As Joan Didon says, I don’t know what I think until I write about it. 

This trip – this 2.5 weeks long- pack my bags at the very last minute after the heart was torn and ripped apart by Love; and after the heart was gripped with Fear from a new career venture. I had to pack my bags and just go. Sprint and go and find some form of answers. Or maybe no answers at all, just go away and escape. I don’t know – whichever outcome is better than lying in bed with anxiety and nightmares.

The trip gave me epiphany for two things.

1) For the very first time in my life, I had time, and I mean ample time, to talk and deal with Fear. I was always told perfect love casts out fear. Which I misunderstood that fear is evil but should not exist in life. But alas, fear is always there. Love exists alongside fear, it is simply the main driver, but it doesn’t mean we elude fear. 

In fact, the whole trip, I made all the space for fear. Heaps of space. Fear of being walked out on, fear that I am never good enough, fear that my decisions or my judgement is never right, fear that I am unworthy, fear that I will never be happy. I gave fear all the space it needs. I talked about it, I allowed fear to live, breathe, stretch out its legs comfortably. Because if I cannot learn to live comfortably with fear, I will never be able to do anything vicariously or do anything.

It became clear that for me to live life creatively (and that I don’t mean in the world of arts, but to live a rich life, a life of curiousity and then passion), then I need to build an expansive enough interior life that my fear and my creativity would peacefully coexist, since it appeared that they would always be together.

2) There was another big wave that hit me. To distinguish between The Story and The Fact. 

What is your story and what is your fact. For example, the Fact is that one day you came home past your curfew and your parents yelled you.

The Story in your head is that your parents are mean and they don’t trust you and that is why they yelled at you, and you go on the rest of your life with that story as the truth. but for someone else, their story is that they can’t believe they worried their parents so much, and their parents  love them so much and that is why they yelled at them. And they gone on the rest of their lives leading quite a different life.. What happens is that the stories that we create actually affects us for the rest of our lives.

With every event that happened, there is a fact and literally what happened. And the story is what we interpret it in our minds.

And the story I created for myself, is that I need to do something to be loved or be happy. I don’t know how or when I created that. I think it is from childhood that my siblings are always competing for attention or love, and they will do great many things – get full scores grades and show it off and Mum will give gratification for that. And as a middle child, I don’t do that, and of course I don’t get the gratification or attention or even love. And I grew up with the story that in order to be loved or be happy or even be gratified or appreciated or noticed, I must do something. I must work at it. I stopped looking inwardly or never did, and I felt I must do so many things just to get love or happiness. 

And I just need to have one little time to feel slightly rejected to tell myself that, see, I told you I must have not done enough or I have done something wrong , that is why you don’t love me or I am not happy. And that becomes my story. 

But the fact and truth is, my happiness and the love I deserve, isn’t what I have done or not done. I can’t demand or force happiness or love. 

And then this crazy thing happened, “Megan, you don’t have to do something amazing to be happy. You already are.” 

Every time I ate something, every time I talked to someone, every time I worked on something, my story is that , I must do something amazing to be happy. And that affected me. And when I realized it was just a story; and to cast that aside, it felt so free, and I’m shedding the story. And I’m opening up the opportunity of fully feeling love and happiness without that story, without the sense of having to do something amazing to deserve that.

I remembered I called my person up and said sorry and that I allowed my story to affect my relationship and it is a story I created and it is not fact. And I am gonna be free and not have any limitations that I created for myself.

Every time I had that story, everything becomes evidence, and every thing that Happened I will be like “See, I told you I wasn’t good enough and I didn’t do enough.” And to finally be able to distinguish that it is a story and not fact, and I don’t have to do something or work on anything amazing to receive love and happiness, was just so freeing. It felt so free.

 
I cannot imagine and explain how amazing and freeing it felt.

So yes, the trip is a combination of those two epiphanies.

I am back stronger with fear within me and I respect Fear’s existence and will coexist with it while living a creative life. And I am freed of a story I created for myself all these many years, and I am receiving and looking at love and happiness more beautifully than ever and never at my own efforts or at the expense of my own self worth or esteem. 

I hope this story will help someone out there. I don’t know how, but I hope it will… 🙂