Permission Slips - Don't run over yourself

The following list is from a soap box I was standing on a few years ago. Something a friend and I dreamed of speaking through a megaphone in the skytrain station.

You’re allowed

…to be sad even if it’s not raining and your mother wants you to be ok …to be happy, even if other people are not, even if the state of the world terrifies you …to have a boring story, a boring day, a boring week …to not know such and such a reference even when everyone’s head is nodding …to be angry even though you can see the other person’s perspective …to ask …to know the answer simply because it’s your answer …to cry though you feel there’s nothing truly worth crying about or you can’t put your finger on the cause …to dislike the music they like and play the music you like …to surround yourself with kindness so you don’t have to be tough all the time …to ask for help, even if it feels like the same story …to congratulate yourself for small things like having substituted the f-bomb for the s-bomb, or vice versa …to feel excruciating loneliness even when you know you’re probably considered lucky by most …to ask people to pronounce your name properly, repeatedly

...to not be friends with him …to sound rude, draw a line, push back, have enemies

...have moments of seeing in black and white and not be eternally "open" …to forget …to remember …to be delighted and equally un-delighted …to give up being Amelie, a supermodel, or your ex’s new lover …to believe in what your mother dreamed of and your father never got to be. …to believe in something that feels better even if you’re scared it might not be true …to sometimes believe in nothing at all …to borrow someone’s belief that you like better, for a moment or for keeps …to consider staring at the wall/the clouds/your lover’s face as part of your to do list

When I don’t give myself permission to be with what is I get stuck and feel weird; I am harder to connect with. Nothing moves. I become blocked creatively. I am awkward. I stop playing. I run over myself.

And the awkward, weirder weirdness about all this is that I don't even know what I'm running over in myself anymore, because I've run over it so often that it's a paved super highway at this point.

Today I could start with letting myself:

1) Feel a bit melancholy.

2)Feel a fear about an upcoming business idea.

3)Hate birthdays.

4)Feel angry about something that came up in my relationship.