Self-Love Series Day 4: Ebony

Self-love Series Day 4: Ebony

I wasn't supposed to contribute this year, but I found this in my drafts titled "Self Love Series 2018" . I wrote this April 10, 2017 and it was my first contribution to the 2018 Self-Love Series. I was beginning to experience anxiety for the first time in my life and so, I turned to the things that keep me grounded and calm: writing and photography. I look back at this writing...I wrote this during my lunch break at work, right after I took Rhodiola Rosea and some Ashwanghanda (both adrenal healing supplements). Time heals everything. I feel so loved and beautiful right now. I feel more whole than ever before, and a sense of calm that only comes from God and an intention to seek joy. Never give up on yourself, never believe you are incapable of growth because you are. You are everything you need.

I don't know when it happened, but it happened suddenly and unexpectedly. My heart raced at uneven tempos and my mind became a swirling mess of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and fears simultaneously. I thought "shit, am I having a stroke. I knew I shouldn't have had those hot wings, but did they really clog up my arteries like that!"
Really, I just struggle with anxiety and unfortunately, its a recent happening. I've always been such an optimistic go-with-the flow type of person, so I never thought anxiety could be an option in my life. However life has a way of wearing you down, if you're the rock, life's the eternal ocean that erodes at your being.

For the past year; I've been trying to deal with the reality of love, how independent it is, how it chooses when to take you in or throw you out. I lost my first love and quite frankly, I allowed our relationship to steal pieces of me with it, which has left me lost and quite the realist.

That's weird because I've always been an idealistic optimist, who believes everything works out for our good. I still whole-heartedly believe that. Its just taking some time for my mind to believe what my  heart knows is true: we are love, so love never leaves. So I think that's the thing: that's the basis of my anxiety.

My head and heart are in discord and, for a while, were at war. My mind desires to be free of emotion, free of idealism, and free of love. However my heart, my tender child-like heart, still believes in love, in dreams and idealism, and it feels very deeply. For months I wasn't aware and often would suppress my emotions. Literally. If I felt myself about to cry I would take a deep breath, swallow it, and send it into some deep chasm within me. Talk about toxic waste!

I'm in discord and it has manifested itself in ways; new and old. I have begun comparing myself to others as I did when I was a child and I often feel like I don't do enough to make myself or God happy. I think I'm lazy and don't work enough, so I feel guilty when I'm sleepy, and frustrated when I want to nap. I constantly want something to do to make me feel productive, which often makes me tired and worn, which causes me to become anxious because I know sleep is near. And sleep signifies the moment when God can either say Assignment Complete, or Assignment Pending; in which I pray he says pending because I don't think I've ever completed anything. (geez I was so harsh on myself, sorry Ebbles)

That's how my mind operates these days.

My heart is quite the opposite. My heart is wise, wise beyond my years, so it tries its best to remind my mind that its the one in control. My heart knows me. It feels beyond me, it knows the intersection of good and evil, it intuitively knows when to love more and how that love should be administered. When I don't feel good enough, my heart repeats that every part of me is good and whole. When I feel unaccomplished, my heart reminds me that the only way I've come this far is through accomplishments. My heart throws conventional beliefs and accepted social principles out the window. My hearts wants to love. It wants to love freely and it ultimately wants to love me.

So what happens when the heart wants to love and the mind tries to destroy and confuse: anxiety. That feeling that you don't want to fight yourself anymore, but you have no blueprint or old self to go back to; there's only uncharted territory I must explore. I have to explore me, know me again. It's not even that I lost myself this time, somehow Ebony remained, though she has been battered by storms, dragged up mountains, and submerged in floods.
Ebony must take the step into the unknown, into the chaotic mass that was before creation and remain to manifest human's creation in the world. I must trust God to know the dark mass isn't to consume me, but to mold me and transform me into something greater than I can imagine or dream. I must take that step, to show my head that my heart takes lead.