I came home last night from acting class, it was about 10pm…bed time. I go over to the living room to chat with my husband about our day before we head to bed. While chatting with him, I noticed that the little moments of silence between conversing with my husband I was feeling something brewing in my chest…a feeling that felt familiar but I couldn’t name it.
Then my husband and I head to the bed room, we lay in bed; I am huffing and puffing, tossing and turning; “Whats wrong babe?” he asked me. “I don’t know” I replied… “I don’t know” — the popular answer for what you kinda know but seems to be indescribable with words. I started talking some more until I blotted out..”I feel invisible in class”. Phewww, where did that come from?
‘You feel invisible?” he asked me looking confused.. “why?”…then the words started pouring out my mouth like rain fall. “I…I..I don’t know, I feel out of place in class, I feel like they don’t see me you know…I am the only black person in class and I feel like I don’t fit in or belong in that space, I…I…I don’t relate to what they talk about sometimes, their jokes. And they don’t get mine either. And…and… the other day I told my acting teacher I would go first to do my performance in class, he reacted all surprised like he didn’t know I was part of the class the whole time or so i thought”…. Rant ended.
My chest felt deflated. It’s finally out. My husband looked at me, with love..he hugged me, then we continued to break down the feeling together.
Husband: “Why do you really feel like you are invisible, you seem to do really good with acting from everything you’ve told me.
Me: I just feel like they don’t get me.
Husband: Have anyone in your class or your teacher said anything to you or done something to you to make you feel that way?
Me: No. Other than the way he reacted all surprised when I told him I’ll go first with my performance..
Husband: Could it be that maybe it’s just your perception? Remember perception is reality, You’re maybe seeing yourself as someone that doesn’t fit in with them and it’s maybe being projected out?
Me: I think you are right, It feels like my perception changed all of a sudden, I don’t remember feeling this way about class. If anything I actually used to feel like I stand out. Like I’m a badass. I never felt self conscious about being black in class or anything like that. What changed with me? It’s as if I lost my self-confidence out of nowhere.
We broke it down to the point that I discovered that I am back in a place I thought I had graduated from. The place of “ Not feeling enough, not feeling rooted and grounded in my being”…again.
I thought I had graduated with a degree of “ENOUGH-NESS” and that I have a gold medal for self-confidence. I am the queen of advocating for believing that you are enough. I perceived myself as someone that have self confidence, someone that is rooted and grounded. Something I worked on consciously as a young adult. I had crafted my energy and my presence to radiate the energy of someone who walks into a room unshakable. I am incredibly inspired by Oprah Winfrey, I adopted her rooted essence of walking into a room with all of her ancestors; the people that came before her and paved way for her. That was how I viewed myself when I walked into rooms. I wasn’t a self confident person growing up but I did the work on myself. I read books, I attend personal growth workshops. However; Last night I cracked.
The crack brought me to a place I thought I had left a long time ago. And I didn’t want to believe it. It felt like a punch to my growth Ego. Its like when you are a grown ass man or woman and you trip and fall like a child and you just look at yourself embarrassed on that floor, with your mighty big grown behind, on the floor like a 2 year old.
I fell from my self-confidence tower; I am looking at myself in my emotional floor. How did I get here? In that moment my self-confidence felt like it evaporated. However, my self-awareness was present and fully alive. I was aware of the absence of my self-confidence. I was aware that I felt shaky, didn’t feel rooted in my being. I buckled up my psychological seat belt, together with my self-awareness, ready to embark on a journey into myself. I took a deep look into myself to do some diagnoses. I lay on my side of the bed with my eyes closed, husband is already fast asleep at this point, I allowed myself to go into that emotional floor FULLY all the way to the very bottom of my subconscious where that little girl lives (My inner child).
I began the journey within…
I am breathing deep into my belly now, and exhaling out..hot air. The room is quiet, lights are off..its mostly pitch darkness except for the light coming from our alarm clock. The only sound I am hearing is my husband’s breathing (he wasn’t snoring thank God) and the sound of cars driving and honking from a distance. I am slowly drifting into a meditative state……. Ah!…… I can feel my legs fully (I haven’t been in my legs fully in a while, it feels so good to enter my body). Ah! I can feel the bed sheets on my skin and the cozy blanket over me…I am feeling tingling sensations now, waves of energy vibrating through out my body; I am getting to the upper part of my body now….ummm..Its kinda uncomfortable up here. ermmmm..My Chest feels like energy escaped but now there is a vacuum.
I stay in my chest a little longer, breathing deeply into it, noticing every thought and feeling that comes up from keeping my attention on my chest…Then suddenly I stopped! I felt pain. Emotional pain (felt like a chest pain but quickly stopped, it was probably from not breathing properly), then I felt sadness, then heightened anxiety and palpitations similar to a panic (it was from getting anxious about future deadlines), then feeling like I want to be held skin to skin like a new born baby. I place my bare hands on top my bare chest to give myself that skin to skin touch. It helped calm down the anxiety. It was uncomfortable to sit with all those feelings at once. I didn’t want to push myself into it so I left my chest and went to my head.
Now breathing deeply into my head. Eyes still closed..I see nothing, I am aware of the spacious darkness behind my eyes (a feeling similar to being in space when I tried space virtual reality). My head was heavy, sooo heavy from all the thinking, all the processing. I heard the voices and thoughts of the characters I created for my acting scenes, I saw visions of their lives, the life I crafted for them; intertwined with my own memories; What I ate the other night, How I felt on the cruise date with my husband last weekend, what my friend said the other day; memories that I took in and experienced but didn’t fully digest. It was like I was watching multiple movies I produced in my head…It was noisy up in there. It took a little while before the chattering in my head stopped. Then a floating sensation came up to the surface. It felt like my energy was circulating like oxygen around my head; the stagnant tight feeling in my head lifted, my forehead muscles relaxed…I am floating now..in the dimension and spaciousness of BEING.
I stayed in this sweet spot of BEING, Savoring the comfort of BEING with my existence, nothing else mattered. Soon enough I remembered to revisit my chest again..At this point I got little drops of tears rolling down the corner of my eyes. I wasn’t crying, it was my body releasing tension, and stress coupled with multiple yawning, sighing and deep EXHALE. I am back in my chest now. I feel ready to go deeper (to meet the little girl), I am ready to understand the sense of confidence that I lost.
I am breathing some more, deeper and deeperrrrr. It’s getting quieter and quieterrr, I can’t hear the cars from the distance anymore or my husband’s breathing. My attention is fully in the HERE AND NOW. The quietness started to scare me; I jumped out of the flow. Fear came up it seemed like sound disappeared. AM I STILL ALIVE?…the thought of that question alone made me laugh inside. Of course I’m still alive or else I wouldn’t know I even asked a question…I pinched myself to make sure then continued with my trip into my chest again.
This time the silence gripped me alot quicker. It got quiet real fast…before I knew it, I became profoundly aware that I AM WITH MYSELF NOW. I am with the TOTALITY of me. I am with all of my human versions from conception to now. I am face to face with myself. It was scary and there was a choice. To escape myself or to BE with myself. To get up from the bed to find something to munch on like a snack (I use food for comfort) or to sit with myself and discover what needs to be discovered…I decided not to run from myself, its been a while I went this deep into a state of stillness and total surrender.
I kept breathing. Then it felt like my energy took the shape of all my versions. The best way I could describe this; Imagine a big circle with smaller circles inside. The circles was me and all my versions. I saw me “the adult”, I saw me “the teenager”, and I saw me “the Child”. What I saw wasn’t visual memory, it was seeing through sensing. I saw shapes of my energy. Visual memories came later. I stayed in the awareness of my energy shapes until my attention got to the smaller shape and I stayed there..noticing the child version of me. Then she started to speak up through visual memories. Images of when I was super busy for the past 3 months came up; I saw myself editing youtube videos for hours overnight, I saw myself forcefully taking driving lessons, I saw myself in class performing when I was already exhausted and depleted. Uneasy sensations of doing too much at the same time came up. I heard her. she told me how she felt by showing me moments when she needed me and I was too busy. I acknowledged it as true within myself, and gave my inner child words of affirmation. She needed to hear, “I am here for you”. And I said that.
The human body have a very interesting way of communicating to us. We have mouths to willfully talk when we want to speak from the mind. However; the body in and of itself does not speak through the mouth, it speaks through signals (like physical sickness; a migraine, headache, cancer etc), or through visual memories or emotional memories (anger, sadness, joy, grief etc) and other physical sensations like twitching, shaking, blinking, tingling.
The past 3 months have been chaotic for me juggling school’s heavy workload, plus trying to get my drivers license.. plus work… plus other projects, and deadlines. I didn’t give myself the attention I needed to the degree that I needed it hence the tantrum from my inner child. The attention and stillness I gave to my inner child last night integrated the invisible feeling. I woke up feeling better like I gained myself and my sense of confidence back, even if not completely, a little bit, I know I still need more dose of deep stillness.
The invisible feeling wasn’t really about my acting class. It was about being invisible to myself. I was so busy these past months that I barely looked into the mirror to truly see myself. Looking in the mirror to get dressed is not the same as taking a good deep look at yourself. A deep look into your own eyes..are they tired? have you lost that joy and zest in your eyes? are they bright or dull? are you eating well? sleeping well?.
I haven’t looked into my own eyes in a while. My acting class is not perfect, I have already done one year in the program; its challenging and sometimes annoying but its rewarding. I have grown alot and learned alot from doing the work in class and I love the work and I love my class mates…it never or I never allowed it crush my self-confidence in my core…. I haven’t spent time with myself to the degree I needed to. I do solo dates, like going to a restaurant to eat by myself or doing an activity. The other day I went to a solo dinner cruise but I wasn’t fully present because I was thinking about deadlines I felt I didn’t have enough time to complete and I couldn’t escape from. My mind was pre-occupied with what I have to do. I haven’t had the quality of STILLNESS that I needed. I also needed to PLAY.
When we are stressed and play deprived, our inner child comes up to surface and act out..throwing tantrums. This time, my inner child temporarily took my sense of self-confidence, sometimes she seizes my sense of freedom or my sense of truth until I give her the quality of attention she needs; this time she simply needed me to lay down on the bed, breathe and truly truly just BE (I’m up on my feet galavanting about alot, gotta do this, gotta do that). I still need more BEING, and I cannot wait for the holiday break to go on a vacation.
Sometimes, simply acknowledging our inner child is what we need to course correct. There will be seasons when we feel like we’ve lost our sense of confidence, sense of identity (wondering who the f*ck I’m I today?) , or our sense of truth, sense of freedom, whatever sense it is. Sometimes its just that little boy or girl calling for our attention. The 4 year old inside us saying “HEY! I’m here, do you see me?”…Please listennn to your body and your inner child before he or she takes you to the hospital to get your attention.
