Something’s come up during essay class. Another misbelief.
Which if you look back at previous posts, you’ll see these are false ideas that other people have often laid on you and that you have accepted as part of reality, even if you disagree. Or misbeliefs are something you’ve decided are true, when in fact, they’re just not.
This is why trusting yourself, believing your body when it tells you that something is wrong, is so important for all of us (adults) and for our children to learn.
Yet I still believe that writing about myself is narcissistic and navel-gazing. That if I do it and do it too much that I risk turning into a self-involved and toxic person who only thinks of herself. (Yes, I believe this on a deep level, hammered into me by continual and repeated demonstrations and by the fears of others. I was raised with these beliefs, many given to me carelessly by men, preachers, who turned out later to only want to control me and who were wildly projecting.)
I am not surprised that I still carry this odd idea around. It’s shame. We’re shamed with this kind of ideology both in and out of religion, but religion is really good at it. They’ve perfected it and now it’s in all areas of life. We shame others, all because we feel the panic within ourselves, the “I don’t want to be seen as weak, or I don’t want to lose” feelings. You can’t walk around as a human without feeling shame for something.
But our society has a very odd way of behaving. They want spectacle, they want the scoop, but if you don’t reveal it, you’re not being honest. So, we tell something and then no one believes it. It’s a catch-22.
To counter this misbelief, I must stop caring about what others think of me. So much of writing is believing that you have something important to share, something that you must say out loud, and I think readers can tell when writers are not completely in agreement with themselves. It doesn’t ring true.
Will it help me to tell it? Tell it. Will it help others to tell it? It must still help me first.
See how I recast the misbelief?
I think part of me posting on my blog is to test whether I actually have the courage to write about me and not immediately dive into the nearby bushes to hide. It’s about me challenging this misbelief. It’s my way of reclaiming the space I need to write about myself.
It’s also part of my process. Confronting my misbeliefs. Reclaiming what’s mine. My story. My childhood. My life. My feelings and thoughts about all of it. I know people will not agree, but this space, this blog is me staring down what tries to stop me. Giving me the room to spread out, make space, enlarge, refuse to shrink.
This is my story. These are my observations. If you don’t like it, write your own.
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