I’m looking for myself
I scroll on the internet, youtube or instagram, looking for someone to teach me. Looking for someone to learn from. Someone who looks like me at least a little bit. Someone who thinks like me. Someone who feels like me. Someone who sees and listens like me.
Oh no, not her. Not the copy-and-paste 20 or 30-something-year-old white girl preaching the same thing as the last. Hell no, not him. Not the old white guy, who has forced his views down my throat my entire life, anyone but him. The brown guy, maybe. I click follow and subscribe for a bit until I find myself nitpicking him too. Too patriarchal. Not spiritual enough. Too spiritual. Unfollow.
I keep scrolling. I like finding women of color who I resonate with. I like reading what they have to say, soaking it in, absorbing their wisdom. Idolizing them. Maybe one day I’ll be like her, living like her. Her instagram life looks so beautiful. But the more I scroll, and the more I look, I lose interest. I disagree. The desire to find someone else, someone new, someone more like me arises.
So I scroll and I scroll and I scroll.
And then I decide, it’s too much. I need a break. A social media detox. It feels like an octopus has its tentacles wrapped around my brain. Logging off is removing all these suction cups from my head right before they completely take over and my brain becomes this rock that this octopus now lives on.
Who am I without all that and what do I believe in?
I realize this person I’m searching for, this woman who looks, thinks, feels, and sees like me…. is me. I’m the woman that I need. And I will never find it in anyone else. Maybe bits here and there, but the whole package, the perfect teacher that I’m searching for is me.
So what does that mean? Does it mean that I step up into the role of teacher?
It’s weird how I surpass myself when I come to these realizations. It’s like I get the message but only for a split second before my ego steals it and darts off in the wrong direction.
My ego says, ok so I’m the teacher that I’m looking for, and if that’s true then that must mean that I need to become the teacher that others are looking for. I need to become an internet teacher so that others can scroll and scroll and scroll through my content until they fry their brains thus causing them to realize the teacher they need is themselves.
*THUMBS DOWN*
*WRONG ANSWER BUZZER SOUNDS*
*CROWD BOOS*
It’s a good thing I put that leash on my ego a few years back. I quickly remember before it gets too far and I yank that bitch back so that I may fully receive the message.
I am the wise woman, the teacher, the guide, the mother, the support I have been looking for. I am both the student and the teacher. I am the one with the questions and also the answers. I am not google. Sometimes coming up with the answers will take years or lifetimes. Sometimes the answers are not presented in words. Sometimes I feel the answer to my question arrive in my body, as soon as I ask. Sometimes I will need to ask someone else. Sometimes I will need to ask a tree, or a flower, or a potato. I don’t claim to know it all. I don’t claim to know anything. But I do trust, and I do feel that what I need is already inside of me, wrapped up in this cute little package called Sydni.
It’s not a relief to realize this. Not quite a burden either. The human in me feels slight disappointment because she wanted so desperately for it to be easier. As easy as scrolling. And my soul feels freedom. Like a key has been turned and the locked door opened. I finally found my way home.
