Playing Life on Hard Mode

The meaningful freak’s cost of freedom

Photo by Andy Wang on Unsplash

I can’t believe my dumb-stupid-baby-yes-how-could-you luck. To realize that I can do whatever I want. And move toward that. I’m doing it right now…!

Yes, even with my current low-wage (but enjoyable) job. My life is so very different from last year, heck, last month. New house, new city, some new people, new travels, fresh beautiful food, healthy body (minus this headcold), good music, alone time, freedom. Not a lot of free time yet, but I carve out what I can. I take baths again. I sweep the floor contentedly. Everything is play (potentially). Work is play. And play is ecstasy.

This is what I never dreamed possible with my old mindset and habits. I lived in scarcity, a paradigm of constricted confinement. Today is different. All opportunities in front of me. Alight on the inside. I’m in the drivers seat. Wow…If only you could see this. Looking around me it’s…beyond anything I’ve known…Sometimes I don’t know how I’m alive, because who gets to be so lucky? Bonus time frfr.

Is it easy and all feel-good? Oh, God, no. Haha, yeah…no. I mean, there’s pleasure here, otherwise why bother. Grueling effort has been made. Hard work is a continued requirement. Mindset requires discipline. Also a lot of tolerance for pain. Self-judgement that is fair (not reactive) and measured. Accepting that there will be natural sway between ‘I AM’ and ‘am I?’.

(Forgive me for being vague on the specifics. It’s a delicate time for me and my separated family and I will likely have more to say down the road. Thanks for understanding. Continue!)

This particular chapter of my story happened because I got on the wrong train a long time ago and didn’t stop to get off as soon as I could. In fact, I rode for years. I assumed it would passively change for the better. Someway, somehow. I just kept smoking weed and using psychedelics and saying ‘this is fine’. More numb, more distant. I did quit my addiction eventually. To have children and lose myself in a different way. Same story, new variation of the struggle. But something did eventually change. After a decade and a half. A lifetime of limitation in mindset. Slowly the change took over, then all at once. Or was it all at once and then slowly? Time does some crazy things. But there is always an element of will required.

Because now that I want to fully inhabit this authentic and empowered person that I wear for the very first time, the illumination as well as the shadows, I’ve had to take the long, cold, lonely, ugly route back to start. Be brave. I’ve had to purge a lifetime’s worth of bad energy. It is still coming out emotionally, all over my new happier surroundings. It’s necessary and ok. I am going to make mistakes, it’s in the design. I am surrounded by the right people. I understand what change requires. Lucky for me, I also learned just how beautiful ugly can be. And vice versa, the ugly in the beautiful. When I was a freak. A weirdo. A too much, not enough person facsimile waiting for life to pick me.

You maybe don’t believe me when I say that because I seem a certain way, that’s alright. But if you’ve ever kept ugly secrets you know they make your personality strain in distortion. If you’ve ever eaten your anger through the years, you are silently screaming alongside the smiling faces. And it only confuses people when they see you as beautiful. Or capable. Or what have you. The contrast makes you a freak. Alone.

You embrace this eventually if you gain wisdom. Too tired to pretend anymore. Find the beneficent others if you are both parts lucky and willing to be seen. Maybe you hate the word, maybe you think it means something specific. I think, actually, I know, it means defiant. A freak is someone who stands out and makes people uncomfortable. It can be for all sorts of reasons. But there is something dangerous about this person, a ticking time bomb of disruption for the status quo. If you can’t see the difference, you can feel it. And if you, the freak, can accept or even embrace rejection, you can do anything. That’s what this transformation is about.

I’ve been called a weirdo for a long time, I guess as long as I’ve been in groups, for being quiet, serious, tall, smart, open-hearted. Neurodivergent is a label now. Labels are as helpful as they need to be, can take them or leave them. ‘Quiet’ alone will get you, it makes people nervous. The quiet one might be really smart and looking down on you, mocking you, plotting against you. So you further isolate them. Would that explain the now-bitter nerd in power phenomenon? It’s a trope for a reason right?

That thing about an open heart. It hasn’t been worth a lot to the masses and culture. Scorned in its ‘softness,’ not something to build the machine on. Yet maybe now that Western society is about as openly-hostile-for-fun as it has been in modern adornment, we can look at the importance of open-heartedness. I feel that we are perilously close to losing our souls on a societal level, that the leaders have all been selected for seeming strong, for becoming the bully and convincing us it’s better to be their lackey than their prey. Just swallow down your very essence to stay ‘safe’. A heinous passivity. Life on easy mode?

That’s where my last train ride was taking me, further and further away from my heart center. Comfortable. Crowded. Out of creativity. The imbalance was going to kill my soul. I might not have cared much if I didn’t have children (note: this is not an endorsement to have children just to prevent soul loss). But as a creator of life, I wanted more for them and eventually for my tentatively re-examined inner child too. I knew it would be difficult, but I was going to lead with my heart and save myself.

I was always taught to put others first. Be self-sacrificing. It’s common enough to woman-kind and plenty of men. I mentioned losing myself anew in raising children. Was this actually to their benefit? Is this the example they should duplicate? I can’t say I was excited to play out ‘what not to do.’ Because I was starting to feel like a cautionary tale: “person dresses up old limitations in new clothes, calls it progress.” I can’t just tell my kids to be bold, brave, and compassionate, I must show them exactly what I mean. Not going to be easy.

First in my soul mission, I needed to suffer deeply to wake up to my illusions. Isn’t that how it usually goes? Over and over again. So maybe it’s more like ‘fifteenth’ step or ‘fivehundreth.’ However many, I did suffer unconsciously until I realized that if I didn’t change my life’s major trajectory, I was going to pass on while still alive, pass on the same trapped reality as a template for my successors’s impressionable lives. F that. I want to know what it’s like to be free, fully alive. Time for heavy lifting.

Me to me: Reconnect with expression that makes you feel your spark. (I began to write). Follow your joy and the people that nurture it. (Hello beautifuls!) Do the shadow work. Look at personal triggers with real analysis. Why does this thing bother me so much? What message does it reinforce? (Nothing would trigger us if we didn’t believe some part of the negative message). Argue with it. Dare to get messy. (You haven’t yet convinced yourself that you’re able to be brave through action or say the thing that needs to be said out loud). What is the worst that could happen? Can we trust life in all of its peculiarities? Nothing is impossible. (The synchronicities were shocking and abundant by this point in my process). Life itself seems impossible, yet here we are. Laugh at the odds, like a good little freak!

So now I’m living on hard, meaningful mode. As a weirdo, as capable as any success story. If life is measured in love, I am a monumental triumph already. Friendship is sharing, is life, is love at its foundation. No title, status, or hierarchy necessary, a wealth that is felt deeply.

Whoa. Wow. Ok! Yes, yes. I love it! What else can I do with this life game? Anything I want, remember! I want to find out. Ok! It’s actually uncomfortable to say these things out loud and be held accountable to them, to claim that I’ve learned something, will carry it out, but here I go. I already started. What am I, Valerie the worthy (name origin; thanks mom!), building now? I don’t want to talk more than I act. I’m sure the failures will be juicy, affirming, and worth building upon.

So we will all see what develops, as I develop myself, my courage, patience, and damn nerve. I am taking the big scary leaps in my life choices and fortifying my heart space. Clearing what does not serve me. Going slow at the moment and paying my “sadness debt” (will talk more about that next time). Being honest and compassionate with myself and others within flawed human capacity. I will keep being the student until my last breath, but I must also have the audacity to say I’ve learned something worth sharing. So, hello to you! Thanks for the witness.

What I really, truly believe and focus on is this: The old world, the vastly imbalanced, heartless, unjust empire is ending. It’s not pretty, no. Yet. I bet that the sun will still rise and act on it.

Do you want to play life on ‘hard/meaningful’ mode too? I suppose it’s not for everyone, but you happened upon my page, so maybe we share some things in common. You crazy bugger. What dream could perish in you before your body moves on? How many summers do we get in life? What do we have to lose besides everything eventually? My favorite, very Aries, phrase to say to myself when I’m scared: I dare you :)~