My Stripper Name

Spoiler alert; content of post not nearly as sexy as the title.

I am currently in the throes of stripping away decades of illusion. My head is hurting, I’m feeling extremely vulnerable, and for the first time I’m handling myself with gentleness. Going through any kind of rebirth is an excruciating process. Both mother and child must be tended to with extreme tenderness and care, and here I am starring in both roles. All that shedding that I’m always writing about has never been more raw and real. The time has come for a serious shift. I can’t ignore the signs any longer, and while it hurts so much I have concluded that discomfort never killed anyone. Finding comfort in the discomfort is where I need to be right now. I can do it because I know it’s temporary, as all things are. Thoughts and feelings are all temporary illusions created my our own minds and anarchistic egoism. It’s unbelievable how much shit we make up. It’s pure masochism, and though there are so many ways in which I’m good to myself, there have also been ways in which I have been failing myself. It’s important for me to know that this has not been my fault. I have been humanly absorbing emotionally surrounding cues from others for my entire life. All I did was get used to them, store them, and then subconsciously perpetuate them through my own unaware choices. Fun!

The anguish has been too great, and my only recourse is to deconstruct the narrow bandwidth of unconsciousness that has been squatting in my beautiful mind. I let it in unknowingly. I will now kick it the F out. Squatters don’t leave agreeably and peacefully. This work is hard. It rips apart everything we know and rewires the only systems we believe we are familiar with. Systems that are false bullshit, built on ego, fear, projection, attachment, and feelings of unworth. No infant sits in the nursery feeling unworthy. This is a story we pick up as we grow, which is ironic in that all it does is shrink us down. Our body gets taller, our physical muscles take shape, but our insides get so knotted and stunted. This is the challenge unique to humans. We get more messed up than anything else on the planet, as a result of our insane complex makings. However what this really means is that on the other side of this exists the possible opposite human experience; clean, untangled, bright, shining peace and tranquility. BUT HOW DO WE GET THERE????

This is the question I’ve been faced with recently. All the forks in the road I’ve been presented with over the past several years have led me to this giant fork. Always the dots are connecting. Always...

There is no place to unpack new awareness in a messy, cluttered closet. A complete and thorough stripping down is simply necessary. Old tendencies, destructive habits, erratic emotions,  insecurities,  feeling like shit at the drop of a hat; where is this coming from? I can’t take being enslaved to this anymore. It’s too hard to move about my day buried by these surface forces. Unless you are a seasoned monk living on a mountain in Tibet, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You might not want to admit it, but a part of you knows. I am a typical human body encasing the same spirit as you. Our struggles are the same. How we address them or not is what makes us different. That’s what will divide humans into varying levels of greater or lesser consciousness. We can only love in direct conjunction to how conscious we are. If there is any kind of veil or lack that covers us up, we will literally not see anyone else in front of us. Friends, lovers, children; we can only see others the way we see ourselves. If we have a hole we will attract others with those same holes. It’s a support group. I used to think I had it all together, but then I’d invite these experiences into my life that were not in line with that. I now know why; I was aching to soothe parts of others that needed to be soothed within myself. I recognized holes in others so clearly because they were mine. I finally understand what it means to have others be a mirror for ourselves.

Friends, this is a sad yet valuable piece of information. I am a giver, a lover, a nurturing healer (we all are at our essence) but I wasn’t directing those efforts inward. This is why receiving is harder for me; it’s foreign. Receiving from others can feel uncomfortable to a giver because it’s so unfamiliar to us. We almost give to avoid having to receive, since deep down we don’t feel we deserve it. Someone’s gotta give, so we steal that role first since it’s easier for us to fill it.There has been a part of my story that has told me I wasn’t deserving of all that TLC, but that it was always my job to spread it around like fairy dust.  Since I’m a good girl I listened. Which would explain why I keep falling down the same rabbit hole time an again. Different rabbits, same hole. Same Me. Until now. It’s deeply painful to admit to buying into a direct line to lack. What, Me?? I’m awesome so what are you talking about??

Another thing I’ve learned; confidence, strength, and feeling outwardly secure are totally different than having lack at the core. Those things can swim around inside us simultaneously. Its synchronized swimming but everyone is drowning and the routine is a hot mess (side note; is there anything more demeaning than a bathing cap?? K fine, maybe those leashes we put on our kids at Disney). In breaking apart and re-piecing myself together, I have identified these waves of fear that I feel as stemming directly from rejection and abandonment. If triggered, it’s amazing how instantly I hide in those caves. The caves like when I visit, and it’s the ego who tells me I belong there. That if I leave I’ll get whacked. The ego will always aim to have us remaining steeped in poison. That’s it’s job, and we need it to overcome and level up. I can be going about my day feeling wonderful, grateful, and light but then bam; the inner voice that tells me I’m being discarded will arise. That inner voice looooooves the past, and so it will start to rattle off dozens of past examples in an attempt to prove itself right. It loves to point me in the direction of “see? You’re being disposed of. They took what they needed and bounced.” This voice will basically give a power point presentation in my mind as to why the 40 years of past instances are applicable to the present, even if logically they’re not related at all. It’s so confusing, and we question what’s real and what’s not. Old butterflies dust off their wings and flap about in a cruel attempt to make themselves relevant again. This makes me kick myself for giving so much, even though I know that’s our purpose on earth. Giving feels right to me because as Ram Dass says, “we are all here to walk each other home”. Clearly my past giving did indeed lead to dark places, and feeling taken advantage of always hurts deeply. The feelings of terror of abandonment and being rendered insignificant is something I’ve had to explore recently. Going to the roots of these reactions has been painful but crucial. I never thought I was afraid of pain, but I have been more so than I knew, since I had all these mental survival tactics to avoid getting whacked again. We collect when we lack; collect texts, collect plans, collect thoughts, collect errands, collect flattery, collect dates,  so often out of attempting to fill a hole we don’t want to see. Therefore, if the text doesn’t come, we can be filled with actual anguish. Which sounds crazy because it is. I have also discovered that I automatically go to a place of self berating when I express my voice or needs in even the slightest way. Did I say too much? Was I pushy in what I needed? Did I over assert myself? There are people in my life who have made me feel hunted and throttled; did I do that to someone else because I had the audacity to be open?

It’s obvious as to why I feel guilty at having a voice. It’s because I was never given permission to have one. It was always told to me in some way to shut up and follow orders. Perform, deliver, be an extension for others and get them whatever it is they themselves needed. This came as a shock to outspoken, comfortable sharing Me, but it’s been a liberating revelation. Another friend of mine going through a divorce said he’s  just learning to find his voice again too. It’s amazing how our needs get so buried under an avalanche of someone else’s emotions, and even more amazing how we allow that to happen in the first place. It comes from somewhere. There is a painful source that must be examined in order to cleanse. How sad I thought expressing my own basic boundaries and needs was considered outrageous. Listening to others is an essential part of the human experience. Was I not entitled to be heard too? One reason led to that belief: conditioning. You start to believe the stories others tell you, especially those you start hearing from youth. Then as we get older we make poor decisions that support those stories, simply because they’re familiar. There is some kind of messed up safety in making bad choices that perpetuate these lousy narratives; at least there’s predictability, right? It somehow softens the blow if we can be less shocked by the outcome, even if the outcomes aren’t desirable. To oversimplify, we can both “un” and “re” condition our choice patterns, but only if we do the work head on. That means examining the ugliest parts to our reality, the parts that dredge up all kinds of difficult feelings.

Cleaning up the inside is the only way to clean up the outside. Only after rebuilding ourselves will we invite good choices, patterns, and experiences into our lives. By being better we will attract better. This doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen bit by bit. Each smarter decision, however small, will lead to greater better ones. What we eat, who we hang out with, who we choose to get involved with romantically, how we react to certain situations. Personally, I don’t think this type of necessary self study can be achieved without meditating. Going within is the only answer. Therapy is one dimensional in that it’s an entirely egoic enterprise. It’s worthwhile on a certain level but since it’s all “I and Me”, it doesn’t bring inner peace. It’s when we can’t see past the “I and Me” that we remain trapped in seeing ourselves only as human. Living as humans seems like that’s all we are, but we are so much more than that. More on this later, it’s too much for one post. One step at a time. Just trust me on that; tapping into that awareness is the key to joy. Not happiness, which is fleeting, but joy. Bliss. Serenity. The stuff we claim we all want. I love sharing this research with you, it allows me to build connection as I strip away at the layers that had prevented connection prior, namely connection to myself.

Oh, and if I were to really choose a stripper name based on the name of my pet and childhood street, it would be Roxy Crestwood. Definitely viable. Love you guys.