What I Gained From The Lockdown

newageoldsoul.blogspot.com

I’ll start out by saying it definitely wasn’t financial gain and with the utmost respect and condolences for those who lost their lives, loved ones and livelihoods, my heart goes out to all of you. I think we all lost someone, if not from COVID 19, from just the inevitable passage of time. It’s been an unprecedented year and a half, with probably more to come.

I’ve always been a bit of a loner. Being black and growing up in white neighborhoods, with a handful of real friends but a number frenemies who would turn on me in a heartbeat along with my mother’s abuse and neglect after my dad left. Having a proclivity towards the arts and music also made me the kind of person who absolutely needs time alone for my creativity and sanity.

So the lockdown, while a bit of an inconvenience, and a little scary, was not painful for me.

I put most of the time into my music and writing, I recorded my album, even bought a set of water colors and tried painting again after a decades long hiatus from it, I did some sewing, I stayed fairly baked. I spoiled the crap out of my cats. I avoided violent and gruesome entertainment because really, are we getting enough of that in the real world or what?

I received my Reiki Master certification, and continued working on my spiritual growth, continued my work with earth bound spirits and delved deep into my psyche to heal old festering wounds and shadow beliefs that were holding me back from realizing my true self and my true power in this life.

I have to give much credit to my mother and other family members who have crossed over. My mother passed away in fall of 2019. She’s been with me to correct her mistakes and help me heal the damage she caused and will be for the rest of my life if I understand correctly.

She’s even helped heal the damage my father caused because he, well he is crossed over but he’s not in a position to be able to do that these days. He has some considerable weight on his soul. He’s a bit lost, to put it gently.

Anyway the universe handed me an indisputable reason to set much needed boundaries. You see, my problems, because of my childhood abuse and neglect were not only self esteem related but also my sense of self, my sense of who I was as a person, was rather tenuous.

Add to that the fact that I didn’t realize my full empathic and psychic sensitivity so I really didn’t have the awareness or skills to keep other people’s negative, toxic and draining energies from invading my psychic space.

Nor, up to a point in life, did I realize those energies had not originated from me and my crazy brain even though I was carrying those energies as my own and because of that they had become my own, and my point of attraction in this life.

At the time of the lockdown I was working at a job that was literally draining the life out of me with a dramatically, and that’s no exaggeration, irregular sleep schedule that had been going on for years nonstop. No two week vacation can undo the damage of years of sleep deprivation.

And add to that, I almost never took a vacation, ever. If I stepped away from work it was usually a working vacation, a music conference or a spiritual seminar or something, never just plain down time.

I was sleep deprived, and burned out, I was depressed and anxious. I was surrounded by, including family and some “friends”, people who didn’t respect my emotional boundaries and people who had no respect for my physical boundaries, and basically no respect for me as a person, all while being cordial and civilized and even very friendly to me on the surface.

That’s what my parents taught me to expect from the the world as an adult. My parents were narcissists. I had no idea what no respect looked like up to a certain point. No one had ever showed me anything different and those shadow beliefs and expectations were buried very deep in my psyche.

And let’s face it, modeling and acting for a living is a voluntary handing over of your physical and mental boundaries to a degree. Not to the same extreme as a sex worker, but still carrying similar potential for emotional and psychic damage. Especially when a decent income and extreme sleep deprivation are involved.

So this past year was a year of discovery, realization and healing for me that was long, long overdue. I came to the decision that I don’t want to be anything other than exactly who I am in this life.

I have reached a point of no return with being what other people think I should be or who other people imagine me to be in this life, personally, career wise, personality wise, and that also includes haircuts, makeup and fashion choices.

I am done. I am done with making a living as a blank canvas, because I most assuredly am not. I am done with tolerating assholes and narcissists. I am done with forcing myself to be something I’m not because I was taught that who I was and wanted to be in this world was unrealistic.

I am done with bearing the weight of other people’s neurosis. And that includes racists, sexists, an assortment of “phobes” and all the other “ists” and “isms” that people who think they have a right to recreate this world in their fucked up images can’t seem to stop projectile vomiting onto everyone.

I own the space that I occupy and when I step out into this world I will most assuredly not be the same person who went into the lockdown. And I’m pretty sure none of us will be.

My album release should be happening sometime this fall. I don’t have a date yet but you can be sure I will keep you informed. I would love to hear what your transformation stories and self discoveries were during this time of forced introspection. And I hope whatever trials or pains you have endured during this time have made you more resilient, stronger, smarter, and more lovingly connected to your creator.

FYI- I’m not related to Tony Robbins as far as I know.