Confessions of a libra

Protect Yourself | Credit: Here

22.10.25

Sometimes all you really have is yourself. It can sound daunting, crazy and unfair. Why, in a world of 8 billion people, would the Gods forsake you and leave you to swim unsupervised? Yet it happens. And it is through those trials and tribulations that we grow. Not just as a person, but grow as a force. For someone of us, our first experiences with abuse and manipulation started in the home. Makes you wonder how any of us who consider ourselves to be good people, turn out that way. Instead of calcifying in our resentment and making everyone’s lives a misery.

When you are a good person, many times you are the one who doubted your goodness. I know for me, I have always asked if I deserve anything I have. I have often believed other people could do things better than me, a form of humility that wasn’t in-built but programmed. How could I, a regular human ever proudly proclaim my own talent? We watch the most confident of us – the entertainers, the life coaches etc. – and we look up to the results of their shadow work. We may sometimes look up to the result of their avoidance, and envy it without seeing the whole picture.

I’ve learnt to listen to my own internal guidance system and the only problem it creates is cognitive dissonance for those outside of me. Sometimes, I must make moves that confuse other people’s value systems. Like when I chose to pick up pole dancing as a sport/hobby. For the religious, and for the sexually repressed there’s too much stigma attached to the activity. Someone like that thinks of pole dancing, thinks of strip clubs and sex workers. Whereas for me, I see a pole dancer – whether they compete in the sport or shake their ass for money – I see someone with enviable core strength. Someone who has overcome their own limitations incrementally. Someone who trusts in themselves, and their body.

Capitalism will have you believe that you are only worth something, so long as there is output that is quantified through approved capitalistic matrices. Capitalism will have you squirrel and hoard your money, always staying in the game so you stay on top of it. Capitalism frowns at the idea that you might carve out time for yourself through money, and that you might never need to rely on it regularly and as a crutch. It’s not an accident that there’s a million and one short-courses you could take on hot to plan your way out of the standard capitalistic framework. It’s clear, capitalism feels oppressive – especially on our minds and bodies.

Listening to oneself no matter what system oppresses you at any given moment, looks like sitting with yourself. Often. You will not know yourself if you are scared of sitting with yourself. I know, because I used to be scared to be with my own thoughts. Likely because of all the trauma I was pushing down as a child. Being alone, meant my thoughts were much more unpredictable and I might have to remember. And sometimes, you don’t want to. I knew logically that it didn’t make sense for me to avoid my own company, so I worked on it. Sometimes people think being too logical can be a crutch. I say, being too logical can be weaponised for your own good.

I often make decisions because they are the logical decision, and I value my position as a rational, logical person. If I think I am gaining too much weight, it is usual this that makes me start making physical changes in my reality. Not someone constantly making comments about my body. Spending time alone intentionally, can start off as awkward. You might find you put a movie on but you immediately want to play with something in your hand. You might want to now text your bestie. When these things happen, you watch your thoughts. Don’t judge, and make adjustments.

The more your spend time alone, the more your consolidate different parts of yourself. For someone with neurospicy traits like myself, I didn’t realise how much I masked. I knew I masked but I thought it was a normal level, and so everyone does it. In retrospect, I think I had a highly organised filing system based on a safety rating of the individual I was interacting with. It is clinical in its organisation, but it was born of being misunderstood. It was borne of self-protection.

Now, I have fused parts of myself, so when people meet me they are meeting the whole of me. This doesn’t mean I reveal everything in one go. I am finely attuned to everything needing to happen at the right time and in the right place. You may know me for several years and only start to think you get all the aspects of me. It sounds cliché but learning to meditate is an invaluable skill. For me meditation and yoga also just go together.

I cannot be more effusive in expressing how much meditation and yoga have been the scaffolding of my healing in my 20’s. The practices are ancient and while I have mainly done them through YouTube yoginis, it feels like my body has responded to the ancient call. Like my body knew before I did and guided me along the path. Now, I do think in life there are just some things you will be drawn to and not others. If you are not inclined for yoga, I feel that pilates is not considered spiritual like yoga is but can definitely teach you about breathing deeply and trusting your body. My advice is to always have a sport that you engage with either annually or seasonally, something that elevates the spirit.

Sports, hobbies, solo travel and shadow work are some of the things that you can do alone that help you hear yourself. Sometimes life is too fast. We are constantly chasing the next solution to the next problem. Stillness is where we find our centre. If you are reading this and you haven’t taken a holiday for a while because you’re banking your leave, then give yourself one or two days on either side of a weekend, and just have a mini holiday. I love doing things like that otherwise my spirit gets restless. The existential crisis looms over me like a cloud.

People will project their own insecurities onto you. Create neat little descriptors for why you are difficult because you refuse to be abused. You refuse to bend the knee where no knee needs to be bend. Men have called me cold for cutting them off, after I warned them what kind of infraction would warrant that kind of reaction. I was called selfish as a child because I didn’t pre-empt how much a grown woman needed in her serving when I was handing her lunch I offered to cook. I have been called difficult when I finally snapped on a prissy girl for throwing hot soup on my blazer. I’ve been called selfish for refusing to agree to a family friend coming with her boyfriend to my birthday party, because that man walked into the toilet ‘by accident’ when he knew I was in there and I refused to forgive him for it.

It’s okay to be the villain in someone else’s story. The sooner you accept that somewhere out there, someone is telling a lie about you as we speak, the better. I don’t want to leave you feeling hopeless and dejected though. Lies are very slippery things. They have a lot to live up to. They must be remembered to be upheld across time and space. If you believe yourself to be a person who lives an honest life, then all of those Chinese whispers will never hold up to the weight of your existence. That woman who thinks you’re stuck up, might one day witness you giving back without fanfare. That teacher that thought you were lazy will read your essay about your academic struggles and the anxiety they wrought. That man who said you liked it, well… one day there might be news of another woman and the two of you might teach him a lesson in court.

The part they never tell you is, it can be exhilarating and addictive making scary decisions that work out for you. The way it feels to cackle in the halls of your first home alone. The feeling of rightness in the body. The way you tell yourself, you may not know how everything will pan out but you knew that was the right step. Learn to look at yourself in the mirror. Talk to yourself in the mirror. Affirm yourself in the mirror. It’s fantastic for your connection to yourself, and for your self-perception. Self-confidence doesn’t always feel like confidence, sometimes it feels like quiet defiance. May all who’ve read this far find sanctuary within themselves. Asé.