I've changed...

On Performance . . .

Before I discovered my cage, the outside in method of who I was continued as I began shaping myself into who I was by what I did. What I offered to the world, that was who I was. My value was in my paycheck and accolades. That was the professional fuel that created a very successful, by most terms, HR professional. What it did NOT create was a well-rounded, grounded individual. I was climbing the corporate ladder leading people and programs with the only self direction being up. The external environments that I created were informing my internal sense of identity, just like the indoctrination instructed.  A life of numbed ignorance never letting anyone truly in or myself authentically out. The enormous burden of being of worth by what others see is a disease that infects us all. I am what people see, I accomplish. I am my body. Lies, all lies. You are SO, SO much more. You can be more than one “thing” in the hierarchy of self.

One of the aspects of my deconstruction and estrangement that I often overlook in retrospect is the unity of self.  The wholeness of authenticity in all the spaces I choose.  I no longer look to be or represent certain aspects of myself with the exclusion of some other part.  There are no parts or personality traits that don't fit.  I no longer choose belonging with people who don't see all aspects of me as indivisible.  They can't "love the sinner and not the sin", "pray about" or "love me in spite of", because my wholeness won't be divided by their 'Christian love '.  I am whole.  I am good. 

The excavation of self has been grueling.  Then add in how this new version of you changes in relationship to others, well shit can really start to hit the fan and you discover whose gonna run and whose going to stay. The pain of uncovering actions wholly meant to hurt and rooting out people who maliciously or unconsciously gaslight us into the version of ourselves that meets their needs is the price of self enlightenment.

I no longer perform who I am in life, no longer act for your attention or love and as a result some of you, in the audience, no longer have seats.  Knowing my values helped me know my value.  It’s cost me plenty - my parents, friendships and even professional contracts and relationships.  When you know who you are, you know what you are not. Who you will not be any longer and the behaviors you will no longer tolerate. I have won wars within, with this self-knowledge. 
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My losses have been significant; people, time, money, titles, but none of them matter when I am the master of myself.  You can watch from a dark corner, hell, buy my guidebooks and search for your character, but you’ll only ever see me at a distance.  

My lived experience reminds me I can lose it all, but as long as I never lose myself, ever again, nothing is truly lost.