Becoming Alive

Life happens in the moment where the fear of being alive no longer stops you from being out there.

Life is messy and intricate, filled with textures, sounds, noises, dirt and dust, whispers and (I)scream.

I did not want to get myself “dirty” with reactivity, proposals, negotiation, feelings and emotions. I wanted it to be sterile so that I would be safe.

This is what I thought life was about, an orderly succession of events and situations with clear delimitations that I could identify and with that I could have control, because I know the beginning and the end of things, I know what defines and distinguishes one situation from the other, that is something that I can learn and integrate in my extense book of “how things go so I can be safe”.

I have reached a turning point where isolating in order to survive was making me die instead of keeping me alive.

I realized that as I kept on moving in my life and I was looking for something else, reading books, going to therapy sessions, I was gaining an awareness and maturity that was no longer fitting being in the world in survival mode.

The pain of not living was such that I dared joining a Bridge-House. This is one of the scariest things that I have done because I have been bullied, I have experienced abuse in school, in my family, with friends, with romantic partners, what if it happens again?

Abuse is normalized in modern culture: “it is just a slap”, “don’t be a cry baby”, “don’t be afraid”, “she was asking for it”. So I was living in this bubble of normalized abuse as if this was it, a part of life and I have no choice other than going with it and be myself also, an abuser.

This last week in the Bridge-House I have been triggered in different moments and I noticed how my defenses would come up and how I just want to give up and say “I don’t give a fuck”.

Then 10 minutes later a woman is going through an emotion, she is meeting one of her walls, she is in pain, seemingly stuck somewhere inside.

My mouth opens, questions come from my mouth, I am no longer reactive, I just love her and I want to be with her where she is at that moment.

I give a fuck. I actually care a lot about the women with whom I am living. I notice that I am noticing what they are struggling with and I am offering possibilities when the time comes. I know what each one of them is struggling with. Not because they tell me but because I am putting my attention into that. I am also noticing that I notice what they create with their presence here, Love and Beauty, Adventure and Connection, Presence and Being With.

In my black and white (previous) memetic world, if I had a “I don’t give a fuck” I could not have “I give a fuck”. There was an impossibility that would say that the two of them could not fit together.

Except…

I have parts. My parts want different things at different times and, as I have been discovering, in the same moment, now, immediately.

My Gremlin wants to kill everyone. The child-egostate wants to be rescued. The parent egostate wants to control and have rules. The Adult is the one handling the crowd saying, not now, I’ll do this, let's have an EHP, oh now it is a listening space, now I really need to say that I don’t want this. The Adult is the manager.

I thought that I would reach a point where there would just be me, being an Adult and silence. Now I know this is just another way of seeing things through the lens of “either this or that”.

Life is happening in the mess. In trying to make the mess go away I was skipping the living and giving my power away to my emotional fear.

There is no perfection, no salvation, no elevation, no morality, no right or wrong, no love will save us.

When I give my power to these concepts and I step away from life and what is happening inside and around me, I am giving away my authority and the possibility to create something different.

There is no way to figure out something without doing it, without moving and trying, just trying. Being with life in its constant movement and chaos, that is where I become a Creator, because in that place, I can choose, declare and ask questions.