If each year of my life has a theme, 2024 might be my year for vulnerability.
I didn’t just wake up on New Years day and decide, “I’m going to be more vulnerable.”
The seed was planted last fall.
A few weeks before Thanksgiving I met a man who was trying to get romantically involved with me. As usual, I hedged a lot. I wanted to spend time with him but more often felt like he’d turn out to be just another lame. I was already dealing with enough trying to chase the shadows of my health.
Coming up to the holiday he proposed we hang out, both of us were without family, and do shrooms. “Shit, why not, it’s just one day,” and I committed. Long story short, I ended up trauma dumping on this man for 6 hours straight, all kinds of feelings and memories that I had stuffed deep down inside of me.
Things between us didn’t work out; he was 2 shades too crazy for me. But it set my mind to thinking; if that was just sitting at the surface waiting for an opportunity to come out what else must be hiding further beneath?
I thought a lot about the Ayahuasca ceremonies I’d done in my twenties, and what they might still offer in healing my broken self. But I was also worried about if my health could handle the Ayahuasca brew; I was already losing weight rapidly and adding any other stress to my digestion wasn’t smart.
Conversations with my best friend brought up the topic of DMT, present in Ayahuasca but you can also smoke it.
In the beginning of the year I did one session with DMT and it helped unlock so much for me. I wish I had recorded it; so I was ready the next time and recorded that full session (watch it here).
There’s a part of that session where I work through a memory where I was almost murdered by a man on a first date when I was just 21 years old. I never told anybody about what happened to me. I continued living my life like nothing happened – work in the morning, hanging with girlfriends on the weekends, calling home every couple of days.
I was struck by the sheer absurdity of it.
How absurd that by 21 I was already so accustomed to keeping secrets about people hurting me that this extraordinarily violent event was calmly and quietly hidden. It didn’t seem to disrupt my ability to go to work, socialize with friends, interact with family.
To keep secrets well you have to learn to lie. Most people just lie with their words, but to be really good you have to lie with your whole body and mind. You have tell yourself the lie over and over again until you convince yourself that its the truth.
I used to be an amazing liar, the best, a real professional. But lies and secrets are like poison and they’ve made me real sick.
I want to get better, I want to heal. I want to experience a full life of joy whenever possible. So let’s shine some light on that shit.
I’ve been telling people just how I really feel; especially when I’m not doing well. I cry more openly. I tell people I love them, and I mean it. I hug more, I grab people’s hands to hold onto. I listen intently. And I just tell the truth.
When I read the definition of vulnerable, I don’t think that’s it.
Me opening up and saying out loud for the whole world to read is in some strange way, making me less vulnerable than I’ve ever been.
I’ve been walking around in constant pain and turmoil from what happened in my life. Spitting it out as words into the wind is finally letting go of that poison.
Anyways, just a few thoughts I wanted to write down today. ❤️
P.S. I didn’t proofread anything.
