“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”
― Georgia O'Keefe
This quote from Georgia has appeared to me in as many ways it can every day for the past couple of months. I think a message so adamant would awaken even those in the deepest sleep. I have not always done what I wanted to do, and this is a reason she is one of the strongest muses for me. She pushes me to work: One day I will get there. I’ve walked through a lot of fear since these words of hers have been coming, and many different kinds. As the quote shows up again and again, I have resisted in a way that propels. I have not let fear keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do, or at the least tried!
During my time in North Carolina, I found a path to the life that I have dreamt so I began walking it. While doing so, very clear and non-negotiable obstacles arose. It was confusing, frustrating, disheartening, and I fought against them for a bit. Eventually I realized it was not the right time, or place, or situation. It was close, and my excitement overweighed my intuition. Sometimes “close enough” will wrap you oh so tight around its finger, and I became afraid to abandon it, but I did. I packed up everything I had and drove over 1500 miles in two days to come back to New Mexico. I had to be quick before that particular fear took over me, an oldie but goodie I know intimately.
At the same time, I fully stopped working in a field that has supported me, but on the other side I felt an extreme emptiness in it (towards the tech industry itself, not the people I worked with nor design—both of which I love). It provided what I considered over the years as freedom. I was afraid to abandon this too, and I sat in that one for over ten years!
I have always been afraid of differing from those around me, roots that gnarl back into my furthest memories. In a heroic effort to blend in, I’ve followed life into places that were not fully me. Our path is our path, I don’t think it is ever wrong how we walk it, we learn from each event and relationship, but the waves of how we do and do not connect with ourselves in an honest way are real. It has taken all of my thirty-five years to work on peace with this fear, and in the past few years it has been necessary to do it alone. I still work on it from time to time, I don’t think it will ever leave, but it no longer drives me. Next to this fear there is a light, and it becomes brighter the more I listen. There has always been a silent voice, the truest one of all, that says “Wait for me, worry not, I will be there and I am here”. It’s cryptic yet not, and I have learned to put my faith in this mystery I cannot see. It’s all I can do, really, because when I worry and move away from it, things get totally wrecked in myriad ways!
I have been afraid of things I see and feel, things that most others seem to not. I was always afraid of being thought of as weird or a freak. It was impossible not to wrap it up and throw it, far, so it sank into the sea. I worked to send sensitivity away. I tend to embrace this now, thank goodness, although along with the unimaginably beautiful, it brings things that can be horrifying, heartbreaking, bewildering, threatening, endangering. There is a voice I am learning to listen to here as well, it says “But this is your gift”.
I set out to not let these fears I battle with most, those that run deepest, the ones who are oldest, keep me from doing what I want to do. Damn them and love them at the same time, I say. This is causing what has held me back to fall away, and while this process of liberation is not always beautiful and is quite ugly sometimes, it is necessary. My mission is to be true, loving, and of service, and while I have always worked toward this as best as I could at the time, I have finally begun to see how my deepest fears, the ones I wanted to avoid and keep hidden, prevent me from doing just that. I do not find it coincidental that these particular words of Georgia’s spring up so frequently while I am in this burning time, for this is the way of Spirit, the only way I know.
What are you so afraid of?
What will you do to know and release your ghosts?
What will you do when you are free?