I am taking back my Power

I'm done with letting other people define who I am.

I know I live with my head in the clouds. I've designed my life to be that way. That is how I choose to live, because in the clouds, anything is possible, and isn't life exciting in a place like that? That's where I like to be, and where I am happy.

I know I'm emotional. But isn't that wonderful? To be able to feel life with such intensity? Not that it doesn't cause difficulties, and doesn't paint my life in shades of gray and black sometimes, but it's better than than the alternative. And as often as it paints my life in darkness or dullness, it just as often paints it in brilliant blues and purples.

Well, to be honest, I'm still trying to find that balance, but it's coming.

I'm sick of singing in the hopes that someone will like me. I sing because I have this gift, and don't you dare try to judge me on if it's good enough. I'm done with that. I will always work on it, but it's good enough as it is.

I am beautiful just as I am, and I've spent all my life not believing that. I am taking back my power, and my right to inhabit this world as I am. All my life I thought I was inherently flawed.

Well, not anymore. That is done right now.

I AM ENOUGH. I AM BEAUTIFUL. I AM OKAY. I AM POWERFUL.

I don't usually do this, but I'm going to post a poem that I myself wrote. Here it is:

When I was younger I ran to the edge, to the brink, to the lip, and sobbed, begging.
Take it. Please. I don't want it. I can't deal with it.
Nothing answered.
Then I learned
to push it under
To pummel it and to punish it
and to hate it, finding ways to reaffirm the fact
that I was wrong wrong wrong.

Now suddenly I sob and beg again at the brink.
Help me. Please. I couldn't get rid of it. I couldn't deal with it.
This time a voice whispers back
gently, barely audible.

It sighs:
Don't you know that this is what makes you beautiful?

We apologize for the delay in our regularly scheduled programming

Life has been upside-down. White has suddenly become black, black has become white, Flava-Flav has become handsome...you get the idea.

I've been meditating and doing Yoga nonstop. I've also started reading and studying yogic texts, as well as various others from the self-help genre (a genre which I love, and will feel no shame about). I've been researching Ashrams in India.

For the first time in my life I'm really, really, I mean really listening to myself, scary stuff and all. It's terrifying and wonderful. Sometimes my fears and my grief overwhelm me, and that's okay. But also, sometimes I feel a core of genuine strength that I've never felt before inside me. That strength is scary, because it's not compatible with a lot of the way I've been living my life. But the strength takes over, whether I want it to or not. It is sweeping through my life, whether I want it to or not.

I won't go on about this, but I will say that this strength is telling me to start a school. A school for the arts and creativity and soul. Or something like that. I don't know. I'm starting to work on it and collect ideas and people in my mind.

For now I'm going to pursue that stillness and truth, because that's what I want and need right now, more than performance opportunities.

I have a feeling this is going to open up a whole new world for me, one in which I can stop clinging so tightly to my performance dreams and just open up. I can let me be me, and whatever follows will follow. And, frankly, I know that if I stop grasping and gasping after performing and instead follow my truth, the performing will come to me. Because really, all I've ever wanted from performance was to open my inner soul and create a community, however briefly. I've always wanted to find the emotional truth and power in the music and the emotion and the text and let it flow through me.

Maybe now it will actually be able to.

Change, real change, is the most difficult and painful thing in the world. Now I really know that. But, change we must.