Growing Pains

The more I grow and learn, the more I notice patterns. Today one is really fresh for me. I have long feared that I would grow into something that my family would be unable to love. I suppose in some ways that has already happened at least once.

When I was in my early teens, my parents seemed a little bit akward around the church ladies who would come by and invite them to church. Sure, my parents bought me a bible and paid my way to church camp... it just wasn't their thing. They may have even been relieved when I dropped it at age 16. But then in my phase of deep existential exploration they seemed equally uneasy. I recall one time when I was about 19 and there was some big cult expose' in Texas. I was chatting with my mom about it on the phone and she was asking me odd questions. As if she had a brochure in hand entitled "10 Easy Ways to Tell if your Teen is Trapped in a Freaky Death Cult." I called her on it and she admitted that she was a little worried about me. I thought my response was pretty funny, "Come on mom, you should be more worried about me starting a cult than joining one!" She didn't find it humerous at all.

At some point I learned that my spirituality and my environmental philosophy were simply not to be discussed with my parents. I don't recall that they ever came right out and told me to omit these parts of my self, or whether it was just painfully obvious to me in other ways.

I played along out of respect, love, and a desire to keep the peace. But I was really challenged and felt broken. The problem is that if you try to be a whole person, but you can't be your whole self with certain people, there are walls created within yourself. Sure, I chose to build them... but after a while there were parts of my soul which felt like step children, or East Berliners.

It was not okay to be a witch. It was not okay to be radical or outspoken about anything. It was not okay to think deep thoughts or practice developing higher sense perception. And you gotta know that I was always very open and honest with my parents until that point. So the shift was painful. I didn't know who to be when I was with them, so I just didn't show up there any more; for several years.

It is clear to me that they love me deeply and that they didn't want to hear the things that amplified their worries. But as I drifted further away they worried even more. And I'm highly perceptive, when someone I love is worrying about me I can feel it across space and time.

Well, okay, so I can't be me with my parents. And I can't be my whole self at work. I've always tried to be my whole self with friends, but most of the time I was lucky if I could find one person with which I could be whole, for a few hours or on and off for a few months. And even that was iffy and problematic. I reckon that I'm not alone in this phenomenon. I reckon that there are other people who are perpetually veiwed as weirdos by EVERYONE they know...

And then I met my beloved, and for the first time in my life I could be my whole self. He didn't always agree with my views and theories, but he didn't write me off as crazy either. I really like the fact that we don't agree on everything, it makes for a much interesting conversation. To me the most important factor in falling in love with him was the fact that we could have really DEEP conversations and I could be WHOLE at last.

But I still carry this scar tissue around, this fear that I'll out-grow friends and loved ones. That people who love and understand me now will one day say, "Wow, she really has become a freakin weirdo!"

Because, from time to time, even my beloved gets freaked out by things I do, say, and experience. Every once in a while we pass through a phase where he is uncomfortable with who I am becoming. Conceptually we have discussed what I envision for myself. We've discussed it many times. But discussing abstract concepts of the future and then living through deep learning events are two totally different things.

I live as true to my heart as possible. I believe in a higher force and I have spent my life listening for that still small voice which points me in the right direction. I trust that voice because it has never been wrong. EVERYTHING which has occurred has been a gift.

Yet my dedication to this emerging path of mine creates fear in my beloved. And if I still spoke about it to my parents, it would create fear for them as well. My beloved has even recently asked me to not talk with him about certain things, or even with other people when he is in ear shot.

In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.