Keeping It Real

The thing about this little blog I do everyday is something, in itself, that gives me gratitude.  I am grateful for words, and emotion and expression.  I think most people that know me would say I am an optimist, a person with a positive outlook, and usually, making my way through life with a smile.  I make a conscious choice for that.  I make an effort to be positive, and to use love and healing energy to keep my life peaceful.  But, beyond what people see everyday, I am human, and I am real.

Someone in my previous career history had actually said to me, "when you are not smiling and cheerful, you determine the attitude of the people around you".  This forced me to bury emotion, response, and reality of myself, taking on responsibility for the behavior of others.  I had become full...and unfair to myself.

I remember the day when I decided for myself, I was allowed to be real.  Not everything that came out of my mouth had to be a sunshine and rainbows just to please the people around me.  As long as my emotion was genuine, and as long as I was being true to myself, I was free to feel everything I had to feel, without guilt, without judgement and without restriction.  I remember being angry when everyone started asking all the time "what's wrong? Are you Ok?".  I remember exploding one day shouting "just because I am not pretending to happy in every moment of every day, just because I am doing dishes in contemplation, and not pretending to be elated about it, just because I have to concentrate and maybe while I do, there isn't a visible smile on my face, does not mean that I am not happy!"

I am allowed to be real, and I am so grateful I have given myself that gift.  I am allowed to have bad days, and I am allowed to feel dark and twisty.  I am allowed to be peaceful, without a mask on for everyone else to see.  I am allowed to cry just for the release, and I am allowed to put out there in the universe whatever I have to to feel whole.  I am allowed to be real.

There are days when people say to me "I didn't like that post, the last one sounded more like you", and I think, how can something I wrote about my day, in that moment, not sound like me?  I am not writing this blog for everyone else's soul, I am writing it for mine, and I will not apologize if someone "doesn't like it".  I am going to try very hard to keep this blog real, for it has become part of me, and I need to keep me real.  I am allowed.  I decided, and I am grateful.

There are a lot of days when I am just happy to be alive, smiling and laughing, filled with light.  And there are days I have on a mask of strength, and there are days, I sweep my emotion under a carpet of smiles, and there are days when I have to do nothing else but just breathe to get through moments, or hours, or days.  And if ever there was a lesson that came out of my own mouth that stuck, it is that I will not be responsible for the actions or behaviors of people around me.  That's not my burden to carry.  I can only be responsible for me, and if that is a lesson to someone else, well, good then.  I can not be a reflection for someone else any more than I can be a reflection of someone else - and that is keeping it real.