With every shadow there is a source of light. When all you can see is shadow, it likely means the light is at your back. If you can picture how cold and dark this might feel, then you can share in the lifestyle of cynical dreams, pessimistic truths, and half-hearted passion. The shadows are not a place that can be avoided. We all live here for some time. What might be avoided is a departure into the light.
Hope is the acknowledgment of light. I have spent a majority of this year accepting and listening to how people recognize me by my shadow. I have spent an equal amount of time defending it, explaining it, an pitying it. I learned to ask permission from my shadow, I asked to be invited to share its borders. I asked my darkness if we could make an adjustment towards the light.
I submitted to the tensions that inspire my shadow to darken. I worked to listen to judgment. I reflected on circumstances that irritated my ego. I became fragile. Much of it was unintentional. This year, I did what it took to turn myself towards the light. It was to turn further and further into the darkness, eventually I turned 180 degrees. Now I can glimpse the light breaking around the obstructions in my life.
Turning is a metaphor for learning to listen, accept, and own. Turning was a difficult collection of actions, events, and emotions. It ranged from working to put down defenses to simply identifying defenses. I became weak, physiologically and emotionally. I embraced resting. I was lazy, while being responsible for actions I would normally avoid. I was sad for a lot more circumstances than I would normally allow myself to grieve. I find myself crying more. I became needy and notice how much of a whiner I can be. I can still see my arrogance and behind it how scared I am. I owned my perverted ways, allowing me to see my shame. I did a lot more discomforting activities than normal. I resisted my addicted nature. I drank less, rested more, just sat, I watched sitcoms, I stop reading, I let my weeds grow, and I tried to be less selfish. I used the muscle movements that I had never trusted. I expressed my jealousy. I reached out for help more often. I allowed myself to be spread thin. I visited places I was judgmental about. I trusted people more. I listened more often then finding contradictions.
I embraced a lot more emotions than I let myself in the past. I was able to really feel perplexed, confused, and worried. I revisited what it feels like to fear losing a lover. Then again I really embraced trying to love and be loved. I did more things for others that were because I wanted to versus out of reciprocity. I realized what it feels like to be let down. I learned how difficult it is to love like a friend while being in love. I learned the difference between being seen as a lover and seen as a friend. I had the heart wrenching struggle of once again being rejected. I am different, and see the shadows with curiosity more than fear.
I behaved in ways I would have normally avoided. I found myself feeling taken advantage of. I felt myself being valued less. I found myself walking on egg shells more often. I found myself spending more money on extras. I found myself drinking more when obligated. I found myself reminding myself of past trespasses. I was beginning to lose hope entirely. I began to question my heroes, mistrust my lover, become jealous of my friends, and shut myself off from the activities I cherished most. I lost myself in my victimization...gently and with care.
I had the courage to be defenseless enough to feel the pain when the coping tactics of the shadow kicked in. I tried my best to keep myself in the places that brought on fear and my shadows. I resisted the urge to protect myself with so much tolerance refusing to allow my ingrained warrior's protective nature to argue for my internal cause. I fought hard to hold the words that are usually release with anger, sending my blood from my torso up toward my head. I may be more patient but also defeated. It didn't give the gifts I thought it would give but it gave me gifts.
I did not regain sight of my hope, my light, until I could have a full 360 degree scan of who I am capable of being. The term "come full circle" fits the analogy. Who I am is who I have been, complicated by who I am seen as and who I think I can be. None are completely accurate or an expression of how undefinable I am. I feel my hope growing and my future brightening. I am excited about the last year. I am excited that I can be flawed, weak, and misunderstood and still thrive.
I know more about the lesser me than ever. I like to be liked and have a difficult time seeing how unlikable I can be. I believe now that I hold on tighter to trespasses more often than I do successes. It feels like towers of stacked successes can easily be wiped out by a visit from tragedy. And now I can see that tragedy is not random or spontaneous. Tragedy is a build up of the sewage. The subtle collection of toxins from unregulated evil or suffering that eventually erupts, boils over, and reacts.
So when tragedy rears it's head, my shadow tries to convince me that I should be surprised, but having gotten to know my shadow, I can testify that my pollution has created or contributed to tragedy's growth. I am an equal reason for the tragedies in my life or how I allow them to impact me. I am liable for the reasons that those that don't like me have. Where before, I might have believed it was all their problem. I can be open to listening to the noise coming from my messages. I can be present to fear... in doses.
With this journey into my shadow, I have a new respect for pessimism. It is a currency that I don't really need when I can use hope. Because hope was so absent, the only resource I can conjure in my shadows is pessimism. I now have an analogy that pessimism is like a two way street. If I turn down that street I realize that the paved path, with a street sign displaying Pessimistic Avenue, will always put me in traffic and dangerously into on coming traffic. The pessimism I have about others, will and has eventually cultivate pessimism about me. I am glad the intersection between life and pessimistic avenue is a four way stop. I no longer see the value in pessimism, but I am still learning how to bank on hope.
This encounter with my shadows is not my last, but it feels like a time has come to look for more light. I see the shadow as a coping strategy for extreme stress. I realize how intense introspection can be required in order to notice shadow qualities. I became disheartened and discouraged by seeing and being asked to see myself in undesirable ways. I have grown to readopt and respect the influence of my victim role. I have sat with my loser concept. I have revisited my abusive tendency. While trying to accept these qualities I found myself immersed in discouraging moments of identity struggle. I was believing and becoming absolutely my shadow.
I was starting to identify as my shadow. I was convincing myself that there too much to overcome to go beyond my shadows. I was working overtime to reconcile events, ideas, and values that I no longer needed to synthesize. I was putting myself into environments that were holding me and binding me to my shadow versus aiding me back to my light. I found mercy again.
I was a prisoner to my shadow. I may still be a prisoner to my shadow. What I can tell is that there is a forgiveness that I am trying to recognize. I am trying to tell the story of my shadows from their wounded perspective. I am trying to see my shadows as crying infants that have yet to be held and soothed. I am trying to tell its story from the circumstances that evoke my coping strategies. I came up with a few shadow qualities that I can forgive.
I am fallible.
I am guilty.
I am dangerous.
I am careless.
I am rude.
I am vulgar.
I am prejudice.
I honored my shadows. In a symbolic way I gave them the necessary attention they cried for. To everyone who wants to blame, punish, criticize, compete, prove, license, regulate, corral, judge, and hate, I join you. I bow to the pain and frigid shadows that have hoarded our attention.
