Be the Change You Wish to See in the World.

Isn’t it interesting, to look back on your life at certain points, and realize that what you thought was so very difficult to get through, was actually a very good learning experience? Going back and re-examining points in your life with new skills you’ve learned is pretty interesting, and sometimes helps you get through things you never thought you could.

Like deciding that despite your fear, you were GOING to college, dammit.

You’ve never done this before, and it’s terrifying, but also a little exciting because Change is Scary, and the Unknown Can Be Anything At All!!

I remember that feeling of the week before my first day of college. I was jittery, and worried that I’d look stupid, or that I’d feel overwhelmed being around a lot of people I didn’t know. I WAS afraid, that first day we were expected to talk about ourselves. I was shaking inside, but nobody saw it. I spoke as if I knew everyone in the room; that I was friends with them all, and that we were enjoying a random moment of insight into our summer activities.

“I’m Shya, my favourite meal to cook is Spicy Asian Spinach Fettuccini, and this summer I started going to SCA events.” An explanation of what the SCA was, and I was done. Sat down and felt sweaty and nervous and … rather stringy, like old jerky.

I feel like that almost every time I’m to speak in front of people. Even people I know! It’s been a hard road, but I feel I’m getting a better handle on public speaking.

Which takes me back…

Time-warp!

I don’t have many memories of my childhood, but I do remember making the conscious decision (around age 12) to stop being shy. Growing up with a name like Shyanna (“Oh that’s such a pretty name!), I was called “Shy”, by everyone but my teachers. And without fail, any new person I met would greet me with THIS EXACT QUESTION:

“Your name’s Shy? Hu-Hu-Hu are you shy?”

I’d had enough. The problem was, up til that point, I WAS shy. Or at least, very quiet. Watching people and listening to them talk seemed way more interesting to me than participating. Also, remember that nervous, jittery feeling I mentioned? Way worse back then.  By the time puberty hit though, I was full up to HERE with that question, and I fought my shyness.

I’d had self-esteem issues and almost crippling shyness for so long, and I was tired of it. We were really poor growing up; I remember once having a spoonful of peanut butter for dinner because we had nothing else. The hand-me-downs I wore to school got me picked on a lot, especially since it seemed I had absolutely no sense of any kind of cool fashion. Basically if it was brightly coloured, clean, and kept me warm, I didn’t really think about it too much. My passion was watching the world and drawing it in my sketchbook. When kids found they could get a reaction from me by calling me names, or calling me fat, they continued for a long time. No matter that we moved around a LOT; it seemed everywhere I ended up, I was the outcast, the loner, the weirdo who people could safely pick on. Until I was 12.

That’s when the fighting started. I fought back, against my fellow students, and kids in the neighbourhood, when they touched me. I bottled up the rage I felt when they called me names, and I unleashed it if they got close enough to shove me. What I only now realized is that when they called me fat (From age 12 I weighed about 80lbs, to a max of 120 when I was 19) I wasn’t crying because they hurt my feelings. I knew I wasn’t fat. I was crying from suppressed rage.

I knew fully well that I had a serious disadvantage to the kids making fun of me: I was alone. One small girl with no fighting skills and barely able to speak to people is no match for a posse of self-righteous little asshole kids. One strikes out, and they all get in on it. Mob mentality. So instead of shoving my way past them and getting out of there, I would try to walk away, crying with rage and frustration, so I wouldn’t get physically hurt.

It happened anyway. Becky Pauley was my first real fistfight. She had moved into the neighbourhood and was the same age as me, so I tried to make friends. She was loud, crude, a lot bigger than me, and seemed like she knew what she wanted in life. (Yes, at age 12. Lol, so worldly.) Our relationship was one of Friend/Enemy: Some days she was my friend and we had lots of fun, and others, she hated me and everything I did, so we’d be at odds. One memory I have of her, during one of our “off” weeks, was of her on her bike, about 20-30 feet in front of me. I was walking. She looked behind her, saw me, and promptly fell over, falling off her bike and scraping her knees and hands. I was baffled at this behaviour; what was she doing that for?

I headed home as she scrambled up onto her bike, burst into tears and rode home. About a minute after walking in the house, there was a knock at the door. Becky had told her mother that I had pushed her off her bike! She recommended that my mother keep her “little trouble maker” away from her daughter, and her and Mom got into a yelling match that ended with Mom slamming the door in her face, and me being grounded. (You get in trouble a lot when you don’t talk much; I guess people believe the quiet ones are more capable of being assholes.)

Pictured: Sheer 90s Awesome! (Read: Bully-Magnet)

Not long after that, I got my new glasses. They were huge, clear plastic with black and red lines across the top; I thought they were spiffy. (This was back in the 90s; they'd look cool now but these were a huge embarrassment for most kids) Certainly they were the coolest that Welfare glasses had to offer. And of course, new glasses means, “Time to pick on the quiet kid!” She waited til our teacher left the room at recess, and then it started. I don’t remember clearly what she said, but I do remember finally snapping, jumping out of my seat and mowing her down with a right jab to the face. What followed ended up with us on the floor, her under my desk with me banging her head off the floor.

I was suspended and transferred to another school. I KNOW there were other incidents involving that girl specifically, but I can't remember them. When you’re an honest person up against a practiced liar/actress, nobody hears the part where she taunted me for weeks, every day, before I snapped and punched her lights out.

Looking back, I realize that I started changing myself, but my view of the world never really changed with it. I always believed that people, for the most part, were good inside, they just did things because they were following others. Understanding now that there were a lot of insecure people around me helps me realize that I made out fairly okay! And also made me see it this way: people are threatened by those they perceive as greater than they are, and if you are one person against many sheeple, you’ll get trampled unless you can fight your way clear.

From “Shy”, I became outspoken, cheerful, optimistic, giving, loud, funny and .. I almost wrote cautious but that’s never really been a part of my make-up. I speak without thinking, because I don’t have anything to hide. The older I get though, the more I have to shut up; the word has been so taken over by the media that people are trained to believe what their televisions, Internet videos and searches, and “news” tell them, and never really think for themselves what they’re doing. They don’t like being reminded that they have no real thoughts, goals, or skills anymore. They get offended when you try to help them be better people, insisting they’re not flawed.

See that box? Who said you had to live in it?

Who said you had to only take in what it gives you?

If you’re dissatisfied with who you are, STOP BEING THAT PERSON.

If I can help, I will.

From here, the next challenge I have, the one I'm feeling jittery and nervous about because I've never done it before, is starting my placement at a restaurant next week. I've never worked in a real restaurant before; only at Tim Hortons. I'm hoping I won't screw up too badly.

This blog post is a bit rambling and long-winded perhaps, but I’m doing this to set down my memories and thoughts, not write a book. (Maybe…?)

The point is here, what you thought you couldn’t do, can be done, and what you’ve been in the past, can be changed.

Change is inevitable. Roll with it or it’ll roll over you.

Every day it'll rain.... But the sun is that much more dazzling when it comes.

Toxic people.

BAM!

Right in your face like a large, wet dog while you’re wearing white.

Toxic people suck the happiness out of life, like Hexxus, the spirit of destruction and all that is toxic to nature. Actually, that’s a good analogy, if I do say so.

 FernGully: The Last Rainforest was a pretty good movie. Batty was awesome.

Back to the toxics. Or rather, back away from them. Back away, and then run. Those people who suck the fun and happiness from your life need to NOT BE in your life.

Until I was introduced to this concept back in 2009, I just allowed things to happen. I let people tell me what I should do, think, be, say, and feel. For the most part. My spirit was strong enough to occasionally rouse itself and say, “Hey now!! That’s not right!” and something was briefly lit.. and then went back to sleep.

Until I was introduced to the topic, I never thought very much about who was around me, what I said, what They said, and how I should change it.

I used to be (and still suffer from this at times) severely depressed. I would hide in my sister’s basement (where I lived; yes, most of the time in a basement), play World of Warcraft, and ignore the outside world. I didn’t know a thing about politics, my family’s lives, what fun things there are out in the world. I neglected my friends horribly, for YEARS, and as a result lost touch with almost all of them. I WAS the toxic person.

Luckily I reached a breaking point in May of 2009. I’d befriended a man on WoW who encouraged me to go outdoors, try Parkour, listen to loud crazy music and BE A PERSON. Subsequent events showed me I was really very unhappy with my life, who I was, who I was with, and what I WASN’T doing.

Once I moved to Sault Ste. Marie, I discovered more joy and love of life in myself, and it caused me to seriously examine my life. With the introduction of this term “toxic people”, I looked back on my life and realized who was who and who was useless, who I learned from and who I learned NEVER to be. I started to change myself, beginning from the realization that the person I was (that slack, lazy, depressed wad in my sister’s basement) wasn’t a person *I* would spend time with, let alone wanted to be anymore. I took charge.

I kicked myself in the ass, kicked my useless and selfish partners to the curb, practically FLEW towards my future.

I started with roller blades.

Now, you must realize, I hadn’t been on roller blades since I was 16. The way I learned how to stop at THAT time was by running into stuff. Mailboxes, poles, cars, my sister…

So after having dug out a pair of roller blades I’d had for a few years, I strapped those puppies on and began. It was a lovely spring day, the birds were all tweetling and life was grand. Almost snapping your own neck going about 1/8 km/hr is a feat of strength, and I should get a medal.

I made it about ¾ the way around the block around my sister’s place, when, upon the BUSIEST INTERSECTION OF THE AREA, I wiped out in an absolutely stunning display of flailing limbs and twitchery.

I laughed the whole way down, while I sat on the ground, and then back up onto my feet. All I could think of was, “If I’d just seen me do that from across the street, how friggen funny would that look?” And then burst into laughter again. I made it home, giant bruise on my ass, happy about the whole experience, and life changed for me.

I began to change my way of thinking. Instead of thinking about the negative things life had set in front of me, I would think about ways I could get around those, or ignore them and focus on the positive things I could do instead. It was REALLY REALLY HARD. And it still is. Some days I feel terrible, and now.. Now life seems up again, so I’m going at it as hard as I can to keep it there.

Those toxic people who tell you the things your Inner Critic tells you all the time: get rid of them. What’s your Inner Critic, you ask? Some people refer to it as the “chatterbox” inside your head that sometimes does their best to undermine your self-confidence and diminish your self-esteem.

Challenging that Inner Critic is the HARDEST thing I have done to better myself.

THE HARDEST.

Because that voice is the one with you ALL the time, you can’t get away from it, so you have to pester it with truth and damn right, Willpower! YOU are stronger than that little wimp in your head.

Basically what I did to help me was to write down the things that I’d been circling around in my head. Were they fair? Were they legit? Were they the truth? If it isn't the truth, then it's a lie. 

Alison Finch said it the best way, actually:

“Think of your inner critic as having a personality of her own. If that personality is rude, obnoxious, unfriendly, cruel, insensitive, prejudiced against you, subjective in her assessments, out of control, unbearable, a nuisance, aggressive, destructive, then it’s time to eject her from your mind and replace her with a personality more worthy of sharing your life!

For example, I’ve known women who have lived for years with an inner critic who says horrible things like: “You’re just a big, fat, ugly lump of lard. I hate you. You are pathetic. It’s no wonder no one loves you. I wish you’d get your act together and stop looking so miserable”. Well, if your inner critic is similarly harsh, then it’s definitely time to find within yourself an inner critic who is better motivated!

If you want to BE a better person, don’t try to shut up that inner voice. Work with it, remind it of the truth you want in your life, not the negative, self-doubting, demoralizing words it speaks.

When it comes to toxic people, no matter who they are, do your best to avoid them for awhile, if not altogether stop being around them. Those people who spout “I’m just being realistic,” and then go on to tear down what you are, what you want, or what you can be, are not worth your time, energy or care.

YOU create your reality; create one you love.

Life, the Universe and lots of Things.

Writing a list today, to remind myself of the various paths I’ve taken towards being myself, I was reminded strongly that in pursuit of each of these “explanations” of who I am as a person, I’ve neglected the one thing that makes me happy: creativity.

I have put aside projects I was initially excited about, that got me all fired up, creative juices flowing, because I suddenly found myself reading something or hearing about something that made me think, “Wow that sounds like me! I should go research this exhaustively to see if it’s true!”

Each time, whether through paganism, Wicca, Christianity, Asperger’s Syndrome, deciding if I was an alien, a robot, or both, Buddhism, deciding maybe I’m an Atheist, maybe no, I’m an Agnostic, it lead me to another idea, another source of information. I never seemed to get a definitive answer, which left me more knowledgeable about the world, but less so about myself.

The conclusion I have come to, after the MANY paths I’ve explored, is that I am a spiritual being and I like making things that make people happy. It makes me feel warm and proud to create something from my own vision of the world, hand it to someone and have them go, “WOW! You MADE this?? This is amazing!” , and knowing they’ll treasure it. I have pushed aside the creative part of myself constantly and consistently over the years, but I want it back. I will be working toward that as much as I can in the coming months.

Looking too hard for answers as to who you are, to cram yourself into one small box, only to look outside your little box and see another one that looks like you might fit into better, ultimately leaves us feeling unfulfilled and uncertain. Focusing so hard on those boxes and labels is what helps us neglect the things we genuinely like to do, the things that make us happy. Because everyone knows, if you don’t know who and what you are, obsessively to every detail, you can’t be happy… /sarcasm.

Obviously I recognize the problems I face in my life. Sometimes I worry that people see me as a flighty, kind of dumb but cheerful doofus. I’m always hoping that someone will see deeper than that and know that the things I’ve lived through, SURVIVED, and accomplished, mean something important in the end. Those things mean that I tried; where others are content to sit gazing at their navel, filling their lives with emptiness in front of a big glass screen, I went looking for myself to see what the Universe holds and where I fit in it.

“I always knew I'd never reach perfection
And if I ever did then I wasn't trying hard enough
'Cause there is always something more to reach for..”

Shya’s Personal Journey to Success and Healthy Living

Man, that title sounds pompous, don’t you think?

Certainly does to me. I’m not exactly the type of person that formal labels and titles apply to, or at least, I always feel pretty damn uncomfortable when they are presented as fact. I’m the most down-to-earth, positive, helpful person I know… but I wasn’t always like this. And I’d like to be even better than I am now, which is where this blog comes in.

If you've just arrived and don't know who I am, here's the basics: My name is Shyanna, I'm 31 years old, and I live in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. More about my journey to this Frozen North will be told in a story later. Here we go.

Over the years, my struggle with labels has led me to some very weird places. I’ve sought out many different paths to discover who I am, and found myself on some twisty ones, some straight and narrow (I always thought that meant focused, but recently changed that to understand it meant “narrow minded” instead), and some that had huge gaps.

I have self-diagnosed as manic-depressive, addicted, an alien from another planet, synesthetic, and most recently, as living with Asperger’s Syndrome. The truth is, I hate labels.

I know mostly what kind of a person I am, but trying to understand WHY I am the way I am has caused me to try and succumb to the lure of using those labels to TELL people who I am. I would rather use adjectives such as smart, funny, unconventional, creative, sensual and emotional, rather than tell people “I have Asperger’s,” or, “I’m an addict,” or, “I’m a Synesthete,” or, “I’m a pansexual”. The assumptions based on their perceptions of those words would skew their perception of who I am, and that upsets me.

Many people like to say, “Don’t care what other people think, be yourself.” While this is a good way to live for some, I care greatly what people’s perceptions are of me. That conflict, to be myself while trying not to confuse people, or to be properly understood, makes me feel like my mind and soul are being pulled in two different directions. Letting go of these self-made labels is tough. The glue is pretty sticky, so even if (and when) these labels are peeled off, a reminder stays behind.

This blog is my journey to figuring out the metaphysical glue-remover of my life, and being myself, out in the open, for all to see. To see me, accept me, though  not necessarily understand me, are what I want to find from those around me. We'll veer from serious, to silly, to interesting, to things that will make you think, because I'm unconventional, emotional, sensual and weird. That's part of the fun though, isn't it?

“Cuz I’m a Gypsy.. Are you coming with me?

Come along for the ride..”