One thing that resonated with me this week on The Artist's Way is this sentence:

“In order to have self-expression, we must first have a self.”

We must first have a self.

It’s crazy, I would’ve thought earlier. Of course I have a self. How else would I be here, how else would I exist?

Right now though, for me, it’s becoming more of: how much am I connected to this self, and how much do I know about it, if in fact it does exist? Who am I beyond the expectations, beyond trying to fit in, and beyond all that I’m scared I can eventually become. Who am I beyond the voices in my head, most of which I have no control over? And who am I beyond the triggers and the traumas; have they turned me into this person, or have they only highlighted what was already inside?

There’s this part of an Ayah that used to trouble me whenever I came across it: لَن تَنَالُوا الْبِرَّ حَتَّىٰ تُنفِقُوا مِمَّا تُحِبُّونَ (Never will you attain (piety, righteousness, etc.) unless you spend [in the way of Allah] of that which you love.)

I’d pause there, try to list the things I really love, and I’d fail. They were somewhere inside, I knew it, but a part of me had learned to hide them over the years, so I‘d put other people first. Their opinions. Their judgments. Their own needs, before mine. That I totally lost access to all what’s inside. I’d often be referred to as the ‘quietest’ of the group, and for the longest time, I thought something was terribly wrong with my speaking skills, for nothing of what happened inside my head would come out the way I’d intend.

When I started acknowledging my own existence – my own self-worth, I realized I have so much passion inside for things I can literally speak about for hours. I have words inside me that can fill books. I have an artist within that’s only been scared of calling herself one. And I have so much love that I truly enjoy pouring in and out.

I’m still exploring, I still have a lot to find out about all what’s in. Yet it’s safe to say that, over the last few months in particular, I’ve learned what it truly means to have a self. A self that demands to be expressed. And right now, I feel like I know exactly what is it that I need to spend.

July 12, 2020