Pain. It’s always been there. It was here then, and it’s here now. I’ve come back to new walls and new surroundings. My love for others, rotten with the need to be loved, wanted, valued – by organisms outside of myself. My search for love has been reclassified as a want for meaningful connection. The sudden change is frustrating. I can feel the friction of this life with my old. I can’t continue to carry the baggage of my parents’ negative thought patterns, or the hatred towards those who belittled me in the past. This new future, this present, won’t seem to let me.
So I’m dying, purifying. At the moment, I am lost and so is Levi. Huh… Levi… He’s new. I met him, not too long ago, but he was just a voice — now apparently the true master of this human’s soul. Interesting… Don’t get me started on Felix. I don’t even know who he is. Never met the guy. But, he’s been taking care of the vessel so I guess he’s ok. The vessel has been looked after but I need looking after too. I need that. I need love. I’m so hurt. I’ve been so starved. I need something. I’ve been questing for world domination just to hurt those that inflicted pain onto me so long ago and those I believe didn’t support me when I needed them — or at least someone. Through this process, I’m learning that approval should come from within instead of outside, but I’m so empty inside. Well, there’s just a lot of pain that I don’t want to look at.
The weight of these expectations crushes me. “I should be THIS”, “I should be THAT”, “They should’ve done THIS”, “I NEED this”, “I NEED that”. I apparently need everything to be perfect so I don’t need to look inside, or look back. Yet I continue to exist as a being gripped by the talons of the past. Truly, I want something more. I have wings, but I’m not even grounded, I’m chained — by string. The mind is what keeps me attached. Guarded by the patterns indoctrinated into me by those around me who couldn’t love themselves. And with their lack of self-love and self-respect, they lacked the resources to assert themselves righteously so instead they bullied me. Now I sit here lacking the same. Yet, what Levi and Felix have built seems to be amazing — but how do I fit into it? How can I help? How can we terraform the landscape to unlock the vessel’s full potential and all of our own?
A memory reappears: My secondary school music teacher, Mr. Pope. Reminding me of a good deed I committed, that only he witnessed. He told me that that was who I am. Someone who helps people. Someone empathetic for others. He would also tell me how my parents could be partly responsible for some of the pain in my life. That day, I helped someone. I need to heal Babi. I need to heal young Amia. But at what point? When did I start hurting and stop giving?
I never stopped. My problem was that I gave too much — to the point of unnecessary self-sacrifice and self-humiliation, all for the gratification of a few bruised egos. Never Again.
True Love doesn’t carry, it sustains. Balancing between true love for self. Connected. Friendly. Happy.
How do I work? How do I need love? What is the wound that isn’t healing? How do I need to be supported? What do I want? Whereas Levi and Felix are hard workers, I find that I’m more of an artistic temperament. My attributes, yet unmastered, are those of a beauty and sociable kind. Whereas currently superficial, if humble enough to undergo training and reformation, I could develop only to fufil my potential and my role towards how I play this game of life. I bring freedom, flexibility, and modernism to a team that is strong, stable, masculine, competent but rigid and one-dimensional. There must be compromise and I don’t expect to be a ruling class in this 3-way partnership. But I do hope to contribute to the team in a way that is valuable to the team and valued within the team. I still can’t work out who’s hurting more from the change. Whilst I’m being burnt and burnt again, Levi and Felix are having their whole worlds and systems broken and warped. So life’s not feeling too great right now for either of us. But I like to think we both understand the nature and necessity of this process, as this is the process that incurred our previous metamorphosis/journey/death/rebirth in the first place. It seems harder to end now than it was to begin, because at least we hadn’t built what we left behind. Now we have to move on from what we thought was the final result — but only the stepping stone for the next journey.
But the questions still stand: How do I work? How do I need love? What is the wound that isn’t healing? How do I need to be supported? What do I want? How can we all work together, in harmony? Levi was about work, discipline, authenticity, mindfulness, internal power, self-respect, self-mastery, self-assertion, competence, service. I, Amia, in brightest terms, was about helping others, empathy, art, beauty, giving love, freedom, adventure, connection, knowledge, enthusiasm, risk. How do I need love? I need to value myself.
A Kuaked Reflection 