My Dark Side

Artwork by AnnaPostal666

Over the past few days I have had an idea dancing about at the edge of my thoughts. It started when I reviewed my blog. I hadn't known that I had some posts here from 2009. I also elected to go through my facebook posts and delete things. Looking at the posts from before my divorce compared to more recent ones it is like looking at the thoughts of two different people. I am not that person anymore. When I read the posts they seem so shallow, so fake. I chose to be optimistic about everything. Sometimes I wasn't successful, but I denied even to myself all the truths, the realizations about myself I have come face to face with over the past couple of years.

I used to get defensive really easily. Someone would point out an imperfection or get too close to the hidden ugliness inside and I would lash out. Oddly I now seek out those ugly parts. I still feel surprise sometimes when I see them but if people ask me about something I openly tell them. I have good things about me, but I am introducing myself to my dark side. Perhaps it was destined to happen at some point. Maybe I would have gone my whole life in blissful denial. But I believe the jolt I experienced when reality and my beliefs about myself and the world around me so clearly did not match brought on a string of inner changes.

I'm still learning about this part of me. I'm still learning to not only accept the reality of the imperfection but hoping that in the accepting I will learn to become a genuinely beautiful honest person inside. My outside will likely never be what I wish for. But I hope that as I grow to accept and learn to work through my issues rather than denying them, I will become a healthier person. And not just inside.

It is a struggle to find words to accurately describe the process I find myself in. I keep circling back to the name of the blog- it is a journey. I optimistically called it a healing one. So perhaps this dark side of me is not all-encompassing, perhaps I am learning to integrate those parts of me I try so hard to hide.

One issue that comes to mind is the deep down fears I have. You know those issues that are so deeply buried for self-preservation? There is a part of me that just knows I will never be genuinely free to live life with abandon while I hold to those fears. And yet, if I am not cautious and share them with people who will use them against me or tease me etc, I will bury those fears deeper. Its amazing the depth and strangeness we can find within ourselves.

I am slowly beginning to remove or limit exposure to people who are not accepting of me. To people who believe that I am toxic because I believe differently than they do, who tell me I need to go back to the person I was.

Even as I write this I just feel like I'm not successfully putting to words what is in my head. Why does that task get harder when I move closer to topics that strike at the core of me?