PROLOGUE
"One thing you won't ever see is a rose without a thorn. Life ain't like the movie scenes. What's love without a flaw? I can only meet you as deep as you have met yourself…" — an excerpt from Memo Blue by Alina Baraz
It all begins with a thought—a quiet flicker that becomes real the moment we dare to believe it.
This one piece of music once held a mirror during a very dark period in my life and asked that I looked at myself in the mirror. It acted as a lighthouse to guide my spiritual journey of 'Becoming' and it all began with a quiet flicker—a single thought that dared me to step out of my shadow and into my essence.
For me, it felt like lightning to the heart. A call from my intuition to find my way back home, yet the pain of who I thought I should be kept me anchored in self-doubt. My life soon became a pilgrimage of externally seeking validation, severe people-pleasing, and an excruciating ache to be accepted as I am (in the most imperfect way)even when I refused to give myself the same grace. I want to stop shrinking myself.
Carrying a void, I trekked through life lifeless; half baked with half of my faith -- running from demons that didn't belong to me. You see, someone stole me from me. The most vile violation, a consent form without my signature - don't make me say it out loud. The months that followed consisted of detrimental hobbies that only took me further from my calling. I found and thought myself worthless without a purpose.
Burial after burial, loved ones turned to dust (heaven couldn't take them home without taking my light too), prescription pills have most of my trust, don't wake up from this bad trip - nothingness felt like a new reality I couldn't (didn't want to) leave; go back to sleep, its the closest I could get to feeling six feet under but instead I rose from water both purifying and renewing. My feet washed from the sins committed by others and from my desolation came creation, I've smelled the coffee. My hair, bald with a profound freedom from my curls that once wrapped around his hand when I begged for my life. Tears, dry from the weight of wanting to be in the casket too. I cried intensely through the night, but my joy still came in the morning. That quiet flicker wasn't mine to claim, the most High slipped through the dark to find me before I could even find myself. I just have to be brave enough to follow it.
Reflecting on Alina's epigraph on Becoming, the most frightening thing it asked of me was to trust the depths of it and so I did; the Good Lord made sure of it.
On Coming Home to Myself