Making room.
Why is it so easy to give and so hard to receive?
Maybe I’m a person who is compliment forward. I like telling people things I feel about them. Especially, if they make me feel incredible and cool. I love pointing out traits in people that I see that they might miss. It’s a fun experience for me and I hope for them, too. I like seeing the beautiful things in people.
Though I’ve noticed lately I’ve been running my mouth. I’ve been feeling things at an exponentially large scale. I believe this is due to my mother dying and my heart breaking open to a million times its size. Or no, it’s rather that, my heart now has no closing. It has no doors. It is like light is everywhere inside of it.
So yes, my heart has vastly opened and when I feel something about a person it all pours out. I tell them all the beautiful things I see and feel about them. I’ve noticed how this has maybe become overwhelming for them. As if their brains can’t quite compute what I’m saying. Maybe it’s because I’ve learned that life is too short not to tell someone everything you feel. Even if it might sound insane in the moment.
But, I’ve realized people don’t really talk like that. Pouring huge large emotions of feeling out onto a person. Oopsie lol. But, it’s more than that. I’ve found that sometimes it’s hard for people to receive or hear beautiful things about themselves. Especially, when they are things other people might miss.
It wasn’t until today that I understood this feeling.
I was sitting in an urgent care clinic in Brooklyn because my god, something else is happening to my throat. So, as I was waiting to get it checked out. A mountain of feeling started growing inside of me. I haven’t been in a hospital like setting since my mother died. Those last terrible weeks. All of a sudden those rooms in the hospital disappeared. The rooms we were going to for almost a year just disappeared and deleted from my life. I no longer went to hospitals weekly anymore.
So, in this urgent care, now dealing with matters for myself, I started to get weepy. My god what a year it has been. Then I looked down to see a text from my editor on my phone.
My editor. I’ve dreamed of saying those words for months. I finally found an editor to work with me on delivering my series of books which I will be self-publishing. More on this to come later. But, I got a text from her saying she read my draft. This is the first time anyone has laid eyes on the entirety of my novel project that I have been working on for five years. Five years of the deepest stories that have been toiling and twisting in my mind. Someone has now finally read them and she had the most beautiful things to say.
I looked at that text and felt like there was not enough room in my body to compute it. My mind felt like it wanted to transition into people pleaser mode and think how I could compliment her back instead. But, I realized I was backed up against a wall. These were feelings and compliments I had to take. But why was this so difficult? Why was it so hard to receive that she is honored to be working on this project with me? Why was it so easy to dream these scenarios before and so hard to actually experience them?
I stared abysmally at my phone and started crying. Started crying from being in the hospital and also feeling the grooves of my life changing once again. Like the nodules in my body were reformatting because something nuclear and massive was happening. Somebody is helping me manifest the very invisible things that have been pinging in my head for a lifetime. I have somebody who has looked at the deepest parts of me and she said, “I see you and I’m coming on this journey with you.”
I just couldn’t believe this.
And I couldn’t understand how to take in the size of feeling she was gifting me. Of the beautiful things she was seeing in me. These very secret things nobody else has really seen. My body, my soul, my life, did not (and still doesn't really) quite know how to make room for this.
Making room. Yes, making room.
I keep thinking about love and how I want to be inside of it. How I want a person to be in real, true love with. But, to have real, true love one must be open to receive it. You can not only give it. The equation requires you to receive. I didn't understand how hard receiving is. Receiving is harder than giving actually. It’s actually harder. Because you have to make room in yourself to believe in what you are receiving. That you are a person who deserves these things. That they match your frequency.
I feel in myself how much room I have to make for the size of the things I am asking for. I used to think of this as more of tangible concept. In that, you literally need to make room in your life for the things you deem important and minimize what you do not. I never quite understood the abstract portion of that despite being a deeply abstract person. Well, actually maybe because it’s not abstract at all. You literally have to make room in your body for the belief that you deserve the size of the things you are asking for. You have to make room for people to tell you these beautiful things about yourself, because if you don’t have room, how could you possibly process it? How can it metabolize? How can you experience it in your life as something real?
It is a doozy being a person who has predominantly daydreamed all her life to now be entering the portion where I actualize all of those dreams. This is a WILD experience.
I suddenly, understood all the people I was dumping all of my kind observations and compliments to. I understood how hard it can be to just even listen and receive. How you want to writhe and look away. You want to say, “There is no way you are talking about me.”
But, they are talking about you. Those beautiful things are all about you.
So, a few things will be changing here. For those of you who have been reading Electric Blue since the beginning, thank you. I’ll be adjusting this to just be my name Halleta. I’m understanding it felt like there was a barricade between me and you when I would think about writing on this Electric Blue substack. I just want a direct channel between me and you. Especially, since my book is coming to you this year. It’s extra important our communication remains clear. Btw, paid subscriptions are still paused. I’m not sure if I’ll ever re-instate them. We’ll see.
Electric Blue will be taking a more behind the scenes role as my entity for publishing/production as well operating as a think tank. The Electric Blue mission has always been to see the world in a more alive, connected, and new way — Halleta will now be an expression of that but hyper-focused on transforming the writing/literary industry. So much more to come. Ily. There is so much in the works.
x!
I LOVE THIS ONE