Fatigue and fear
The story of desire
Small moments hit the hardest in life.
They are like echoes of bigger events or bigger decisions you’ve made. And although a big change in life can be painful… the smaller echoes feel like repeated blows while you’re down.
Perhaps I am wrong.
But that is how this weekend felt to me.
It was meant to be an escape in the countryside, a chance to relax. It ended up being a painful opening and discovery of how these last few years have affected me.
I found myself on the first evening of my weekend away in a room with four people. Four other people that took the shape of what I, in the past, considered cool. Edgy. Better than me. Who I was meant to strive to be.
On that night, I realised that I did not respect or admire them. Instead, I felt trapped. I wanted to leave, but I was unable to.
But I didn’t say anything, I kept quiet instead. I smiled, even though my eyes were getting red. I told them I was tired.
I excused myself often, to take a shower, to make a phone call, to go for a walk, but I used these opportunities to cry out tears without really knowing why I was crying.
These people, who had represented the ideal in my life… I now pitied them. Instead of confidence and provocation, I saw people who were desperate for attention, but didn’t really want to admit that because it looked weak. Instead of seeing people who were unbothered, I saw people who were playing a game with each other. A game of upholding their own value, in front of the other. As if value needed to be proven.
Looking back, I think I cried not because I judged them, because I know very well that I am no different from them. I cried because I had held people who were holding up a pretence, a façade… in high esteem. I was fooled by appearance, when my heart knew and sensed differently. I cried because I realised that the only reason I was fooled, was because I did not respect myself enough. I cried because now, things were different.
The tears were sad, but they were also happy.
Relief. Knowing. Strength.
I finally knew myself well enough to see past the image that I had, for so long, felt inferior to.
I kept this feeling quiet wihtin my heart, for days, for the whole weekend. I let this realisation ripen before I decided to express myself — something that I had not done often before.
I felt myself blooming, like a flower bud whose petals were groaning from the long awaited stretch outwards, towards the elements.
This moment was simple and unexpected.
It felt like heartbreak, but in reality, I was only breaking open.
It came after a long period of always trying to be better, working towards achieving stability, and keeping up with the racing cogs in my mind.
These were all products of a life lived by habit. The habit of thinking that I was wrong, and others knew better. The habit of thinking that I needed to please others to make progress in my own life. The habit of feeling the need to work hard, rather than recognising how I was already deserving enough.
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These were all habits that I became aware of many years ago, and now it felt like the momentum was finally slowing down and the wheels of my life were changing direction.
The turning point?
Not instigated by knowledge, insight or love — although that was all part of it.
No, the turning point for me was pure fatigue. Pain — mental, emotional and physical. These can act as a compass.
For me, this pain made me so tired that I decided I was done with effort and ready to put my life into my own hands, rather than the whims of other people, conditions or things.
Pure fatigue was what helped me to realise that I do not draw my value from attention, from validation or from rejection and victimisation.
Fatigue helped me to drop all that was not important and remember the one thing that was — when I simply go for what I want in my life, then everything in life comes in to help me. If it doesn’t come, then it was not important, needed or helpful to achieve the outcome I so desired.
Fatigue acted as a slow outlet towards a certain kind of faith that poses the gentle question that perhaps… just maybe… what is happening in my life could be interpreted in a different way.
Fatigue is what has brought me to the same desire, deep within my heart, that I am meant to write. It’s why I’m here. A quiet certainty, humming in the background of my dramatic, thought generating mind.
For a while, I was so distracted by making my life work for me, that I forgot: the only way I got here was because life naturally worked in my favour in the first place.
We live life in waves like this.
The hotter and brighter the spark of desire, the more we are afraid of its power. This fear makes us dance around the flame, rather than feel its warmth by bathing within it.
For me, being an author has always been that spark, that flame, that I have been trying to dance around — because I am afraid of what I could do with it. I am afraid that there would be people out there who would relate to what I write, and I am afraid what those people might feel as a result of my words, how it might affect them. I am afraid that effect might be good, I am afraid that it might be bad.
I am afraid that my words will be judged by their effects, of which I have no control over.
But fatigue has overcome the fear, and now I drop everything, once again.
I start from day one.
From a blank screen, a blank page.
From a word, a phrase, a sentence.
A feeling, a scene, a conversation.
A situation.
Just like the situation I found myself in this weekend.
The simple, small moment that opened my eyes. That reminded me to trust the flame within me more than what I see in others. Because what I see in others is only a distorted version of what already exists within myself.
It is better to turn inward. To engage in the courageous activity of being oneself, and being oneself fully.
