I’m 26! It seems to me that 26 doesn’t have as quite a ring to it as 21 or even 25 but it’s a special day nonetheless. I’m taking this as a moment to reflect on myself and catalog the fact that I’ve really been through a lot (relatively speaking) in the past year.
If I look back at my life a year ago, some things are the same.
I was going to acupuncture and getting cupping and needles put into my body to help with my chronic pain. Today I still deal with pain but I am healing (more on that soon). A year ago, I felt pressured to figure out what I could do for work—since that’s what we grow up believing we need to shape our lives around, right? Today I think less about how I will fit into a workspace that exists and instead realize I’m meant to create that for myself. A year ago, I was still living in the place that I grew up in and wishing I could pick up and move. Today that’s still the case but I can also admire how it doesn’t take being someplace new to become someone new.
It is now my 26th year of life and much seems the same on the surface but so much has happened within me that pure words alone will prove challenging to illustrate. I will try my best, though. I have transformed, evolved, shed my skin, built walls, and taken those walls down. Nothing has happened yet everything has happened. Everything that has happened is more than I can describe right now in this post today but I can still tell you something….
I’ve had the most transformative year—a transformative last 2 years, if I’m being fair.
The feeling of sameness has plagued me for a long time. When I was younger I remember going to school, the monotony of classes, the dullness of summers, and everything was just the same, year after year. I was longing for something to take me to another state or for my mom to let me dye my hair, or something, anything big to happen. Little did I know that whatever big thing I wanted wasn’t going to solve the way I felt on the inside. What was causing me so much distress had more to do with what was happening on the inside. In my body and in my self—my identity.
What I was feeling had to do with the small little actions that happen everyday that dictate the person I am today.
Now, those little actions are so outstanding and miraculous. I can look back and see how the things I was struggling with inside of me changed just by taking the smallest of actions. By showing up for myself. For trying when no one around me could see my vision. For knowing when to give up when everyone else seems to be going forward. For seeking out education when I thought there was nothing left to learn. For holding onto hope when I thought my case was hopeless. The insecurities that I had, while they might still be here today, are so much smaller.
Yeah you could say it’s because we grow and, naturally, as you come into yourself, things get better. But I don’t believe things just get better without any effort, without trying.
I know I have put in so much self-work. It’s not without really branching out of myself that I’ve been able to reach out to people in all sorts of different places and from different backgrounds and ask them to be on my podcast. It’s not without trying that I have recreated habits that I have for myself that were keeping me in disordered eating patterns and fought to overcome them. And it’s not without lots of research, sleepless nights, crying, and questioning my motives and desires and beliefs that I’ve been able to feel more like myself than I ever have before.
There was a lot of gunk to get through when I started digging around in the depths of my subconscious. Sifting through many years of trauma. I learned how much I’ve been soaking in my parents and family’s beliefs, society’s rules, and people’s ideas and projections about who they wanted me to be, and I have finally arrived here today. I don’t feel like the most evolved version of Melanie Moreno; yet, I do feel more capable than I ever have before. I used to have no confidence in myself to pursue the things that interested me. I wanted so desperately for someone else to show me what was safe, tell me what’s valuable, do something for me…because, that way, I couldn’t screw it up. I was so unsure of myself.
The insecurities that I had, while they might still be here today, are so much smaller.
No one ever told me it was okay to make mistakes. No one ever said it was okay for me to try out different things and see if I like them. It was always:
- Make the most of the time you’re spending and commit FULLY to get the best results.
- Don’t be one of those girls who just jumps around from person to person (or thing to thing).
- What’s going on with you is your business and you shouldn’t be telling anyone else that.
- All you need is to go to school and then college and get a decent job that’s going to pay you well, has reasonable benefits, and is enough to support you and your family (assuming I want one).
These were ideas I was always taught and surrounded by growing up. I took them in as if they were an undebatable truth but these ideas are not MY TRUTH.
This all implies I have no soul.
All of this was said to me as if I am just a thing. A cog in the machine meant to work within the system that has already existed–the world’s system that governs us, whether we know it or not–but it doesn’t take into account gifts that I have. That each individual has. I am so much more a work horse. “Why can’t other people let you just be who you want to be?” was a thought I had often about myself. I thought it was other people’s fault, the system’s fault, society’s fault that I’m stuck.
To what benefit are you to the governing powers when you can feel and create from your own mind? You are a threat to society, to tradition, if you can think and feel and create. There isn’t room for your unique abilities in this antiquated, straight, one dimensional path created by us–a few select men–who could no way know you. Who could no way could understand nor represent the varying and limitless qualities all human beings existing on this Earth at this time. Or even into the future.
Evolution isn’t just for monkeys and plants, humans are constantly evolving. And we aren’t just what the scientific journals and old textbooks will have you think we are. There is no limit to what we can do and, with each generation that wakes up, that chooses to live authentically, and that tries to be better for themselves and for their community, they help create more awakened and WHOLE human beings.
Humans who do not want to look outside themselves for answers. Humans who do not want to sit indoors with artificial lighting all day long while LIFE continues happening outside. Humans who do not want to live ONE way. Humans who are accepting of individuality and the beauty that comes with that.
So it is with all of this in mind that I look back on the past year and I just have appreciation for myself. For my younger self who really didn’t have a plan or clue what to do. All she had were a few vague ideas of what appealed to her and she went after them. Even though it didn’t make sense and she doubted whether anyone even cared. A lot of it still doesn’t make sense and a lot of people probably don’t care.
There is no limit to what we can do and, with each generation that wakes up, that chooses to live authentically, and that tries to be better for themselves and for their community, they help create more awakened and WHOLE human beings.
What matters is to be a human being, to be alive, to have a mind, a heart, and a soul. That means you are something. Means that you have substance. You have a purpose. Not the kind of purpose that the world would like to make you think you need to have–one that is inflicted upon you–but an internal source of purpose. To be you. And that’s what this year has been. A year of being me, or trying to see what that could be like. A little more, and a little more, and a little more.
Thanks for sticking with me through all of the changes and growth.
XOXO,
Melanie
P.S. somehow I skipped out on sharing a birthday post last year but, if you’d like to read my blog post from two years ago when I turned 24 (woo!), check it out here: Birthday Reflections 2018