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Self Reflection

Earlier this year, I had an aura portrait. It was a a radiant kaleidoscope of yellow and orange, purple and pink. But in the middle was a small dark smudge. The photographer pointed to it and said it was a mental block; that something was troubling me. I thought about it afterward. My shoulder had been hurting for days, off and on, and I realized (through some journaling and card pulling and observing myself) that I was walking around hunched in on myself, trying to protect my heart. I rolled my shoulders back, lifted my chin, and journaled through what was bothering me. The pain went away.

At the end of last month, the week that I would normally begin writing and scheduling posts for the upcoming month, my jaw began to hurt. Intensely. I prodded around and located the source as being in the soft space behind my jaw. There wasn't any swelling or visible problem. I wasn't in pain while I slept or when I first woke up, the motions and activities that triggered searing flashes that left me gasping were inconsistent, and that added to the location made me suspect that it was mental. I'm not saying all pain is, but based on my own experience, if I get unexplained issues in soft spaces I start googling the metaphysical connections. I didn't have to look up jaw pain though. There was something that I needed to say, that I had never said before, that wanted to be said... that also terrified me, some part of me at least. 

But I've spent too long in silence. So I wrote. I hit "publish," knowing that a lot of the views would be from people who wanted to use my life as gossip fodder rather than to expand their own views or connect with me. Knowing that anything anyone might say or do based on my openness was less of a concern to me than being completely honest. And the pain went away. 

That's why I write. Why I share things, personal things, here and on Instagram. Because pretending to be someone I'm not wrecks me, on every possible level. I cannot be quietly authentic, because part of who I am is loud. I try to be loud about the right things, to be just as loud in my apologies as I am in my offenses, but the volume knob is broken and I have no intention of fixing it.

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