The Hardest Part Isn’t Showing Up - It’s Believing That It Is

Kristina Sescon? Present.

I’m here. I clicked on the links, I logged in, I opened up a new draft. And here I am, corned away in my local coffee shop, beginning a story that has no planned ending.

Why is starting always the hardest part? Don’t answer that. We all know why. But why don’t we believe it?

If it was that easy, then why are we not all opening a blank document, or unrolling our yoga mats, or turning on the oven?

I don’t expect to know this answer today or ever, really. But consider this (as in me sharing my personal experience) my humble attempt to put the puzzle pieces of this grand life together.

Long before I turned 40, my mind, body, and soul have been searching for something it doesn’t know exists. I BELIEVE it does, or at least I want to believe it does. But because of how my life has transpired, I’m not sure if I would recognize it even if I already had it.

It feels silly to say out loud, but vulnerability is courage and so here it is: WHO AM I?

Who am I … when no one is watching.

The picture that flashed before my eyes was a sad, lonely, mess of a human being. A scared, lost child. Someone afraid to be seen in all and only of her SELF.

And yet I look at her with such sorrow and sadness. How could she not see what we see in her? Why doesn’t she think she deserves to exist or take up space? That even on her worst day, she is loved and accepted.

The adult me wants to fight for her, pick her up, and show her everything I’ve learned. Give her all the tools of cognitive behavior therapy, medicine, spirit, and humanity.

The child me wants to curl up and cry beside her. Not just because she still feels this pain, also because she wants her to know she’s not alone.

So the question remains, who am I?

The adult I show others? Or the adult I am when no one is watching?

The adult I want to become? The unhealed inner child?

I won’t be able to answer this before I finish this warm cup of comfort coffee. But I know this much in this moment: for as long as I’ve been hopeless, I’ve always found SOMETHING to hold on for.

Perhaps the question of “who am i?” is exactly the answer.