GrandRising | The Return, The Self, & Humility

🖋️

After everything becomes mania...

What happens when the word becomes quiet?

Interesting.

I used to think returning to myself meant finding the person I was before all of this.

Before the diagnosis.

Before the medication.

Before the observation.

Before everyone else's explanations.

The woman who never had a mental health history attached to her name in her whole life.

I don't think that anymore.

Because...

Which self?

The one before?

The one during?

The one after?

The one I became because of what happened?

The one I became despite it?

Perhaps the mistake is assuming the self is something waiting somewhere in the past...

Fully assembled.

Waiting to be recovered.

Maybe...

The self is something we continue participating in.

Something observed.

Something questioned.

Something revised.

Something returned to.

Again.

And again.

Not because it is false.

Because it is alive.

That...

Is where humility enters.

Not submission.

Not surrender.

Humility.

The willingness to say:

"I may not know."

Without immediately turning that admission into:

"Therefore someone else must know."

Those are not equivalent.

I have spent many days teaching myself how to be kind to myself all over again.

From the ruins...

Of massive violations of autonomy.

Of unkindness I received.

Of being told what I was...

Before I was given the opportunity to decide what I had become.

Perhaps humility is not thinking less of yourself.

Perhaps it is refusing to confuse someone else's certainty...

With your own understanding.

Understanding yourself after...

As much as before.

Because only one of you has to live with you in this body...

Twenty-four hours a day.

Seven days a week.

Wipe its ass.

Brush its teeth.

Bathe its form.

Carry its weight.

Wake it up.

Put it to sleep.

Live inside every consequence of every decision.

Interesting.

People can observe you.

They can study you.

They can love you.

They can criticize you.

They can even recognize things about you...

That you have not yet recognized about yourself.

Of course.

That possibility is part of humility too.

But only one of us...

Has to remain here...

For the entire conversation.

Me.

And if that is true...

Then maybe...

The return was never about becoming who I was.

It was about becoming willing...

To meet who I am.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Again.

And again.

Not to recover some untouched version of myself.

Not to prove that nothing changed.

Not to pretend the diagnosis never happened.

Not to pretend I never needed help.

But to remain present...

For whatever comes next.

If self-love was there before...

Then I fortify it now.

Again.

Not because I am finished becoming.

Because I am not.

Not because I finally understand myself completely.

Because I don't.

But because...

I deserve the same patience...

I have spent so much time extending...

To everything else.

I deserve kindness.

I deserve observation without erasure.

I deserve correction without humiliation.

I deserve humility without surrender.

I deserve the right...

To keep becoming...

Myself.

And so do you.

We all do.

And let's be Honest.

If we do not Love ourselves substantially.

Who will?

GrandRising. 🍵