Hello, Invisible Audience. Long time no talk.
My family has been here and I’ve been traipsing around
Panama, showing them my new home. This is probably as good a time as any to say
that again: this is my home. I live here now; I do not have plans to leave
anytime soon. This is no longer traveling for me; this is having found a place where
I’d like to spend some more time, a place I feel safe and loved, and a place
where I have been able to recalibrate and feel grounded. It’s not in my
five-year plan to move back to the States. My only five-year plan is to live
happily ever after, wherever that may be.
Alrighty. So that’s out of the way. Let’s move on. This last
week or so has felt kind of really super shitty.
It’s hard to host your entire family in your new foreign
home. They didn’t stay with me in my house, but there are still a lot of
questions to ask and a lot of knowledge to impart when you’re the one fluent in
the language; more familiar with the culture; more aware of the costs and
drawbacks of where you are compared to where your family is coming from. It is
tiring. It is not quite as tiring, however, as ramming yourself into an iceberg
and realizing that actually, it’s not an iceberg at all, but a continent that
you have hit that suddenly means you’re going to have to walk when you were
enjoying drifting along in the current.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I felt like I’d crossed a hurdle; that suddenly I was ready to leave my past in my past. It
opened up a bunch of space, and for awhile I just got to enjoy that space,
awhile being approximately the first half of the time my family was visiting.
Then we made it back to Boquete, and I found out that two of the people I am
closest to in town, one of whom I spend more time with than anyone else, had
decided to move back to the States. The feeling I got was somewhere between
nausea, dizziness, a child’s temper tantrum and food poisoning.
It’s only a week later that I’m really starting to make
sense of what happened, and its depth. As far as the things I have managed to
survive in my life, having two people that I care deeply for go in search of
their own bliss hardly seems to be a blip on the radar. What has become
apparent, however, is that this knowledge is what stopped me cold, convinced me
I needed to go see what the problem was, and made me realize that I was no
longer coasting along merrily, but had just bottomed out my boat on a big
fuckin’ mountain.
I know, I know; too many metaphors. Here’s what I think has
happened: I finally let go of my past, and was greeted with a pretty, past-free
present. It looked good; it looked easy; it looked like I might have some fun.
I was looking forward to coming back to Boquete, getting back into the swing of
things and just coasting for awhile. Before I even got back to town, though, I
realized that suddenly I could hear something that I hadn’t been aware of
before. It was a voice that had always been there, whispering bile in my ear,
but in the din of what I was trying to recover from, I had never realized how
ugly the words were. So as I stood on a beach in the bright supermoon with my feet in the ocean, thinking
about how I couldn’t wait to get home and see my friends, this voice – whom I
have named Malificent, after the witch in Sleeping Beauty – stopped whispering
underneath all the other crap and finally started talking in a normal voice.
“Just who the hell do
you think you are?”
I tried my best to ignore her, but suddenly my hearing was
either that much better or there was much less interference, and by the time I
found out some of my favorite partners in crime were leaving town, the bonfire
of self-doubt she was stirring up inside me had already reached, well, bonfire
heights. “Of course they’re leaving. You thought you were worth staying for?
You wretched, stupid creature.”
I don’t know why she’s here. I know she’s not a new voice,
but for the life of me I cannot imagine how she ever came into being. I cannot
imagine – as I can with some of my other defense mechanisms that have turned
into super powers, such as empathy and the ability to really listen to someone
– just how in the hell she could possibly have ever helped me in any way, shape
or form. All I know is that Malificent feeds my self-doubt, confirms my worst
fears, and considers it her job to tell me how unworthy I am.
It’s much bigger than just some friends moving on and being
legitimately sad that they’re leaving. What I am feeling – what Malificent
represents – is a lifetime of fear, a continent of pain standing between me and
my dreams; a guilt of having chosen to live differently, oftentimes without
really consciously meaning to, and thinking that any change at all, especially
one where people move on at their own volition, is directly related to not being
worthy of their company, instead of knowing that the truth has nothing to do
with me, and everything to do with them needing something different than what they
have now.
Since I’ve already come this far, it seems to follow suit to admit here
that when I am in the midst of my worst doubts, when I am feeling my most
vulnerable, I never thank my lucky stars that I have been able to make
decisions that have led me where I am today. Instead, I feel as if I have a
self-destruct button that has destroyed anything that I might want to build for
myself, and that where I have ended up is due to a series of random acts of
irresponsibility that have led me there.
That’s when I’m feeling my worst, which thankfully is not
always, even if it is now. The rest of the time, I am thankful for that
self-destruct button, that has blown up relationships that were not serving me,
taken me out of situations that made me unhappy, and brought me to this safe,
sacred space full of people who are willing to catch me, hold me, hug me and
love me as I unsheathe layers and layers of an onion that has no center. On the
good days, I can remember that I made conscious choices to bring myself here,
and that what I deserve of this life is an expansion of the moments of
contentment, happiness and awe I feel as part of my journey, not the guilt and
shame I drag myself through for feeling like I escaped when I shouldn’t have.
Not long ago someone told me that many of my latest blog
posts sounded like I was trying to justify my life and asking for people to
love me despite the guilt I felt for being different. The truth is, that has
been the underlying theme of my blog posts for years; the difference is that
recently I have finally been able to sometimes let go of that and write
something else: something less apologetic, and a little more joyous. Now I know
that it is my battle with Malificent that I have been trying to bring to light:
that hers is the voice I’ve been hearing all this time, and it is the continent
she lives on that I keep running into while I’m searching in the dark for my
island paradise.
I don’t quite know how it will work from here on out. All I
know is that recognizing her for what she is and what she’s been doing to my
life is a huge step. Now that I’ve moved out of the past into the present, now
that I can hear her and see her, it’s time to actually face her so that she’ll
get the hell out of the way and let me get on with my life: let me connect with
the person I’m destined to become, who no longer doubts her own worth: who can
see why people love her, accept their choices as part of the adventure and the
journey, and finally, without a struggle, simply let herself be loved.
Love and Malificent free kisses,
Morgan
