For most of my life I lived my life like the living dead. I was living a life, well, going through the motions, but was numbing our stuffing down those parts of me that were too painful or I didn’t want to face. I had done that for so long that it became normal to shut down my feelings and thoughts until some of them started to die off. Some of those parts I didn’t even notice were gone and others I was glad to see go because I thought it made my life easier not to feel them. I thought those parts dying off made my life easier. But what was happening is I was slowly becoming dead inside and the only thing I was making easier was for the negative voices in my head to take over and control my life.

My whole life I had tried to fill a void inside of me with outside things, something I was never able to do, and couldn’t do, but by numbing parts of myself or letting parts of me die off I made that void even bigger. My brain was telling me that this was a good thing, but what it was really doing was letting my disease progress and start to take over from those parts of me that knew better or would resist. I look back at myself at that time and I looked dead. There was no life in my eyes, and there have been times I haven’t even recognized myself in photographs. If you had asked me during that time how I was I would have said great, but I would have been lying. I would even lie to myself, but underneath my own bullshit I knew it wasn’t true, that I was dying, and I was letting it happen. It got to a point where I was almost completely dead inside, and the rest of those parts of me that hadn’t died, were in grave danger of forever being numb, but I somehow found one tiny bit of light left, one little bit of hope that I hadn’t killed off, and that little bit was enough to give me the courage to reach out for help before I had let go all together and succumbed to death itself.

Today, after many years of work and learning to love myself, I have also learned to feel my feelings without being afraid of them. No matter what life throws at me I won’t allow myself to numb what comes up, and I certainly won’t allow any piece of me to die off because I’m afraid of it. That does make some days difficult, it can be uncomfortable to sit in my feelings and then have to find a way to work through them, and I do it. I do it because I’m worth it. I’m worth the work, and I know that today. And so are you.

We are not meant to go through life numb, or let parts of us die off just so we can get by without feeling things we don’t want to feel. Those feelings are there to tell us things, to teach us things, and to guide us to where we are meant to be. Those feelings are there for a reason, so to take them away we are walking through life blind, and wandering aimlessly to whatever destination seems the easiest, and not where we are necessarily meant to be to help us grow and learn. If you find something too painful use that as in indicator to change, to seek out help, to understand why these memories or feelings have come up, there is always a reason for everything, so trust that you are experiencing exactly what you are supposed to and instead of grabbing for the nearest thing to numb those feelings, ask yourself what you can do to learn from what it is coming up, no matter how daunting that may seem, there is always a way to find your way on the other side of them, and find a way to let your inner light shine and burn bright. I was able to find my light in the darkness, and I know you can too. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: When you feel uncomfortable with your feelings do you immediately try to numb them or make them go away? Why? How do you do that? How does that help you? How does that hurt you? How long have you done that? Do you ever let yourself feel your feelings? What scares you about your feelings? Where you ever told you weren’t allowed to have feelings? Who told you that? Why? You are allowed SLAYER, we’re all entitled to feel what we feel, and we can use what we feel to get stronger and to let those feelings guide us to where we are meant to be next, and typically the feelings we are resisting the most are the ones that are going to teach us the most, so dive in and feel what you feel.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you