Little Me

I've been solely dancing and displaying words with pen and paper, but I miss this space as well. Fingers and keys have a different kind of dance. They carry their own friction and flow, unique from the slow flow of pen on paper.

I have yet to reflect on year 47 of this cycle. This time last year, I was in Morocco. It feels like another lifetime. To excavate the memories, I would need to open my old journals and sift through my photos.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been carrying around a photo of little me. I think I was five years old. Below the Polaroid, someone wrote, "HI EVERYBODY." This sentence is me—it's who I have become, or maybe it’s who I’ve always been. It took a while to return to this authenticity because, for much of my life, I wasn’t able to flow in the way that was natural to me.

I was a happy kid—joyful and loving—but my environment was not welcoming to my nature. It was difficult. Still, it taught me to find joy in an incognito way. I learned how to protect my spirit from a very young age. I touched that place of safety when I was alone, playing in my room under the tents I would build. It was my place to be me.

I did this for a long time and still do, though as I got older, I learned to find calm and peace beyond my own space. To find peace under all roofs.

It has taken many years. The last few years of being nomadic have helped me reach this place. I consciously lived under shared roofs to learn how to flow with the energy of others. The one thing I am yet to master is how to flow—how to be this little guy with a smile—despite the chaos in romantic relationships. I’m still yet to find someone I can intertwine with and not lose myself.

I keep this photo with me because I want to reflect on how we started this journey. I want to ask him: How did we do? How are you feeling now? You carried us through some really difficult times.

Little me is getting emotional. I feel goosebumps throughout my body. I, too, am getting emotional as I write this. Or maybe it’s he who is getting emotional.

Tears want to flow, but I’m in a café, so I hold them back. I’ll save them for later. I love you. Thank you.

We made it through. What bigger accomplishment is there than to arrive at this destination of openness? To move through this world with an open heart and grand compassion. Compassion for self, compassion for others, and compassion for this life.

This maskless place. This happiness that rises deep within, without external dependency.

What a beautiful place to be.

I’m not going to look back and analyze this past year. Instead, I’ll observe the present, because the present tells me all I need to know about my past and the seeds I’m going to plant for my future self.

Crossroads

I feel something stuck inside of me, an uneasiness in my stomach. I'm not sure if it's mine, hers, or both. She’s going back today. It’s one thing to know what we want and develop courage outside the environment where challenges exist, but it’s another to go back into that environment—into the trenches—and execute the plan, the change we desire. Disconnecting is hard because hearts are broken, and relationships are impacted. That’s why so few do it. We don’t want to get uncomfortable, and we don’t want to hurt others. It’s so fucking hard.

We’re raised a certain way, through the lens of others for most of our lives. When we can no longer live with that queasy, uneasy feeling, we come to a crossroads. Do we maintain the status quo for the sake of others, or do we destroy everything to save ourselves? To reach out and pull ourselves out of the quicksand before it completely engulfs us to the point of no return. What we don’t realize is that if we don’t save ourselves in this lifetime, the next one will be a rerun of the one that preceded it.

So, would you want to live the life you’re living today—the life of suppressing yourself—if you knew that the next life would be exactly the same unless you reach out that hand and rescue yourself?

Hell, to me, is repeating a life lived unauthentically, living for others at the sacrifice of our own self. The biggest misconception is that focusing on the self is selfish, that we should help others and place their needs above our own. But our capacity to love and help others is limited by our capacity to love and help ourselves. We can’t fill others' tanks while ours is on empty.

I feel better after getting this out. I think I’ll type it to her. It will be the last journal entry she receives before her flight. Is it possible that I already love her? Is it possible that all these random little moments connected us? If someone is guiding and helping me, thank you. Thank you for the guidance, for the little nudge in the right direction. So many mini crossroads, and fortunately, I was encouraged to flow in the direction of this woman who captures my heart.