Hey All,
How have you been? Have you been good? Yes? Good. I’m glad. Honestly I am, I hope you continue to be good. Have you not been good? I’m sorry. I cannot imagine what you’re going through, and I wish you find your way out of those feelings and situations. I’m learning that sometimes people’s adversities (if that’s even the right word for life happening in the unrelenting way it does), need only acknowledgement and words of encouragement. So I’m here to tell you that although I don’t know you, I know you are currently going through something difficult just for the mere fact that you’re a human living in this world, and I wish you the best - whomever you may be.
And you know, there is something powerful about being able to voice how you’re feeling regardless of that feeling being positive or negative, so I still commend you hon, because some of us just don’t even know that. Have you ever had so many feelings, felt them all at once or one after another so much, that you just don’t know on which to settle? Have you ever gotten to a place where you don’t know how to feel, or what to feel, so much that you dissociate yourself from your own self? Have you ever felt like you were just floating? You feel light, but it’s not the good kind of weightlessness that you’ve previously experienced during good times, it’s the kind that comes only when you’re the most lost and overwhelmed.
I think that’s where I am now, it’s where I have been for weeks now (maybe months, I don’t know), and I’m having trouble figuring out how to voice it. You know, explain it. Name it. Shoot, write it even, but here I go trying because even if all is lost, I could at least say I tried.
So I’ve been watching a lot of t.v. (because quarantine, but also dissociation), and as such I’ve been inspired (because art inspires art), which led me to finally write for the first time in weeks (maybe months) - which is why I’m here, writing to you...for you? Maybe for me. Who knows. The point is that I’ve been watching inspiring things that have made me contemplate life (like I did before the dissociation - work with me, I have a point, I promise) and they’ve brought me full circle back to a conclusion which I had already made around November or December of last year but forgot (because 2020). And now I am finally seeing the beginnings of said conclusion rear its head right back at me in full force via different mediums. What is this conclusion you ask? Well, only that I can be whoever I want to be, and the only one holding myself back is me.
Right. So you need an explanation of course, you don’t live in my head and therefore don’t know what I’m getting at. Basically, a character in a show I watch literally came toe to toe with God (herself, the universe, or whatever higher being you subscribe to) who asked her to name herself. Once she named herself, God transported her into (or turned her into) whom she said she was, which led to her living a multitude of lives. And once given the opportunity to grow into who she named herself to be each time, she then became a more complete version of herself, because she was given the freedom to be who she wanted to be. Her journey reminded me that I can be whoever I want to be as long as I believe I could be, because if I believe I could be I will put forth the effort to be who I want to be, which will then lead me to be a more complete me. And isn’t it laughable that we forget ourselves and our size (spiritual size, not body size), when bombarded with outside input from the world around us that makes us diminish ourselves down to meaningless, small beings? When in reality we are so much more. I for one, have been so enveloped by my ocean of numbness (dissociation) for so long that I forgot that I had the power to just BE who I want to be.
I’ve been having a hard time putting pen to paper (figuratively cuz I type, I don't write) and I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts in order long enough to pinpoint, or name the feelings that have made me their home for the past couple of months. I’m constantly tired, worried, overwhelmed, angry, lethargic, frustrated, easily irritated, stressed, anxious, exhausted, negative and most of all, numb. I feel lost often, and like I’m floating on stagnant water, daily; Just sitting here in the middle of this ocean of dissociation. I’ve been in a fog for so long and still am, honestly. Which sucks because at one point, I was all present just taking in information, putting out thoughts, and actively interacting with life and the world around me. But then it all got to be too much and now I’m befuddled. That’s really it. Just, befuddled. And it’s so fitting because that word means that you just can’t think clearly, which is exactly where I live now - that place where I’m just treading on the stagnant water of negative emotions, that are a result of some deeper shit I cannot dive down into long enough to find a clearing. Befuddled.
But although in some sense I still am dissociated (or befuddled, or numb, or floating on stagnant water - whichever you find more appropriate) I am still being bombarded on several fronts with the idea that I am better than this. That I have the power to get myself out of this place of rumination, and go on to become the better version of myself I long to be. That really, I just need to take the first step forward which will propel me into who I am - the version of me that is closest to my highest self, as I perceive myself to be, in congruence with the higher power I choose to believe in.
For Christian me, “I Am” is significant because of Exodus 3:14 when God responded to Moses’ request for his name as “I am who I am.” I often find myself correlating other spiritual messages to that of specific messages from the Bible, because I still very much believe in a Christian God though I have issues with Christian religious doctrines. But I also understand that a great many of the world’s population does not believe in a Christian God or the Bible, to which I say, if you get some clarity from this piece even though I have correlated it to my beliefs which are not your beliefs, I am forever grateful to you for understanding what I am saying regardless of how I am saying it. Either way, my hope for you is that if you only receive one thing from this, it will be that you have the greatest power within yourself to become whomever you want and choose to be.
Thank you,
Carmen Hernandez