Existing as Someone Like You

I’ve been doing deep dives into my inner depths. It has been tumultuous. I’ve been in so much emotional distress in the last week; I actually held the thought, “ I feel like I am dying.” With beautiful clarity I am recognizing those words as the last utterings of my limited identity. 

I have for the last few months been referring to the work of Anya Lincoln. She’s an author and I would dare say, spiritual transformationist. Her Identity work, as detailed in her book “I Am: A Guide to Transforming Reality and Creating the Life You Want” has been a revolutionary tool. Through the work she describes, I was able to pinpoint the exact core thought behind my identity, its primary structure. It said, “ I don’t match.” That simple phrase had stained the fabric of my reality. It colored every aspect of my life. I always felt attracted to things that were “ out of my element”, or finding myself squeezing into spaces I could not be expansive in. Both of those conditions created a dichotomy of hopeful hopelessness. I found myself constantly creating circumstances that either made me feel small or that I had to shrink for. I was hoping either to become enough or learn to accept less. I saw this pattern, and the recognition was so enlightening. However, there was no immediate inner shift.

I could see clearly what was happening, but I couldn’t see how it was happening. At a certain point I started to feel so much inner resistance to the book itself. I would find myself having a hard time engaging with the material. I didn’t feel like putting any of Anya’s methods into practice. There was so much strain. Identity was fighting hard to stay. Something in me kept yearning, feeling intuitively like I was close to the truth. In the midst of an emotional tailspin over deep feelings of inadequacy, rejection and fear I picked up the book once more. In reading two anecdotes one about Anya and one about her client, the insight emerged with such pristine clarity. My identity created two versions of me, one where I exist as myself and one where I exist as someone who wishes to be someone like me. The thought “ I don’t match” was first suspected to be a revelation about me in relation to my external environment. Through this final inquiry I discovered it to be a statement about my identity in relation to who and what I AM. I felt like I don’t match myself, my true self. 

All of this was revelatory and it came through the distress of experiencing a friendship as unrequited Love. I felt this situation echoing my inner sentiments, “ you are not a match for this.” I navigated many situations like this yearning to show and prove that I was a good fit. It occurred to me that the feeling was necessitated by the very subtle idea that I was experiencing something special and rare. The identity structure that wished it could be like me could only dream or hope of connections like this, so it would do anything in its power to convince the other. That structure perpetuated a condition where I was separate and beneath the counterpart. For the first time ever I was able to question that. “ Is this really something so rare and so special for someone like you?” I looked myself in the face in the mirror and inquired. I came away with a beautiful and startling understanding. The answer is no. For someone like me, that kind of relationship is natural. It is common. It is easy. There is nothing special about it because it reflects the true nature of a person existing as me. 

Initially, that attachment was something I aimed to keep as necessary proof of my worthiness. In the same breath, it also felt impossible to hold onto in the absence of my worthiness. Now I see it as something that can exist or not exist depending on how it honors each individual. I see it as a commonality for how friendship and Love manifest in my life, not as an exception. My worthiness was always implied in the manifestation of a connection I know to be beautiful. The reason is quite obvious in hindsight, it manifested from the beauty that I am. If it could and can exist, so can many other beautiful connections.