create a new reality not only for ourselves but for the one’s that came before us and the one’s who will come after. Blessings!
I feel like a warrior ready to surrender my heavy burden of atrocities and tragedies. Like taking off a cumbersome metal armor after a long battle. Armor I learned to use as some protective badge of honor, as I paraded around as a holy martyr. This was my rite of passage into this world but I have been slowly shedding the suit, piece by piece. On and on, one by one. The helmet, the mask, the role I was handed down.
We are all given a role to play. I adapted a naive and yet cunning way of winning this ambiguous game of getting my needs met. I fell short but it got me by. I wanted to feel safe enough to explore, express and expand into the role I would eventually create for myself but the only way I knew how was to blend in, make myself small which meant the exile of soul parts.
I got good at hiding like wild animals camouflage themselves within their surroundings. No one knew the difference, not even me. Enough smiles, favors, compliments and turning the other cheek to avoid contention because for a long time conflict meant death by rejection. I needed to survive so I went along with it all. I kept enough distance that I could easily escape if I needed to.
Nevertheless, I was the sweetest and kindest in my shallow closeness. And I thought being innocent and gullible meant being vulnerable. Declaring very virtuously to everyone, “I have nothing to hide and I’d reveal everything I was holding in one shot.” I’d give myself away for nothing. I thought somehow I was standing within the truth that would shield me but it didn’t because I was so far from it. I thought playing the victim was the truth. I was mistaken.
Now I have come to realize this was not vulnerability at all being this righteous sufferer. It was pretending to be vulnerable by appeasing others so they would give you the respect you lacked. It was pretending you are just followed by a streak of unfortunate people who can’t see or speak the truth but its really because you can’t be honest with yourself. I blinded myself from it like the Two of swords, stuck in a stalemate.
And it’s gotten too heavy to carry the weight of this armor, the pretending, the politically correct politeness that pacifies me from any responsibility to create my own happiness. Instead I had waited for others, for someone, anyone else to do it for me. I wanted to be spared and sheltered from doing the work that only I could do. I guess because I wanted to be cared for as an adult since I didn’t feel that as a child. A part of me secretly wanted to be protected from reality, the truth. And in my younger years, I didn’t get the chance to choose.
I was thrusted into the harshness very early on and never got to be that innocent playful curious child. And what creativity has granted me in my older ripe years is honesty, that relationship to the authentic power of vulnerability. The vulnerability that is visceral and moving in my body, within my heart. And no one can take that away. No one can tell me what that is. The vulnerability of my truth. The truth that stands deep in the center of my soul, stark and naked. And who I am, what I want, what I see or feel, that is my responsibility. What others do with it, how others receive it, what others decide is not my business. All I know is I no longer want to lie to myself. ~SEeR
