“No”

I have trouble saying “no” to the people that I love. It’s apparently quite a common phenomenon but in my case it is the beginning and ending of me. I am who I am because I have trouble saying no, I am in the situations that I am in because of that trouble; I am because of an inability.

I have tried saying it but it doesn't come out as strong as I need it to and the guilt lingers, biting at me slowly until I give in. I have tried disguising it in other phrases; “perhaps this is not for me”, “can i suggest something else”, “are you sure?”. But these phrases don’t stand firm and when you love someone and they sigh in sadness or are more resolute in their desires it is always easier to just grit your teeth and give in. I don’t want to disappoint, I don’t want to let you down; I want you to be happy because I love you.

Recently, I began to feel lost in my skin. I seemed to be wrapped in a cloak of someone else’s feelings and emotions and I couldn’t find mine. I couldn’t tell you whose hands were writing in my journal or whose lips where speaking, even the words I spoke took on a tone that wasnt mine. I was absent in me. I was looking for my face in the reflections of other people and begging them to give me the pieces I had lost in them.

Everyone says that when you lose yourself, all you need to do is slow down. There is some combination of yoga, meditation and prayer that is supposed to bring you right back; an undocumented formula that restores, heals and elevates all at once. The answer is within you because the problem is you. If you slow down enough, stop looking at your phone in the morning, pray and fast all the while mastering the child and mountain pose that is all that you need to return to the sovereignity that is you. I prayed until my throat hurt but the answer was always the same “wherever you are, that is where you are”.

Finding yourself in the midst of doubts and questions is an uphill battle but one I simply must do. It’s a work in progress; somewhere between mountain pose and tree pose I will learn to step into myself and figure out the right way to say NO. Somewhere in meditative therapy the perfect thought might come to me that eases that guilt that I always feel; maybe the missing part of the complex formula was what I needed all along; the readdition of me.