Do you want to know what it is like to truly be free?
Have you ever felt so trapped inside of yourself… or inside of your own life and reality-the one you’ve created, that you actually just wanted nothing more than to die, to kill yourself, or better yet… to just cease to exist at all?
Have you ever wished you were never born?
Have you ever wished your own voice inside of your head would just shut up? What about everyone else’s voices? Have you ever just wanted silence so badly that you were willing to disappear from your own life to get it, to leave everyone and everything behind and hide yourself away?
Have you ever avoided mirrors because you couldn’t stand to look at yourself?
Have you ever felt completely alone, like you truly had no one… not one single person… no real friends or family members- who didn’t shame you? Have you ever felt that when people called or texted you, it was only to get something from you or use you in some way?
Have you ever felt like everyone was better off without you in their lives, like all you ever do is create problems, no matter where you end up?
Have you ever been stabbed in the back by everyone you know, let down miserably, lied to, manipulated, stolen from, physically, sexually, mentally, or emotionally abused? Have you ever been in a toxic or co-dependent relationship that caused serious trauma and warped your idea of love, making you fear the next potential person who comes along?
Have you ever felt like every single choice you’ve ever made was the wrong choice?
I have felt every single one of these things.
Whether you are rich or poor, have a great family or a terrible one… whether you are black, white, or somewhere in between… no matter your culture, religion, or sexuality… no matter the groups you are in, the events you attend, the clothes you wear, your reputation, your amount of success/lack of success…
You’ve hated life- at some point. You have, to some extent, felt mistreated and that life had been unfairly dealt to you.
Haven’t you?
(I am not negating the facts that their are unjust, hideous, and corrupt things happening in the world, to certain groups. The fact is, some peoples are oppressed. Some are being served underhanded prejudice every single day, but this is not the issue I am presenting to you today. I am only speaking on personal freedom in this post.)
You’ve felt sadness, grief, anger, fear, regret, constricted, conflicted, confined, misunderstood, hatefulness, pity, etc. If you haven’t, you may be a psychopath and should consider therapy. (Bad joke- psychopaths don’t do therapy).
Or maybe, you’ve had your fill of negative emotions and have, somewhere along the way, unconsciously made a choice to cut yourself off from feeling much of anything. So, you don’t trust yourself. You never make any decisions and now you’re stagnant. Or… you fill your time with alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, food, gossip, dysmorphia, drama, or chasing other highs that make you feel… something.
Do you want to love yourself and have the curiosity and wander of a child again?
I make no promises nor sell any content that assures you I have the magical cure for your unhappiness, self-hatred, bitterness toward the world, trauma responses, blocks, self-pity, poor health, addictions, etc. I can only hope to help you understand yourself and your potential and purpose at a deeper level; which offers you a choice of walking down the road of healing.… and guess what?
It’s not easy… for anyone.
Nothing in life is worth it if it’s too easy though, is it?
We can begin healing by asking ourselves one simple question.
What is freedom?
Outside of the realms of economics, culture, and politics, we have another type of freedom and this is personal freedom. Consider the thought of a personal freedom before reading any further. Allow your mind to dig deep enough to reach an unfamiliar place inside of you- a place with limitless wisdom.
What does REAL freedom mean to you? Then, ask yourself how your answer shapes and reflects some of the issues in your life.
If you go to Google and ask what freedom is, the first thing that comes up is this: “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint,” (OxfordLanguages, 2020).
Although we may not have the privilege everywhere in the world to be free outside of ourselves, no one can tell us how we can think or feel. We’re allowed to create an infinite universe that we contain within these vessels that only we know.
“Don’t go backwards. You’ve already been there.”
-Ray Charles
You’ve already been there….. You’ve already felt those feelings. There’s no need to feel them again. That is called a loop and who enjoys repetition? Instead, learn from them. Take them as lessons in life so that you can create new and equally beautiful and horrible experiences. There is always a yin to match the yang.
Be grateful for the fullness of life.
We shouldn’t excuse shitty behavior, but we should forgive ourselves when we were ignorant to the harm we have caused because of our past, shitty behavior.
As a trauma response, I used to act according to how I thought others wanted me to act. I said what I thought others wanted to hear. I repressed my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, wants, and even needs because it was beneficial to those around me, I thought. I didn’t want to hurt people in the way I had been hurt. I avoided my deep feelings until sh*t hit the proverbial fan.
But… The truth always comes out somehow.
I had been abandoned and neglected for years. I was so terrified someone would do this to me again if I didn’t give them everything they wanted… if I didn’t shut up and keep my opinions to myself, they’d leave me because they wouldn’t actually like me.
The truth is, I had no self-worth and I had no idea. I was the one who didn’t like me.
After a number of things happened, I realized I was stuck in a loop. I would end up with similar people; always thinking they’d treat me better than the last. I wore rose-colored glasses and told my intuition to go away. I denied proof of toxicity because I was unknowingly looking for someone to expose me to myself.
What I didn’t realize was that I was slapping band-aid over band-aid over band-aid and never cleaning and stitching the deep gash that metaphorically continued to bleed. One day, all those band-aids finally fell off and I looked at this wound in the mirror. It was so ugly and monstrous- much bigger than I remembered it being when I covered it up.
Something clicked…. I was the one that cut myself. It was easier to just hurt myself than to hand someone, (I wanted to love me), the knife and take the chance of them leaving me with another scar. I’d just get it over with before they could strike… because that gave me control somehow.
What if, however, I wasn’t even in danger of getting sliced open by anyone?
What if it had always been in my head?
What if I actually had the control the entire time, but I was too distracted by all the pretty band-aids and sharp knives to see it?
Here’s a secret: No one can make you feel anything or anyway without your permission. No one can make you react toward their choices, words, actions, or anything else, without YOUR permission. What feeling you feel and whatever reaction you decide to give, is your own. No one can do it for you. No one. It’s a choice.
If you allow yourself to react negatively and feel negatively to someone else’s choices or words, you’re basically saying to them, “I respect you more than myself and I depend on you to make me happy.” And that is toxic.
Here’s the thing: Nothing is personal. Everyone is entitled free-will and we should never assume to have more free-will than anyone else. So someone made a mistake and it hurt you? It wasn’t personal. For every time someone has hurt you, you have also hurt someone (big or small). Oftentimes, the way someone has hurt us, we unknowingly end up hurting someone else the very same way.
Monkey see… monkey do.
You live… you learn.
As above… so below.
Now… I’m not saying you should keep them in your life if they DID hurt you that badly. What I’m saying is, you should fully feel that pain, even appreciate and be thankful for the pain (because without it, you would not experience joy), learn from this pain, forgive the person that hurt you (because they’re only human-like you), and then move on with your life WITHOUT FEAR holding you back.
If you don’t, you are putting yourself in a prison and that prison is inside of your head. Evil is nothing more than fear. Fear gives power over to evil. Then, bad things happen in your life over and over and over again until you finally say, “you know what… I give in. I give up my attempt at control.”
Unfortunately, this generally doesn’t happen until people hit rock bottom and have nothing left to even give. When you have nothing, you begin to lose control. When you have no one, you can only speak to yourself. You can’t seek validation through another any longer. When you have nowhere to go, you go within-and that’s the one place no one else can touch-without your permission.
When your life starts to unravel before your eyes and you’ve got nowhere to turn and no one to and rely on except that guy/girl in the mirror, know that it is up to you and you alone to free yourself from yourself. It is a gentle reminder, however, when another person extends a hand when they know they receive nothing in return, that unconditional love exists in unsuspecting places.
It is the unravelling of our lives that exposes us and it is the crash of hitting rock bottom that begins our healing.
If you have ever been to a point where life just sucks, you’ve got no one to thank but yourself. And I mean it when I say, be thankful. When good things happen, you equally have no one to thank but yourself. It’s inevitable that bad things will happen in your life, even awful things, but the more you fight against it, the more you will struggle.
The ocean is sometimes calm and easy, but other times, the waves are terrifying as they are coming to crash over your head. The current could perhaps pull you under, where you don’t know if you should swim this way or that. You could be eaten by a shark! You may not even know how to swim. Fear, however, creates panic and panic means you’ll drown very quickly.
Fill your lungs, connect your mind and body with the water, and float on without the worries of what will come next. Just allow it to come. That is freedom. Living without always asking yourself… “what if?”
You are the ruler of your life. You are the creator of your reality. You are the feeler of your emotions. You are the learner of your lessons.
You are the seed that grows into a tree, becomes wise with age… only to watch your leaves fall away every winter and sprout every spring. Even when you die, are chopped down, or have fallen during a storm, you are still wood that shelters life, meaning you have purpose. You become paper for little girls to write their feelings. You are used to burn fire to create warmth for a son’s campfire.
No matter what you become, you will never truly die because… you are divine.
Do you truly want freedom?
Stop taking inventory of every wrong thing everyone has ever done to you. Forgive them. Listen to the needs of your body. Don’t rely on others to solve your problems or even love you.
You go and love you!
Stop caring what people think of you. It gets you absolutely nowhere, ever. And in reality, no one actually cares. Seriously, who cares? They’re not you. Only you know what you should be doing and where you should be going. They’re only distracting themselves from themselves, just like you and me.
We all play this game called life, where we spend a lot of time distracting ourselves from our own thoughts, feelings, and needs. Stop feeling afraid to speak your truth. You have the ability to speak, do you not? Stop meticulously planning every little word and just say what you feel you should say. It’ll come out anyway. Find your strength. It’s there in that place of limitless wisdom within.
Admit it when you’re wrong or you’ve made a mistake. Stop doubting and second guessing yourself. Trust your own intuition. Obey the needs of your mind, body, and soul (balance). Love and respect thy neighbor, but honor yourself as an equal instead of giving them more than you actually have.
Feel your feelings instead of always trying to rationalize them.
Float on the ocean of life and stop fighting the waves. Sometimes there will be peace and sometimes there will come hurricanes. That’s the way it is, so there’s no use in dreading it or being presumptuous about the future. Be present and allow yourself to totally live in the moment; otherwise, you’ll miss something vitally important to your growth. If you make this a habit, life will be gone before you know it. Keep making the same mistakes and you’ll go insane.
Take off the rose-colored glasses. Stop projecting your issues on others so that you don’t have to face your own personality “flaws.” You’re simply human and so is everyone else! The only way to be perfect is to be imperfect. You can’t possibly be perfect unless you’re imperfect. Admit your own imperfections. Becoming uncomfortably aware of truths is how you change the truths you don’t like.
“Be water, my friend.”
-Bruce Lee
Last thing, and I’m going to say it bluntly… (Know that it’s out of love)…
…Stop waiting for someone to save you.
No one is coming to save you and no one should. You’re on your own and truthfully, you can only save yourself. Of course, it’s great to have a partner: if they make you happy, respect you, and love you for you, but they’re not your savior. They’re their own savior and you’re yours and only yours.
Accept that life isn’t always easy, FOR ANYONE, nor is it always miserable. That fact isn’t a reason to be riddled with fear. You must see the good that comes with the bad or you will be the misery.
Now, unlock that door and step out of that cage you’ve put yourself into- out of fear of crashing waves. You are the cage and you are the tsunami too. Consider these words.
Liberate yourself.
It’s time to be free!
–From Within the Labyrinth,
With Love,
-Lakin 💜