I built my home out of skin

For some weeks now I’ve been having a recurring thought that comes to my mind during the most random moments: I keep thinking, for some reason, that this has been my best year so far; the year I’ve felt more at peace, the year I’ve felt most alive. 

This thought came back to me so many times during the past months that I finally decided to plunge into a soul-searching voyage that could lead me to the origins and the causes of this personal discovery. 

After tracing the events that have paved the road my life has been following this year, both pleasant and not so pleasant, I keep coming back to a particular one; it must have taken place somewhere around February or March, during a weekend, I was sitting at a dinner table surrounded by three friends that I’ve now come to regard as teachers. We were having a regular conversation accompanied by red wine and its magnificent ability to diminish your inhibitions, which eventually transformed our conversation into a very deep exchange of personal vulnerabilities, all ranging from regrets of our past, buried fears, unattainable expectations, and life-changing decisions. It was towards the end of the night when, powered by some liquid courage and also encouraged by the presence of three humble and at-ease humans, that I decided to share some personal predicaments that had been occupying my mind for years, little monsters that had been stealing my peace and planting self-doubt all over my decisions. 

Now that I see this evening through the glass of my memory, I can see that it fundamentally and irreparably shifted the conception I’ve had of myself for years; for the first time, in a very long time, I was able to muster aloud and share with other humans the fact that I wasn’t feeling very comfortable in my own skin due to several doubts that had surfaced regarding my identity in the past years. 

It’s funny how when you find the courage to speak about what ails you; when you release it and put it into words that find its way out of your mouth, your mind, your stomach... it instantly diminishes. Talking about our demons eventually transforms those untameable monsters into manageable afflictions. 

When I spoke about the bits and pieces of myself that I didn’t fully comprehend and that I had spent months trying to hide, I finally accepted myself... dark and unwanted corners included. 

I can now see that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we interact and socialize because we don’t give neither ourselves nor others enough space to understand who we are, and to embrace our eccentricities instead of trying to normalise them. Stereotypes, along with other socially constructed institutions such as religion and our educational system have established norms and rules that delimitate what we can and what we most definitely cannot be or become. This repressions eventually transform into anxieties, anger and depression, because we try to define ourselves in terms of others expectations and ideas of us. Because sometimes what we are or aim to be doesn’t fall into the boundaries of correctness that others have delimitated for us. 

I know that it would be really innocent of me to declare this as my best year yet, because I, hopefully, still have many many more years to come. However, I am certain that it will go down as a year in which an inflection point was reached, because I finally found the courage to outline every part of myself that I didn’t liked, understood, or accepted, and make amends with it. 

This year has been amazing because I finally understood that it is easier to accept myself than to live in a constant state of internal antagonism between the parts of me I like and the ones I don’t understand…because once you understand something it’s hard to hate it. 

Whether we like it or not, we have within us the power to be our biggest ally or our eternally invincible enemy. 

Sincerely yours, 

Natalia