I Can Grow Into What I Am Meant to Be Or I Can Get in the Way

Thumbnail image reverently appropriated from Margery Gill's illustrations for What Did You Dream by M. Jean Craig

I don't want to stick to this pattern, I'm feeling misdirected and pushed around. By You Know Who, the usual suspects. 

I'm tired, incredibly tired, of being stuck up like this. Stuck up is the right way to say it, the right way to describe it. Caught in some sense of preciousness, some attempt at control. 

Do I want to be loved for something I'm not? No, I want to be loved for exactly who I am. I don't want be known as someone I'm not. It's better to be alone than to be known that way. It would be better to be alone than to be known for something I'm not. 

I wonder, is it possible to detach all sense of pressure? I wonder if it would be possible to unlock all the gates of pressure? I don't want to be hiding any part of me! Especially to try to gain approval or acceptance, or wealth or status or love.

The only kind of love that's worth having is the kind that loves you as you are. The only kind of esteem worth having is the one that esteems you like you are, including all the mess, and all the imperfections and all the things that are in progress.

Including all the mess, and all the imperfections, and all the things that might be in progress forever. 

Maybe it wasn't in my destiny to become somebody to look up to. Somebody to peer up at from far away, someone to admire. Maybe I'm just supposed to be like this. If that wasn't the case, wouldn't I have become that by now, I mean really, I've been trying my whole life to master what I am, to make it something more palatable, less intense, more talented, more polished, more hardworking. I wanted to be the one that got your praise, I wanted to be the one that got approval. 

But this whole project required that I change. There was always something to work on. There was always a goal to reach for, something conveniently ever out of reach.

There was always a goal to reach for, something conveniently forever out of reach. 

I know you want to end the song, you want to cut it off, you want to quit while we're ahead, you want to cut us off at the pass, you want to end this before it gets worse. But how could it?

Your job now, really, and we think you know it too, is to just be whatever's coming through. 

And it can't change as long as I need it to. But it can grow, if I let it grow. 

It can become whatever it's meant to be. It can grow beyond the status of a seed. It can sprout and grow, and grow its qualities, whatever those may be. It can sprout and manifest itself and be a large and far-reaching tree.

It can grow and become what it was always meant to be, what it would only ever be. What it would only ever be. It can't be a different kind of tree. 

I can only grow it with love and see what it turns out like, or I can keep pressing down, keep pruning back, keep weeding it out, thinning it out, cutting it down. 

I can keep pressing it down, I can keep cutting it back, but it grows on.

The life force behind it, it has the life force behind it! And so, it's made to grow. It's made to get big and grow and transform the soil around it, and take nutrients into itself, to become part of its body, come into its ultimate structure and form and shape and its being.

Then it will live in this world as a palpable thing. It will grow in this world as a fruit-bearing tree. It will live in this world as a palpable thing that we can interact with. It will come into this world. 

Those are my choices: I can grow what I am meant to be, or I can get in the way of its growth.