I'll Be your Clown....

Just the other day, I was having a conversation with one of my very close friends. We were chewing the fat as we tend to do, and what had started out as a fairly lighthearted conversation all of a sudden became quite deep.

She mentioned a song that for most of the ladies around our age would be familiar. Now, initially she couldn't remember what the song was called, only that it had been sung by a lady who originated in the North East and that it was talking about standing behind glass.

There is nothing like a vague reference to get you desparately trying to find out what you need to know, so like the good friend I am, I jumped straight onto google in a desparate attempt to discover what song and artist she was talking about.

I'll be honest, although it was a valiant effort on my part, she had figured out who it was well before I found her. (Emile Sande) From there, it was just a matter of nailing down which song she was recalling.

(Little bit of useless pub quiz trivia for you - Emile Sande was born on the sunny shores of good old Sunderland!)

The song was Clown, and that is where today's blog really begins.

If you haven't heard it, check out the video below. If you have, check it out anyway and listen - really listen. I never have. Despite listening to this song a hundred times, for the first time ever I really heard it, and it was profound and poignant and utterly heartbreaking.

"I'll be your clown. Behind the glass.

Go ahead and laugh, Cos it's funny,

I would too if I saw me."

"I'll be your clown.

On your favourite channel.

My life's a circus, circus, round in circles,

I'm selling out tonight."

Don't get me wrong, I have always loved the song but that day, quietly soaking up the music and really listening to the words for the first time, the world seemed to stop just for a second.

I felt my pulse quicken and the prick of tears threatening to escape from behind my eyes. All I wanted to do was sit and let the music wash over me because everything she was singing about, I knew intimately.

Both of us did, and for a split second, the melody threw us both back to a life that at the time left us living behind a glass wall and hiding everything that made us the beautiful, imperfectly perfect creatures that we are today.

Since that conversation with my friend, the song has been rolling around in my head. Its become louder and louder until it was almost deafening.

What I realised is that the only way I can calm it down is to write about it so, in true musing style, here I am!

Its 23:19 on Friday night, and I am once again spewing my thoughts out to you poor unsuspecting souls in the hope that Emile will stop singing in my head and just maybe, something I muse about tonight will resonate for you and stop you making the mistakes that myself and my friend both did.

Those mistakes generally begin to worm their way in to your psyche before you are really capable of recognising them. Whether its parental pressure, peer pressure or just personal pressure that pushes you to make everything perfect, I suspect that for us both, that need to be what everyone else expected followed us through into our teenage years, never leaving us as we became young adults.

Although my teens are definitely a story for another time, what I never recognised was what my rebellion at the time actually was.

It was a desperate cry for someone to see me.

I rebelled with the excuse that I was embracing myself and showing the world that I could be this fierce creature, capable of whatever I wanted.

The reality was I was hiding behind the guise of the stroppy teenager.

The mask I wore was so well fitted that nobody was any the wiser, but inside I was already breaking with such ferocity that I have never fully recovered and continue to live with it to this day.

You see musers, the problem with wanting people to see you is this - you have to let them see YOU!

The Japanese have a philosophy that everyone wears three faces throughout their lives.

How much you allow people to see is dependant on their relationship with you, whether you trust them enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable, and what you are comfortable with based on previous experiences.

The First Face - The Public Persona

Face number one is the public face we all have and this is the one I need to encourage you all to get rid of!

(This is the facebook/insta/tiktok and all that nonsense face. It isn't really a true reflection of who you are but instead, an attempt to portray a perfect existence to the outside world.)

Your public face is the one that you put on when you don't want people to know who you are or what is really going on inside your head. For example - you've been invited out to a party and didn't want to disappoint everyone so you said yes. Everything inside you is screaming not to go. Instead, you put on your makeup and your best frock and spend several hours with a drink in your hand, grinning through gritted teeth and hating every minute.

Maybe that mask goes on at work.

You don't feel you can be completely authentic so you spend your day monitoring eveything you say and do to fit in with what is deemed acceptable. These are people that you may not ever have anything more than a working realtionship with, and whilst this doesn't mean I am suggesting you should be a dick, you should never feel you have to be something you are not.

Hiding behind that mask is physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting. It doesn't just create huge pressure for you, but it will also begin to create mental health issues if you hide away for too long.

Social etiquette needs to be left where it started and authentic, honest and open dialogue encouraged.

I can't begin to tell you how many years I stood screaming at the world behind that glass, desperate for someone to see me. I became whatever I felt I needed to so that I would fit in to the point where I didn't know me anymore.

My personality would morph dependant on who I was spending time with.

It was so damaging and I think it became a huge factor in the choice of relationships I had at that time. I was an easy target for men who were abusive and controlling, and that led me down a very dark path for a long period of time.

The second face - the intimate self.

The Second Face - The Intimate Self

This is that face that shows as you begin to relax and become a more authentic and genuine reflection of you.

It tends to be a face reserved for the people that you trust, whomever that may be, and it allows them to begin to break down some of that glass wall you are standing behind.

This is the face that embraces all your imperfections and teaches you to love them for being uniquely you.

Between me and you musers, I would rather see much more of this type of picture online than the first photo I put up. This one embraces life and lets the viewer into your world.

That top photo is all about exuding a persona that doesn't exist, but unfortunately, that is what the majority of us share because that is what we think the world wants to see.

Although the second face is a much more honest depiction of us, there are still filters in place to protect not only us but the people around us.

That musers, takes us onto the third and final face - The Hidden Core.

This one I don't have a picture for and I will explain for why.

This one is reserved for you and you alone. It's the face that encompasses your deepest and most authentic self, and the one you will spend your entire life trying to get to know and still only scrape the surface.

It holds your deepest hopes and dreams, your fears, your desires and your darkest thoughts.

It is everything that you already are and more. Your darkness and your light - your ying and your yang - but the world we live in doesn't encourage this kind of introspection. To do so is counterproductive, and someone who truly knows themself and understands what is truly valuable can be a dangerous creature!

There was a famous quote from a book that I grew up reading as a child.

It was also a film that we bingewatched over and over. For those of you who know it, the book is The Neverending Story and the quote came from Gmork - one of the big bad's in the story.

For those of you who may not be familiar, the basic story is that the bad guys want to destroy the fantasy realm that keeps humanity free so that they will be able to control them. This particular quote comes towards the end of the book whilst Atreyu is preparing to fight Gmork in the final battle.

"...when it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs, and beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts. That's why I sided with the powerful and served them - because I wanted to share their power...."

....When your turn comes to jump into the nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them..."

What I learnt, and what came back so swiftly to me when I heard the song the other day was how important it had been for me to begin to get to know me. I had to learn to stop being something I wasn't just to keep other people happy.

I began to embrace all my little quirks and eccentricities, and what I began to discover was a sense of happiness and contentment that I had never experienced before.

I started saying yes to new experiences and no to things I didn't want to do.

I stepped back from the people in my life that I didn't feel brought anything to it anymore. As they say, to everything there is a time, blah, blah, blah, and sometimes that time is just over.

You look back with fond memories but these people and things no longer have a place in your life.

I made self care and getting to know me a priority and honestly, it was the best decision I have ever made. I am no longer controlled by people who don't know me or understand me. I embraced the freedom of being able to stop worrying about what others thought. More importantly, I began the journey of truly learning to love myself and everything that I am - warts and all!

I started the blog after I plucked up the courage to smash through my glass wall. I had spent so long without a voice and all of a sudden I had one. The realisation of that has been lifechanging. I have still got so much to learn about myself, but I am finally on the right path. It only took me 42 years to get here!

Honestly musers, if there is one thing I can tell you its this...

Choose you because you are with yourself for a very long time. To love the people around you, you first need to love yourself and that starts with self care and looking inward.

You are unique, incredible and capable of so much more than you know, but you have to take that first step and keep moving forwards. Without it, the world will always control you, and you will never get the chance to discover your true potential.

'Be you. Be yourself....Everyone else is already taken!' Oscar Wilde

Until next time........