Last Sunday after publishing a post, I had this irrepressible smile on my face. Just thinking about that moment now is bringing up the same smile. I cannot really articulate why, but I think it was a moment when I felt everything was aligned. I had put so much intention into writing that post, that it didn’t matter if nobody read it, because I had experienced so much fulfilment writing it, and that was enough.
Enough. Such a simple yet complex word. We never seem to have enough. But I have started to observe many more moments of enough for myself. It is a feeling where after so many years of running on empty, I am starting to feel like I have enough and I am enough. It comes and goes, but they are jarring enough to be observed because other times I just feel like I am broken into a thousand pieces and nothing is ever going to put me back together.
But maybe that is true too, that nothing is ever going to put myself back together, with the exception of myself. Only I get to decide whether I have enough or I am enough. And I have grown to be a person who is capable of coming to that conclusion, only sometimes, but sometimes is enough.
It hasn’t been easy, sifting through my complex feelings, some of them cutting deep or bringing up buried layers of shame. But I am starting to believe that processing my utmost vulnerable emotions is a muscle. I seem to be much better at inserting thoughts to redirect my chain of thinking, instead of sinking into despair.
I have found myself thinking, “omg I am so happy”, and I have this strong instinct to push away that thought, as if believing it is going to cause me to break into a thousand pieces again. But perhaps I had been mistaken into thinking I will break if I couldn’t achieve a persistent underlying state of joy, rather – I guess it is about being able to experience the full spectrum of my emotions, knowing that they all will pass, and yet be able to see them for what they are when they are present with me.
Longevity used to scare the shit out of me. When I was younger, I prayed really hard that I would die at 30. Now at 34, I still don’t wish for a lengthy life, just enough will do. But I no longer get scared at the idea of length, because at the end, whether long or short, it is still passing moments being strung together. I think I was afraid to be trapped in something I didn’t actively want, but now, I am slowly nurturing myself to be capable of surrendering myself to what I will come to experience, because it is through these experiences I am getting to know life itself. Maybe I will never actively want it, but I am curious enough to want to know something, even if I don’t want it.
Not wanting it, gives me the space to truly fall in love with it, because I am not driven by a instinctual desire for it. This evolving love, is guided by a genuine sense of curiosity, the willingness to endure and accept with growing grace, what it means to love something, even if it breaks me into a thousand pieces for me to painstakingly put myself together again, just to see how else it can break me. There is a certain profound joy that comes with growing the capacity to contain something so boundless and true, until it breaks me, over and over again.
And that is enough.