Bar Fight

I feel like I’ve been in a bar fight, and I keep getting cracked in my head over and over again.

I’ve been in bar fights all my life, don’t get me wrong—but after I’d get cracked in the head, I’d go home and allow it to immobilize me for days — even weeks.

But the difference now is, I’m getting cracked, but I stay in the fight.

And I’m fighting until I own the bar.

I fought from sun up ’til sun down, and even laying down to sleep in my plush ass bed, I was still fighting—wide awake at 2 a.m., breaking myself open, trying to understand.

And when morning came, I was ready for more. Ready to understand more, ready to build more, ready to keep growing.

Growing fast is scary, though.

It’s scary when you have a complete loss of self because you realize everything you are has been created to survive—not who you really are when given the conditions to thrive.

It’s scary realizing things I did that I never talked about, because I thought they were crazy, were actually just me coping.

It’s scary to know that I had to lose people who really cared for me—and that it’ll keep happening.

It’s scary to build my empire while I’m building myself from the ground up—in the image of who I want to be, not the label somebody else gave me or told me I had to be.

It is scary.

It’s costing me everything.

And I’m fucking tired.

But it’s necessary.

In this time of transition, I need grounding—not anything that will hold me back from becoming.

That’s why I’m yearning for my parents so badly right now, more than ever.

More than even, I think, when they first died.

I need—when I’m losing my sense of self ascending into who I’m meant to be—for the people who knew me from the beginning, before I learned fear, before I knew constraint or ambition, to tell me that even through the changes I’m making, through all the growth, I’m still their baby.

But I can’t have it.

And so I press on.

I remember that even though the people I want aren’t here, I’ve been with me since the beginning, too.

Even though I don’t know exactly what I’ll “look” like when my transformation is “complete” (I say that because we’re ever-evolving—but not this intense, bitch), I trust the architect.

I’ve torn myself down and built myself back up, each iteration stronger and more aligned than the last.

Each one better equipped to handle the next phase of my life.

I know my final form will be expansive, encompassing everything I am—not forcing me to choose one path.

I won’t have to shrink to fit into a box.

I’ll expand.

I’ll unfold.

And I’ll create space and tools for others who are too big to fit into a box to expand and unfold, too.

But they’ll be able to do it without the hurt, loss, and pain I had to experience—because I’ve laid out the journey.

I had trouble finding a path that felt right because I’m not meant to follow a path.

I’m meant to blaze my own—and lead others to their higher selves on the way.