Free to be Me

Thanks mulderfan for this awesome slogan.  :)

Thank Vanci for posting similar thoughts.
http://notmyrock.blogspot.com/2011/12/freedom-from-fear.html

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.  (This was in my quotes widget today. Awesome timing.)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tough to learn that the ability to say, "I am free to be me," has always been within my grasp.  I just didn't know it.  It is like a prisoner staying in an unlocked cell not realizing they could walk out at any time.  I still remember a fascinating conversation with KavinCoach very early in my counseling.  I was also attending a group therapy at the same time.  The group wasn't going the way either of us expected.  One of the group sessions really upset me.  They had blindfolded me and asked me to walk across the room listening to instructions from another person.  I was upset and became more upset when the therapist running the group started saying things that I couldn't hear the instructions on how to cross the room.  I was disoriented and afraid.  Then I got super angry.  I held very still to stop myself from over reacting.  She taunted me again.  I grabbed at where her voice was and shoved her away.  Then she chided me for getting violent.  I just thought to myself she was lucky that I hadn't unleashed the rage I was feeling inside.  When I complained to KavinCoach, he asked me, "Why didn't you take off the blindfold and say you couldn't do it?"  I looked at him totally dumbfounded.  I stammered that they had told us that we had to participate.   I couldn't get KavinCoach to understand that it simply did not enter my mind as an option.  I thought about it for a week.  The following session I told KavinCoach, "I would no more think of saying I couldn't do it then you would think of stripping naked right now and run down the street for two miles."  He looked at me very oddly for a minute then he agreed that he would never think of doing that.  Then we had a discussion on how elephants are trained.  When elephants are very small a heavy unbreakable chain is placed around their ankle.  No matter how much they tug and pull they can't get away; finally they stop trying.  In time, the trainer then puts a rope around the elephants ankle.  As soon as the elephant feels the rope, it holds still, not because it can't get away.  It doesn't move because it believes it can't get away.  I was trained from a very young age to jump when I was told to jump.  A level of absolute obedience that was combined with times of total neglect.  This combination actually left me believing that to be loved I had to be absolutely obedient.  If I wasn't absolutely obedient, then terrible things would happen.  The twisting of a child's mind can be so complete that you can teach a child that black is white.  Destructive conditioning when combined with uneven levels of love and neglect leaves a child believing that what they do can control the outcome.  When the outcome is unpredictable the child tries harder.  KavinCoach spent years trying to get through to me that I was "Free to be me" at any time.  I doubted him.  He worked hard at showing me that my fears and beliefs were messed up.  The hard thing was not only did I need to learn a new way to live, I first had to unlearn destructive patterns of thinking.   I worked with computers when I had a faulty computer I could erase the hard drive and start over.  KavinCoach could not erase my hard drive.  Line by line he persuaded me that I had to let go of the faulty programming I received as a child and write a new system of living without accidentally stomping on my internal self destruct button.  Push too hard and I would collapse internally.  Not hard enough and I would not get over the necessary hurdles.  Over eight years have passed since I begun this journey of discovery and I finally get it.
I AM FREE TO BE ME.  No one can stop me.  My past can not stop me.  I can choose when I wake up in the morning what I am going to do and be each day.  I am free at last.  I finally understand that the door was unlocked all along.  I just needed to open the door.