I have begun laughing again recently. I had not even realized, until it started happening again, that it had really stopped happening so absolutely. I might not have laughed in two years. Maybe more. Now…understand that when I say “laugh,” I am talking about the really good-and-deep-down, hard, hard laughter that gets so strong you can’t stop it. The kind of laughter that actually turns into exercise, and makes you lose your breath.
I’d forgotten how good it feels to laugh.
I’m letting go for real now. I will never stop believing in what I believe, but it’s time to believe that I am valuable enough not to be treated this way. I don’t know if I ever really knew that, to be honest — that I am worthy of being treated like a valuable human being — and I think at this point that I’m finally able to realize that that is where the trouble all really started. I didn’t believe I was worth anything.
How did it get that way? Granted, I had a daycare lady who was abusive in a number of different ways (physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual) but could that really have made such an indelible mark on my psyche? Maybe it could. Maybe that was it. It was so long ago, and I was so young.
The important thing, though, is that I’ve finally come to the realization that I am not worthless, and waking up to this truth has answered so many questions. That was why the drugs, that was why the sex addiction, that was why the gravitation towards religious ideologies that were, at bottom, just cruel and harsh.
…Because… to me, I was a blemish. My very existence was an inconsistency in the idea of a well-ordered universe. It was for this reason I could never really believe that the things I said to others about God were true for myself.
“God loves you!”
(But probably not me.)
“You matter! Everything happens for a reason!”
(Except me. I am a mistake.)
I can know on an intellectual level that these things represent a series of false core beliefs, but this knowledge needs to be experiential in order to really do me any good. And I think that maybe it’s beginning to seep down into the fabric of my soul now, and that maybe I’m beginning to wake up in that way.
And letting go is a necessary thing now.
I see now that I have been hanging on for dear life to something that has been dragging me to my death, and that makes no sense. It has to stop. I have to act in accordance with the idea that I am loved, even though it’s maybe not really quite all the way real to me yet.
But it will be. I am learning it on every level, and I will soon be radiating it from every living cell.
And laughing feels so good.
