Embrace Your Insecurities Day 1: Coming Out of the Closet

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We all have parts of ourselves that are no longer with us. Aspects of us that are frozen in cold storage, unable to be accessed until we remember where we put that private key.

When I was a child I was a free spirit. It seemed as though I was naturally drawn to cross the lines that other children wouldn't. There was a natural edginess to my character, and a natural innocence. The concept of "cool" had not yet registered in my young mind. There was no one to impress. There was only pure expression.

When I was about nine I had my first sexual explorations with a neighbor girl. Eventually we were caught naked in her walk in closet by our parents and we got a thorough "talking to." But we blamed the escapade on a dare from "the teenagers" and seemed to get off without any real consequence. I mean kids playing doctor wasn't exactly grounds for alarm.

A while later we were back at exploring and one day I had the idea of writing down what we wanted to do with each other. She wrote something like she wanted to kiss and for me to be her boyfriend. I wrote that I wanted us to touch each other's genitals... In sloppy handwriting with a colored marker on green construction paper.

It must've been a shocking sight when she showed it to her mother. I immediately denied writing it and any wrongdoing, and my mother defended me. But then they decided to have me give a writing sample so they could compare the two and I guess my S's were unique and identifiable because it was enough to convince my mother. I eventually broke down and admitted it was mine.

I think this is part of why it's so hard for me to share my desires with others sometimes. Because of that experience early on where my desires were used against me.

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Life went on. I stopped pursuing sexual experiences. But then one day when I was twelve, during a sleepover with three other male friends, we were playing truth or dare. Things gradually escalated until someone dared someone else to get up and start dancing naked. My friend hesitated, and I used that hesitance to jump up and take his place, the same as I'd done countless other times when my peers felt too scared to move forward.

The room was dark, only lit by the moonlight as it shone through the window. And I danced freely with that same zeal and uninhibited self-expression with which I took on everything at that young age. I wasn't thinking any sexual thoughts, yet I felt aroused by the exhibitionism.

I guess we were being too loud, because a few moments later we heard the rumbling approaching footsteps. As the door swung open, my first instinct was to hide. So I jumped into the closet and closed the door behind me. But my clothes were still strewn across the floor.

It was the shortest game of hide and seek I'd ever played. She found me naked in the closet, hiding, and told me to put my clothes back on.

I don't remember exactly what happened next. Only that I felt terribly ashamed. I remember her calling my mother in the middle of the night. Uttering the words "I found this one in there naked" over the phone. I remember being sent home and being yelled at by my mother. I wasn't sure what I had done that was so wrong, but my mom seemed terribly upset. Like I had brought great shame to my family.

I slipped into a depression unlike anything I'd known before or since. I remember curling up in my bed and staring into the wall, not wanting to face the world. The terrible pain of bringing hurt and shame to my mother, and feeling ostracized from my friends.

I basically went into hiding after that. I stopped socializing with everyone in the neighborhood. I went to school and came home. I spent time with my younger siblings and I spent time alone. Winter came and I made a snowman with my younger siblings once, but when my friends came by I went indoors. It was months until I eventually started hanging out with them again.

Years later I would reflect back on the stark difference with which these two formative events were handled. Committing a sex act with a girl was met with a slap on the wrist. But just getting naked in a room with other males felt like a brought down a sledgehammer on my tiny existence.

I didn't blame my mother. I'm sure she felt shamed by my friend’s mother and was just doing the best she could. I didn't blame my friends mother, she was just trying to protect her son from something she feared and didn't understand. I blamed myself. I blamed myself for not knowing better. For hurting people close to me and embarrassing my family. And by the time I realized I wasn't to blame, it didn't matter. Because now I blamed the whole event for how it changed me. And how I now so frequently choose to hide instead of shine. How I kept learned to keep my desires to myself for years and turn off my sexuality.

It wasn't until the uninhibited drunkenness of my late teens that I finally felt comfortable enough to be sexual again. And it wasn't until age 26 when I did a 30-day experiment on risking rejection and looking bad that I finally let go of the beliefs about myself that kept me from having a long term relationship. Now I'm 33 and a part of me is still asking myself, "Who am I? Am I the boy dancing freely in the moonlight, or the one still hiding in the closet?"

Looking for Answers

If I try to answer that question from where I am now, I'll merely re-iterate the beliefs I already hold. Luckily while struggling to find something to write about a month or so ago, I discovered a little trick that allowed me to quiet my mind and gain insight from beyond my typical thought patterns. I wrote three posts that poured out of me with unparalleled ease and surprised and delighted me as I felt like I was merely a witness to the process. So I decided to return to that process, and ask my Limitless Self what it thought about this experience, and the part of me that I left behind.

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Limitless Self, tell me about the part of me that was left behind

There was nothing left behind. You carried that experience forward with you. It helped shape you into who you are today. And when it's all said and done you'll look back on it and say, "I wouldn't have had it any other way."

How do I reverse the pattern of hiding?

By accepting yourself exactly the way you are. Not just on a surface level, but deep down. You are more than just your thoughts about yourself. You are more than just your thoughts about what others think of you. Say, "I am this" and own it as the choice of who you want to be. Or “I am this” and own it as the launching off point of all you will become. But own it right now. "I am this, because I chose this. My circumstances didn't make me this. There is something so perfect about this that I chose it over every other possibility." Don't you want to know what hidden benefits came as a result of you choosing this path and this past?

What are the hidden benefits of this aspect of my past?

By abandoning that aspect of yourself right then and there, it was left untouched. You never had to wrestle with any thoughts about this growing up because it was essentially decided right then and there. So all of your immature, still in development thoughts were cast on other subjects. While this subject was still frozen in time, half encased in innocence.

And it's never too late reclaim that innocence. Like a lost relative returning to your family life. Him missing does not invalidate your past, but his return can bring more love and richness to your future.

How do I love myself fully to prevent this sort of abandonment in the future?

You cannot prevent abandonment anymore than you eat enough food right now to last you your entire lifetime. Some things are best saved for later. If you're not ready to love and embrace a certain aspect of yourself, then perhaps that part of you is best saved for later.

Enjoy who you are right now and enjoy the continuing unfolding of who you'll become in the future. The question is not, "How can I love all of me now?" The question is, "What part of me would most benefit from my love right now?"

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, the hungry stomach moves you to feed it, and the hungry soul works the same way. It moves you to satisfy your craving for fulfillment so much that you will reach for anything you can to fill that gap as soon as you can. But do not see this filler as a fault. See it as holding space for the fulfillment that's yet to come.

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. If you can't be the you you want to be, love the you you are.

It is perfectly OK to fall short of perfection. And perhaps necessary. The more you aim for perfection, the more you'll notice where you fall short. But if you aim for what you want and accept that falling short is the way, then you will love every failure that turns a light bulb on in your head and lights the way.

It's the falling that matters, not how short you fall. Allow yourself to let go and fall forth in perpetual motion. You may not love every inch of who you are, but if you zoom out and ask yourself, "What's lovable about this?" You will find something to love each and every time.

Love is not something you are, it's something you choose to be. And everything else you could choose to be is equally valuable. They're all colors in the infinite rainbow of who we can choose to be. Do not try to be all one thing, no matter how grand that thing may be, because you were not born to be monochrome. You were born to shine brightly with all of the colors in your rainbow. And when you can own that, you'll see that every twist and turn of your past was a different cut in the prism of your perspective. Those cuts create patterns which light shines through and the entire spectrum of color fills the room. Without those cuts, the light would pass through you un-refracted and never show the deeper colors it contains.

Allow the tumultuous nature of your past to become the kaleidoscope of your inner beauty. Nothing has gone wrong, you just have to broaden your perspective by twisting the end 360 degrees, so what looked frozen and lifeless comes alive as a moving blur of color and light. That is who you really are. But until you get into that motion, you can't see that those awkward poses you sometimes strike are merely snapshots of the goofy dance of life, something that can only fully be appreciated when viewed in motion.

Anything can be ridiculed in isolation. But the true meaning of your life cannot be gathered through dissecting any aspect of it, anymore then the true meaning of who you are can be gleaned from viewing your body at a wake. It is only the fluid expression self that can capture and express who you really are. Let your thoughts about who you are move with that same fluidity, and you will see that you're none of the things your mind thinks you are. You are simply alive.

Scream that aliveness from every mountain top. Fall to your knees with every despair. Throw your hands in the air, and wave ‘em like you just don't care.

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Thanks for reading!

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