It's Okay.

It's been a morning of different ruminations... For the past few days, this feeling has been with me, that same shaky, vulnerable feeling and the doors are slamming shut. I've felt it easier not to share again, just grow quiet. I'm wondering whether that is a self protection measure or whether I do grow quiet in order to know the feeling better. To sit with the pain of it, to close and to open to myself. I have grown from where I was, because in as much as I still find myself in avoidant behaviors at times, I do not feel that same need to pick up the stick and minimize it all as- 'you're just over-sensitive.'
I am sensitive to things. And that's okay. Wrong or right, it exists. It's an older part of me that needs healing. It's an experience. It's me.
Self soothing is something that's always been rather unconscious. I've never been awake to the feeling because I've never learnt it, at least not on the surface. The fact is, that I'm only aware now to really self care because I know now- I'm worthy of it. There's still that old part of me that calls even louder now because finally, I'm being heard, by myself.
The worst thing I've done to myself is seek and ask permission to be who I am. And now I know,
I've never needed it. I've started late, but what I need to know, and feel, is to be able to be authentic and autonomous and be okay with it. Casting out the old voices, and know that I've never known- been a stranger to myself. It seems like work for many hands, so to speak, but being gentle with the process and taking it all a step at a time... That's where I'll feel less like I'm curled up again. Because it's okay. That I feel what I feel. It's okay that I don't have answers or understand it, that will come in time. It's okay I haven't quite accepted where I am. I'm not finished yet. It's okay. I'm brand new.
And it's okay that right now I'm not okay. I will be, with time, with nurture and at my own hand.