If someone would’ve told me that this year would be how it has been a year ago, I would laugh at them and tell them that they are insane. This year, I have flown to five countries, worked full-time about two months of the six months and, have had my life as I knew it before all this happened ripped out from underneath my feet. In a nutshell, it has been a rollercoaster.
I went to South Africa for my birthday and to see friends and family in February. And, while I was there, I felt like an outsider. I was grateful to be in Africa but for the first time, I felt like South Africa was not my home and I wondered why. On my way back to Los Angeles, I was so happy to be back in The United States of America. I felt home. I had never ever felt like this in my life.
I spent the next three weeks working and staying busy. Grateful to be in the city of Angels, whether those angels were in the sky or fallen was none of my business, I felt alive but I had this feeling that I needed to change something about my life. I made a decision to let go of toxicity and one night, I prayed to God to release me of what I no longer needed on my road to truth and prosperity.
A few days after my prayer, there was a mandate ordered for Yoga studios to shut down and therefore, I would be out of partial work as I teach at different yoga studios. The next day I was doing a tarot reading on myself and I pulled a card that said, ‘What are you clinging on to?’ I knew what it was but was too stubborn to admit that there was people and things that were not a part of the life that I wanted.
As always, there is nothing that I regret. It took this for me to be here now and the present is the best place I will ever be.
Here are 3 things that I wish I’d known before Quarantine:
1. You’ll be okay.
These past three months have been the hardest time of my life. I have always been an independent and self-sufficient person who has been able to talk, smile or outwit myself out of any situation until this. It went from being two weeks, to a month and then suddenly three months. I went from seeing this as a blessing to crying on my bedroom floor while listening to gospel music. I have had to take each moment day-by-day.
For the first time in my life, I have been late on my rent by no fault of my own and the feeling of shame has been overwhelming sometimes. The feeling of being in a situation because of something you have no control over has created a different kind of faith and hope that I didn’t know possible. Sure, sometimes I am angry, lost and confused but then I look to God, pray, breathe and remember that everything will be okay because it has been okay. If I have my life, my health, my mind and my soul, I am flourishing.
2. Get ready to leave behind the old you.
I have spent my life feeling like an outsider. I always joke that it’s because I am an Aquarius and we are known for that but in truth that was to mask the pain that came from feeling misunderstood a lot of the time. I believe firmly in independent-thinking and I was not raised in a society that allowed that so I was shunned a lot and told to keep quiet for asking questions or thinking differently. Because of this, I developed a thinking that I couldn’t really say how I felt. So, in my earlier years, I would catch myself lying when I wanted to tell the truth, keeping quiet when I wanted to scream and hurting myself instead of releasing my anger in a healthy way.
Over the years that old façade of me has slowly bee dissipating and eventually was forced to leave my life when I came back from South Africa and noticed how different I was to lifelong friends and family. Some of them didn’t want to hear what I had to say, would flake on me or shame me for wanting to know the truth. I couldn’t hold on any longer. The old me was okay with sacrificing what I had to say to be liked but the new me can’t- just can’t. No matter who hates me, who won’t speak to me again or who thinks I am the worst person alive. I am done playing a role of someone who I am not. I am me: unfiltered, non-PC, sometimes offensive but is trying to be a good person and I am done trying to fit into a mould to be accepted and loved.
3. Let go of control.
In my entire life, I have never cried as much as I have in these past three months. I’ve cried tears of joy, tears of pain, tears of anxiety, tears of gratitude, tears of confusion and tears of sadness. In all of my emotional phases, I have had to let go of being in control.
I admit to being a control freak and it has been something that I have been working on in therapy over the past decade. I have had to learn that control does not equate to power. A hard yet powerful message. For the first time, all the things that I was able to do to remain in control have been taken from me and I have had to redefine what power means. I’m not sure that I know the answer but I do know that holding onto something tightly so that it never leaves is not because of power but it is because of fear. My internal powerful voice knows that what is meant for me will never go, will leave and come back or, had it’s purpose once upon a time.
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