Don't let your fire burn out
Surround yourself with people who will keep the fire burning within you.
"When you speak your truths, you either win friends or lose friends". This quote hit me so deeply.
When you become intentional, you transform your being. You speak differently, act differently, feel differently -- and people in your life notice the changes within you subconsciously. They feel it and then they respond alongside a new curiosity or stark confusion. Then when you start speaking a different language, the messages feel like they always fall apart, never reaching, never heard, never understood. All of a sudden, it feels like you're walking on thin ice, people seem to be in an entirely different wavelength, alone becomes the new norm.
But that's okay. When you are infinitely curious and you pursue your truth, you are used to these types of changes within you, and the people around you. You get used to it and life goes on. It's not as bad anyway.
Until you get the second blow. Until one day you decide to listen to that intense call in your heart, saying "go out there and proclaim" ... like the prophet who has seen prophecy unravel right before his eyes. When you have experienced yourself the immense healing, you feel strongly called to share it to the very person whom you think needs the "healing".
The worst thing that a person can ever do to another person is not to punish them when they do bad. It is when you punish them when they do good, that way, you destroy them. You destroy their will and cause them pain so that they will never do good again. It's the rejection for good intentions. It's the regret for the decision to share that vulnerable part of you so that others may "heal", but receive the blunt rejection instead. Of anger, of ingratitude, of misunderstanding.
I wouldn't have had experienced such pain had I not decided to extend my arm. Now it felt like my arm has been bitten, ravaged and discarded for the dogs. I've been rejected and misbranded for my sincerity of reaching out to the person whom I thought needed help.
You cannot help people who do not want to help themselves. You cannot help people who don't need your help either.
"Hurt people hurt people."
I'm not the victim, but I succumbed to the inner demons of rejection and the inner critic. It cast a dark shadow to all the other things that I have been trying to use my creative energy for. It made me fear the imaginary backlash on the places where I have chosen to show my vulnerability.
All of a sudden, there was this fiery dragon that stood between me and this sanctuary that I built, this tribe that I've helped create. In my mind it was wreaking havoc and celebrating the triumph of weakening my resolve. It tempted me to delete all the other places for when I chose to show my being -- this group included -- to erase the traces of the part of me who decided to set herself out there, for the rest of the world to see. In my mind, I didn't want to be mocked again, to be rejected again.
In my mind, I should have kept myself close to the familiar. To the private life where it's been comfortable. To the isolation where nobody can hear my thoughts nor see my being. Like a recluse, a hermit, a hikokomori.
But I digress. I choose to not be pitiful, because being strong is the only means to be. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the acceptance that fear does exist. As I promised my tribe that I will look at fear in the eye and say "I see you", I will get over this slump.
My fire continues to burn, and I will recover. I will not run away but I will continue to face my fear of the unknown, that fear of another rejection should I decide to show myself to the rest of the world again.
When you are in the process of healing, you wish the rest of the world also heals with you. But then again, we all have our own pace. The next time I find the courage to reach my hand out for another soul, I'd be honored when at least one person reaches back. Only so that we may both be able to pull ourselves away from the darkness, away from our inner demons who try so much to succumb us, so that we may both courageously walk together back to the embrace of light.
And even when there will be no one who would accept and hold my hand, I'd keep going, I will keep my fire burning, I'd keep on walking back and forth to the darkness and to the light ... until I find that one soul whom I can bring back with me so that he, too, may experience healing.