I want to live unapologetically. I want to inhabit the space and refuse to apologize. I want my motions, my actions, and my word to live unapologetically. For them to stand out against the darkness, never afraid of who they are.
My goal from now on is to remove this chain of shame. To step out from under this cloud of guilt and self-inflicted punishment. I want to embrace the me that doesn’t apologize for her choices and decisions. I want to own my words, to stamp my name on them.
I want to echo my anthem with each step I take. To walk with purpose and not allow anyone to make me feel guilt and shame for my choices.
It’s hard for me to think of living like this, to live a life with less shame and guilt than I have now. I feel like I’m living under this haze of sadness, guilt, and shame. Guilt for not doing more work, and shame for not being as successful as I thought I would be by now, or shame for not having a job (although I suppose in this sense shame and guilt are quite closely intertwined here). Then on top of this sadness for not being able to motivate myself out of this, to just wake up one day and be productive, to sort out my life, and ‘fix my problems’. Sadness at the knowledge that one more to do list won’t solve anything. I can’t just write another list with the problems and my potential solutions. Because the first one and the one after that did nothing. I have felt myself slowly sinking again, like I was before, down this hole of darkness where I know I am not meeting my expectation (when have I ever though?). Perhaps this would be solved if I didn’t have such large demands on myself, but I don’t even know what that life would be like. Where I didn’t push myself or continue to tell myself that it isn’t good enough. I feel like I have lived most of my private life as not feeling good enough, and, to a degree, that really hasn’t changed. I write all these posts about being better, improving, but it’s an uphill battle filled with setbacks and progress. Sometimes progress does include going backwards.
That is why, even though each cell in my body wishes it could like unapologetically, at this moment I don’t even see how I could do it. How I could take off this albatross of shame, guilt, and sadness. I can momentarily escape from it, do some yoga, take a walk, but I know where it lives and, more importantly, it knows where I live.
So I have no idea what to do really. I don’t have any answers, and while it may be hard to read this, it’s harder to open up.
While I don’t know where I go to put my feet upon the road of self-discovery and success, I know I cannot function like this. So I suppose the first step I have found, or think might lead me eventually, is to unapologetically confess this weakness, this mind set, whatever it is. Because if I would ever live unapologetically, it seems logical that the first step is to admit, to open up in an unapologetic way. To say I am feeling weak, and some days I wonder what I am going to do, how I am going to save myself, but it’s how I feel.
If I am ever going to unapologetically live the way I want to, then this has to be the first step.