I don’t know

This is by far, the hardest thing for me to admit… I don’t know.

Survival. The most primal driving force behind every motivation.  How do I stay alive?

For me the answer has always been certainty.

I grew up with a sense that I must “know” what there is to be known in order to live properly. I must understand the ways of the world beyond a question of a doubt. Surely all of the adults around me seemed to know. They walked around acting and talking like they knew. They gave short one-sided answers, and taught from printed books with pictures, and graded answers on tests with “right” or “wrong”. Everything seemed outlined and defined and surely someday, when I knew enough, I would also “know”. Knowing was the way to get places in this life. Knowing was the way to be successful and confident. Knowing was the way to be alive.

For me, the certainty I’ve come to long for the most is certainty in love. My parent’s love was not dependable, it wavered according to their state or mood and according to whether or not I was pleasing or displeasing. I felt I had to know who and what I could be depending on what they were able to tolerate. Feeling any deep emotion was threatening to my parents because they feared their own emotions. Sometimes I was able to be myself, and other times I needed to hold back and contain so as not to disturb them or threaten their sense of “knowing”. I learned to hide the parts of me that were seemingly “too much” meanwhile secretly longing to be free.

I found freedom in alone time, in music, in daydreaming. As a teenager I spent hours on my rooftop staring at the sky, dreaming of the day I would be free. I always felt that day would come when someone loved me deeply. When I found my true love, then I would be whole, then I would be fully embraced, then I could be everything I am, without fear. It always seemed to work out that way in fairy tales. Happily ever after, right?

Since then, I’ve spent my life searching for a guarantee in love. Thinking that only within certainty would I find true meaning and significance.  That only when I was certain, would I feel safe, happy, connected, free. Give me the answers, show me the way, give me a star to follow, somebody or something to cling to and only then will I be able to be who I really am.  Yet time after time, the more attached I grew to these ideas of certainty, the more I had to create delusions to give myself this feeling of “knowing” I so desperately longed for. Some people do this through a religion, or culture, or politics, or any strong belief system. How did I do this? By falling in love at first sight, many, many times.

Of course if this “one true love” existed, I would know who he was when I saw him, right? He would walk into a room and I would just have this feeling of “knowing” in my body that confirmed without a single doubt that he was my soul mate. The one, and only. That he had come to save me from insecurity, to save me from uncertainty, to give me the love I felt I’d never had. Time after time I re-created this very scenario, unconsciously choosing someone I felt a strong attraction to to be “the one”.  But time after time this illusion was shattered. And damn, it hurt like hell. Why was I so surprised that these guys didn’t turn out to be who I thought they were? Why did it never pan out? Because in wanting so desperately to “know”, I was far from seeing what really was.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s always been uncertainty in my life that I’ve been able to deal with. I moved from Mexico to the U.S. when I was 16-years-old, then I moved to Los Angeles on my own when I was 18. I chose to follow my dreams to become an actress, a singer/songwriter and a writer, so based on my chosen endeavors, need I really say more? Even in love, I came to a point where I felt a tiny bit more comfortable with uncertainty. This was when I entered my first serious relationship. Thomas, let’s call him, was constantly reassuring of his interest in me which gave me security even though I never had certainty. I knew we had the basics: attraction, connection and commonality, so it was worth a shot. Unfortunately though, after 10 months of growing in intimacy, he wrecked havoc on my heart. I found out he cheated on me the entire relationship and was totally devastating. It turns out I was really hurt by something I didn’t know was happening, and after that, I proceeded to blame myself… “I should have known better”.  And out of self-protection, I decided I would never be uncertain again, because hell if anyone was going to hurt me like that again. I would find my true love and I would “know” and I would “get it right” next time. And that’s what I set out to do 5 years ago now.

Yet in the process, I unknowingly found myself further and further limiting my perception of reality. Limiting it to what I “knew”, to what felt safe for me to “feel” and “see”. Some unpredictability was nice, but overall, I was seeking a sense of security. I needed so desperately to believe in something indisputable, that I created it.  I created it in romantic relationships.  Some imaginary, some impossible, the rest mostly unfulfilled and unfulfilling. The problem with being so caught up with a need to know is you don’t and cannot see what is. You miss out on your life. You miss out on truly loving other people. You pigeon hole yourself into a limited version of reality. You start to die.

Imagine how dissatisfying my life became as I set my mind to know, to seek certainty and find it, and then everyday I didn’t find certainty just felt like another day I failed. The more I wanted certainty the farther it seemed to be. I tried to cling to past beliefs and ideas and I wanted the world to fit the beauty of my vision. I was floating and ungrounded. I was lost and more confused than ever before. Wasn’t there supposed to come a point in adulthood when all my work paid off into a feeling of security and knowing? And wouldn’t this likely be rooted in some sort of prince charming that came along to save me?

After months and months of a bitterly disappointing disconnect between my dreams and reality, I had no choice but to invest in therapy and yoga and searching. A couple more broken hearts later, I finally surrendered into a great deal of breathing into what is.

What I’ve come to find is that my expectation that if only I “knew” it all, then life would be without struggle, without doubt, without fear, is terribly and unequivocally incorrect. The feeling that I am an inadequate human being because I don’t “know” it all, because I’m not sure how to “handle” everything, because I have emotions that are out of my control, is a complete and utter misunderstanding. And love? I’ve done it all wrong. I approached dating as a search for the fulfillment of my ideas and expectations. Looking for someone to fit the script I wrote in my head instantly, completely and unquestionably. Looking for someone to give me unconditionally the absolute security that he would always love me. Well crap. No wonder I’ve been single most of my life.

Somewhere along the road I picked up this idea that until I “knew” everything I would not really be good enough or be able to live my life fully. Instead I am discovering that the more I long for absolute certainty, the more I realize how uncertain I am. And it’s the mistaken belief that certainty will bring me freedom, that makes me seek to latch on to it, when really the opposite is true.

All this may sound ridiculous. The truth is, it is. But the other truth is that it’s the illusion or game of the ego, and the ego is very persuasive. It isn’t until the ego drags you through enough pain that you finally choose to step out of it. But it’s very scary to step out of a lie of “knowing”. Most of us would rather feel certain in a lie, than uncertain in the truth.

We all need a certain amount of certainty (pun intended), but for me it always felt like my life depended on it. I rarely felt secure as a child. I learned early on that if I didn’t take care of myself emotionally, in whichever way I was capable at the time, I couldn’t be sure anyone else would. This has kept me from being truly open with people, truly vulnerable. From seeing who they really are, because who they really are is always outside of what I “know”. In fact, you cannot ever fully “know” someone. It’s in the erroneous belief that we do “know” others, that our judgements and preconceptions take over and our relationships begin to shrivel, or at the very least, grow stale.

And so given this hard life-lesson, I can honestly say that in some ways I am dating for the first time in my life. I am learning to spend time with men, not choosing them to be “the one”, not trying to figure out or know if it’s going anywhere, but just getting to know them. Learning to see them for who they really are and to be open to being surprised. I am learning to trust my instincts, and to listen and pay attention to what I do know and feel, but over all, be ok with what “I don’t know”. And you know what? It’s actually kinda freeing.

Today, I stand before you, more uncertain than ever before. If you spoke to me at 18, I was so certain. I thought I knew it all. Perhaps I couldn’t tell you how I was going to get there, but I sure as hell knew where I was going. Today I have shed so many masks and so many identities, I stand before you as a human being grounded in mystery. A person that has talents and flaws, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, but overall, I know not where I am going, I just know better who I am.

by Ellie Araiza

Truth Before Love – Mind the Gap

I think it’s time I tell the truth. I am obsessed with love. It is literally all I think about every second of every day.  I learned many moons ago that love is the most important thing in life, some would go as far as to say it’s the only thing that really matters. Well before and since then, I’ve been consumed by an insistent drive to understand it.

“If love really is the most important thing in life, I give up opportunities to love people all day long” I said in my one-woman show Turtle Love, where I explored my deep fear of intimacy and equal, yet opposing, unwavering desire for love. “Loving someone is easy, not letting anything get in the way, that is hard.”

On New Year’s Eve I was out at a restaurant with some girlfriends when we ran into a guy I’d been on one date with once a couple of years back. I couldn’t even remember his name, but I remembered that it had been a good date and that I really liked him but he never asked me out again. After a brief hello, my friends and I sat down to have a beer and burger. My friend Latisha sitting next to me said, “Ellie, I just don’t get it, you’re beautiful, you’re intelligent, you’re kind.  You’re such a great girl! How is it that you haven’t found someone?” To her shock and surprise, my eyes welled up with tears as I said… “I have no idea”.  She didn’t know she was the third person to tell me that in a month, and I was really starting to think there must be something wrong with me. She also didn’t know, that this guy I had once dated was standing in front of me flirting with his now very cute and blond girlfriend. Though I couldn’t care less about him, he reminded me very much of the last guy I had loved, who I’d recently found out had just started up a new relationship. It was painful to watch my projection of this past love, now in a blooming and happy in a relationship with a new girl.  In a sense, the picture of what I wanted was playing out in front of me and somehow, I still wasn’t in it, and it felt completely out of reach.

Why can’t I find love? I live and breath love. I’ve read more books about love than I care to mention. I’ve been in therapy breaking down the walls, cutting through the lies, pealing down the layers that could keep me from love. I feel like an Olympic athlete that’s been training tirelessly for the gold medal, yet somehow I never even qualify to compete. Why is a girl like me perpetually single? Why is it that after years of trying and giving it my all, I still can’t find somebody to love? Is it that perhaps there really is something wrong with me? The answer is no. And yes. No, because there is nothing inherently wrong with me. And yes, because I would be lying to myself if I told myself that I don’t have something to do with it.

My desire for love is not wrong, the fact that I am worthy of it, is not wrong. The fact that I work hard on myself so that I can be available to love, is also not wrong. What is wrong, I have come to find, is my core and mostly unconscious beliefs about love. What is wrong, is the domestication of my heart and my misunderstanding of what love really is. What is wrong, is that the love I seek to find is at the moment, just a theory. It’s a dream that I have yet to experience in my reality, and because of that, what feels right is actually wrong, and what feels wrong, is probably right. Was that enough of a mind fuck?

Let me attempt to explain. I shall start with the question “Why now?”. Because I just re-lived the love story of my life. I dated someone for a while, I had great expectations and hope, and then, it didn’t workout.  It’s not just that it didn’t workout, but that in actuality, it worked out exactly as it has always worked out for me. What happens is that in the end, nothing happens. I have been through this enough times to know that’s become like a recurring nightmare. A nightmare that has changed very little since the first boy I loved back when I was 14. Now I am 29.

Why do I keep repeating the same patters? There can only be one reason, I haven’t learned my lesson yet. So what is the lesson?

Let’s take a look shall we?

Once upon a time, there was girl named Ellie who went around the world looking for love. Each time she met a boy that was cute and charming and had all the qualities she was looking for, she jumped in heart first and told herself that he was God sent, and that he must be the one. Why? Well, mostly, because it felt so right. And yet, after a few days or weeks or months the relationship would fail to blossom. Ellie was constantly heartbroken and always left wondering “what am I doing wrong?” Frustrated yet determined to fix the problem, she set out to do everything right. She studied love, she did yoga, she went to therapy. But time and time again, the same thing kept happening.

One day out of pure desperation, Ellie found herself crying heavy tears into a pond. Suddenly an old and wise turtle emerged from the water. “Why are you crying?” he asked. “My heart is broken, another boy has left me and I am hurt. This always happens”. Then he asked, “How does it happen?”. Ellie responded, “I don’t know, it’s just that at first, it feels so right, and then, it just doesn’t workout”. “Ahh” said the turtle. And after a long silence he asked “What feels right?”. Ellie thought for a while and all she could come up with was “I don’t’ know, something”. 

“Well” said the turtle, “Is that something true?”. “I’m not sure”, Ellie said with a puzzled look on her face. To which the turtle responded “My dear, love will always be a fallacy without truth. You must understand the truth of what is, before you can possibly know if what feels is right, is true”

Ha! Turtles.

So what feels right?

What feels right is based on my deeply routed yet mostly unconscious false beliefs about love.

“Huh?” you say. To which I respond, “Exactly!”

Let’s deal with the conscious ones:

-I learned love is conditional, based on whether or not you please somebody.

-I learned love is something to be worked for and chased after.

-I learned love is a reward and it is withdrawn as punishment.

This kind of “love” feels right at first because it’s familiar, it’s what I know, it’s the story I grew up with. But, it’s a lie. In contrast, here is the definition of true love I have come to believe in:

-Love is unconditional

-Love is always present and available

-Love is a birthright, and perhaps above all,

-Love is a choice.

The truth is I’ve been lied to about love and on a cellular level I still believe it. Though I’m making every conscious effort to re-write my definition of love into one of a love that’s present, natural and flowing, the unconscious belief is still the one driving the vehicle. Hence my problem, or what I’ve recently come to call, the gap.

Early on I absorbed one definition of love, based on my experience, and later in life I have uncovered a much greater definition, but because I have yet to experience this greater love, it still doesn’t ring true. It’s as if I was given a road map to love when I was a child and I’ve been following it for years only to discover that the compass rose is completely turned around. Now someone hands me a map with the correct cardinal directions and I don’t quite believe it’s true. Hence the gap.

The gap is the space between your dreams and reality. The gap is the space between your false beliefs and the truth. The gap is what lies between what feels right because it’s what you know, and what is right because it’s true.

Thankfully, the gap is closing more and more with each of my experiences, but it is still there. And the only way to close it completely is with the truth.

-By learning to accept and love what is, not what you want something to be.

-By taking responsibility for the filter through which you see the world.

-And by being open to experiencing a new reality, outside of the one that you know.

It takes courage to break out of the comfortable shell the ego built for self protection. But I believe it’s worthwhile venture, and it starts with you.

I have now begun a journey into yoga teacher training and this past week was the first of 12 weeks to come. This is where I seek to develop a relationship with what is, with reality, with the now. This is where I seek to let go. This is where I want to learn, to choose love, to choose freedom, to find truth. My first lesson:

“Love is a fallacy without truth”

I could spend my life falling in love with an idea of love, or with an expectation of love, or with a misunderstanding of love based on my past. Or I can learn to be with love, to let go, to see someone for who they really are and chose to love them as such or not. The only way to find true love, is to live truth first, love will follow.

Ellie Araiza

P.S. Turtles are the shit because they can breath through their ass.

P.S.2. “Love is a many splendid thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love!”

P.S.3. Mind the gap (to be read with an English accent)

To my 16 year old self

To my 16 year old self,

I know you worry about guys liking you. In a few years you’ll be swatting them away like flies. The truth is, most of them will be attracted to you for the wrong reasons and will fly away on their own accord. But some, will stick around. If you feel drawn toward them in return, walk the plank. They have something to teach you.  Don’t be so concerned with whether or not it will last. Everything in life is temporary. Be more concerned with whether or not you genuinely care about each others well being.

Eventually you will realize you don’t have to be nice to everyone all the time. You can actually think about yourself first, and not necessarily be selfish. This will be quite a relief. And you’ll discover people will respect and appreciate you more when you don’t bend over backwards to accommodate them.

Don’t worry so much about how you look. It’s much more important how you feel about yourself. This idea you have about being perfect is someday going to eat you up.  You really might as well give up on it. Someday you’ll realize that everything about you that you’ve wanted to “fix”, is actually what makes you amazing.  This will be hard to believe. Probably for the rest of your life.

Baby girl, you don’t have to be so strong and so brave all of the time. Your ego will often trick you into believing that you are the only one with issues, the only one who suffers, the only one who’s lost. Don’t believe it. Don’t be afraid to share your struggles with other people. You are not alone. The ones who really care will listen and relate. You will discover that your strength lies in your vulnerability. This is what connects you to others. When you finally realize this you’ll cry for all the lonely nights you held yourself together from fear that you could not fall. Fall my darling. Fall.

On that note, everything you fear will happen. You will get your heart broken, you will make the wrong career choices and you will be judged. The truth is, all of this is unavoidable. Everywhere you try to avoid mistakes, you will make them. Everything you try to runaway from, will catch up to you. And eventually, you will meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. So relax, you may as well enjoy the ride. The truth is you have very little control.

You are very talented. By all means develop your talent. But know that your talent is not something that will bring you love. The admiration it will bring you is merely transitory. What your talent will ultimately bring you is healing. In turn, it can spark healing in others. But again, this is something you have no control over.  Just do your best and keep growing. Don’t fear the light, let it shine.

Someday you’ll wake up to find, that every effort you’ve made to be worthy of love, was only distracting to the fact that you have always been worthy of it. You will see that the masks you wear don’t get you what you want no matter how good you are at wearing them. When you realize this, it will be very painful. Even so, out of habit, you will probably try them on again. You are a stubborn one after all. But eventually you’ll knock your head against the same wall enough times to realize you are likely to break before it does. And you will. When you do, you will see that in all your efforts not to get it wrong, you missed all that was right. This is when you will be ready for true love.

Unfortunately, true love will not come when or how you expect it to. But live in the moment. Yoga, therapy and music will prove to be very helpful. Lean on them. Lean on good friends and family. And remember, the most important time is now, the most important person is the one that you are with, and the most important thing, is to do good. Everything else, takes care of itself.

Love,

Your 27 year old self 😉