Being human is so messy.  There’s no book on how to get through this life.  There is no guidance for the day to day and we are all doing our best within our own frames of reference.  So we make it up as we go and we get it “wrong” until we get it “right.”  The room for error and the room to experiment and have fun in my life is something I struggle with every day.  I feel the creative urge a lot but I let myself get distracted by the mundane or the things that I’m told I need to do.  My fear keeps me firmly on the path set out before me.

Being human is about creating space and that is hard to do when you have a preconceived notion about what that space should hold.  It’s even harder to create space when you are only allowed to create the life you’re looking for if you can afford it.  So really when it comes to creating space, it’s about creating space for yourself as well as others to be equally flawed.  It’s up to us to decide how that impacts us and where we put that energy.

I have a story that I’ve been hesitant to share before now because I was afraid of how it would make people perceive my work.  I was afraid it would be too off-putting.  I felt shame about this story because even as I was living it I knew it was “wrong” and as time passed, there were fewer and fewer people I could share it with.  The way I handled the trauma of my life was not the conventional way—and there are some who would debate whether or not what I experienced even was trauma.  I felt guilt because I didn’t believe that I had a reason to feel guilty based on my life.  It left me conflicted about who I was—because I knew I had this experience but there were people who didn’t think it was enough to feel the way I did.  I always carried the belief that all of these things were the direct result of my decisions, so anything that came of it was a result of my own actions.  How could I be upset over things I brought into my life simply because it was more than I could handle?  Do we have a right to be upset over the world not going our way?

I think the point is, regardless of what others may think, our stories are all an indicator of our messy humanity.  We all have things we’d prefer not to have lived through.  We all have things that embarrass us or make us feel a level of shame.  And that too is part of being human. 

Over the next few days and weeks (however long it takes me to compose it) I will share this story.  I can’t move forward with this work without sharing this piece.  And I can’t profess honesty and transparency without being honest and transparent.  Sharing the pieces of life that we have choked down is a mark of our need to connect and also a need to remind ourselves that we are human.  No matter how messy it gets, we are lucky to live in the beautiful chaos of it all.  We can either invite ourselves in and learn to weather the storm or we can fight it and get carried away.  I choose to open the door.