I can’t say I really know when it happened, but somehow along the line in the last year, I seem to have reverted to a kind of post-modern version of myself. It seemed not long ago I was feeling open and loving and free. Now I feel insecure, judgmental and threatened.

They say self esteem can be defined as being capable of maneuvering the challenges in life, accompanied with a sense of being worthy of happiness. I’ve got the first part down in general, I’m alive afterall, but the second, I don’t know so much right now. I’ve been unplugged and cut off, guarded and gun-shy. It doesn’t feel good. It feels sad. I’m hurting because of it.

It seems some deep part of me has been thinking of Love lately as weakness. Showing mine makes me vulnerable and others showing theirs for the likes of me makes them crazy or completely stupid. That notion is preposterous, to use one of Beaus favorite words, and knowing that doesn’t seem to be stopping my guts and instincts from living there a lot more often than I deem acceptable.

So it’s an emotional concern, one of those things that intellectual pick pocketing isn’t going to solve. Even then I don’t know how much I’ve actually been considering what’s been going on versus just letting my moods dictate how little I’ve reached toward others or allowed them to touch me.

It takes a lot of energy to be down on yourself. I appear self absorbed because I am. The part that isn’t as easy to see is that I act that way not because I feel the world doesn’t deserve my brilliance, but because I don’t believe I deserve the brilliance of others.

In an age when I am managing to support myself through a recession as a self employed healer and artist, I am all too frequently made frozen by a lack of confidence in regards to the worth of what I have to contribute in the world. I’d like to think it doesn’t show. But I suspect it does.

So it’s out there now, cultivating focus. That usually gets things moving. Time to see what happens.