on being "lost"

and the fear of everything.

Something I never expected to happen — throughout this time of ~experimenting~ with human design — was to feel more and more lost. 

The terms were not written clearly enough. Or perhaps they were, and I just never bothered to pay attention.

NO PROMISES, NO GUARANTEES. NO REFUNDS ALLOWED. 

LOSE YOUR ILLUSION OF CERTAINTY, SECURITY, CONFORMITY, AND SANITY.

SIGN HERE.

Naively, I thought this was it. I hit the jackpot. I found the golden ticket. This will be the system to fix everything. Follow the rules, and everything will be perfect.

Whenever you enter into a new experience — whatever that experience happens to be — you don’t know what it’s about until much later. You go in with an expectation, only to discover it’s nothing like what you thought it was and actually, can I get my money back?

I still don’t really know what this is about. 

I still am floundering around in the midst of it, looking for a shore to wash up on, hoping there is an answer someone can give me. I describe my life in question marks, posing it to friends and family as a problem to solve. Is this okay? Am I okay? They hold the space with loving support, but provide no concrete answers. No one can.

(that’s the secret in life: there are no rules, there are no answers. you have to discover what’s true — and what works — for yourself.)

This is a process that continues to unfold. Messy and sticky with no finish line in sight. Awareness builds on awareness, until you realize that awareness is all you get. 

Please read again: awareness is all you get. 

It is simple, mundane, and not very exciting. 

You can’t market awareness. You can’t sell it to the masses because it doesn’t come with any measurable or quantifiable “outcome”.

There is no shiny carrot at the “end” of seven years of deconditioning (although we pretend there is). 

There is no magic formula where if you do X then Y will happen, exactly in the way your mind envisioned. 

Human design can’t give you a life. You still have to go out there and do the uncomfortable part: live it. 

And oh boy, is it so fucking uncomfortable.

***

This year I have become unraveled.

Whereas I used to be so firm in my belief in this system, I have come to question every minute detail. I have been forced to look at myself and my life — no filter, no delusional excuses — and question whether this way of living is actually working for me. The symptoms have been obvious. The return of obsessive thoughts around food (a post for another day), the insomnia, the indigestion, the lack of enthusiasm for almost anything, the isolation, the resentment, the mood swings.

I just went back to skim a post I wrote over six months ago and realized, holy fuck, I’m still in the same headspace. I’m still in this place of paralysis.

They say the first step in changing any behavior or pattern is the awareness it exists. Perhaps this year has been one giant long, confrontation with facing my own bullshit. I’ve been shaking the rug, finding all the insidious monsters — insecurities, fear, shame — which are still alive and kicking underneath. Human design has not made them go away. I just got better at pretending they’e not there.

I have been told in the past to be very wary of any kind of system, teaching, or modality, that further isolates you away from friends and family. Only recently have I come to understand how imperative community is to my emotional and physical health, as a heavily defined tribal being (19-49 and 37-40).

This was the third summer I’ve gone up to Seattle to visit my family. Whilst I’ve never lived in the Pacific North West, it feels like a second home, and perhaps something in my blood or genetics knows there’s a part of me which belongs there. Before I was invited to live in Santa Fe, I was seriously considering moving to the PNW. At some point, maybe I will. 

Each year I have visited has been vastly different from the last. However, the one consistent thread is I always return with a new perspective.

I cried a lot over August. I cried to my mum for the first time in years. I cried at 3am when I couldn’t sleep. I cried at the airport because I didn’t want to go home. I cried in my notes app. I cried with my sunglasses on. I cried when the wind blew a certain way and because I felt irrevocably lost.

Something about admitting this to myself — and to others, for the first time — felt strangely freeing. Yes, I am lost. Yes, I thought this system would save me but it did not.

When I first saw my human design chart and discovered I had tribal definition, I was actually disappointed. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be associated with need and touch and loyalty and bargains. I have always prided myself over feeling as if I didn’t need anybody. I have always identified with being independent to a fault.

It’s funny how we deny the very things that are deeply us, resistant to what is plainly obvious to everyone else who knows you.

I am someone who needs people.

I am someone who needs community, support, and physical touch.

Sobbing into my mother’s arms, I felt a wall I had been holding up for so long finally crumble. I realized over the last three years, I have been attempting to keep my emotions in check, for fear of judgment and internalized shame. I finally understood that people want to support me. They want to connect with me. But they can’t if I continue to hold barriers up which prevent me from experiencing any real intimacy.

You cannot go through life alone, Chiara.

You cannot keep holding everything inside when the mess starts spilling out the seams.

***

Fear.

Oh my god, is fear a motherfucker.

Fear is at the heart of everything.

fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.

Is it embarrassing to admit I feel so fucking afraid of everything in my life?

Afraid of making mistakes, afraid of making a “wrong” decision, afraid of social awkwardness, afraid of honesty, afraid of money, afraid of relationships, afraid of just about everything I truly want.

The horrifying realization that so many of my decisions are based on fear.

This is splenic territory and I have a completely open spleen. I don’t know what to fear so instead I just fear everything.

I won’t do this, I won’t say that, because it will jeopardize my security. It’s not safe, it’s better to just stay put and do nothing at all. This is my comfort zone. This is what I know.

The undefined/open spleen will hold rigidly to it’s false sense of “feel good”.

So you stay at the job. You stay in the relationship. You stay fixed in your habits, your beliefs, your daily routines. You let go of the things and people which are actually good for you because it feels safer not to have them. You hold on for dear life to everything else because you truly believe — on a subconscious level — that your life is at stake if you were to let go.

And it’s ironic that the one strategy you believe is keeping you safe is actually the recipe for your own destruction. You wither as the leaves turn yellow; you get stuck in stagnant water, which turns toxic and makes you sick.

This is my lifelong lesson. This is where I am going to have to meet the world again and again to move through the discomfort of fear.

I know this is a very “anti-human-design” thing to say…. but everything I want for myself is on the other side of fear.

When that hit me the other day after an empowering conversation with a friend, I literally sat in her car going “fuuuuuuuuuuucckkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”

Never has anything rung so true.

Living in this perpetual state of fear has held me back from the things I truly desire out of life.

And I think it’s okay to admit I have wants, I have needs, I have desires, and that doesn’t mean they’re not-self or “just the mind”.

They’re still here and they deserve to be recognized.

Sometimes, it really is just about putting one foot in front of the other. No matter how small, no matter how seemingly insignificant (or unrelated) the steps may seem. Even when you feel scared, even when it feels like foreign territory, even when you feel you’re being stretched beyond the edges of discomfort.

You have to be willing to take a risk and be a mess in order to fully engage with life. If that means making “mistakes” and potentially looking like a fool, so be it.

The counter, is to allow the fear to rule you, to be so afraid of the world that you never learn anything at all.

What a sad way to live.

What a sad way to abandon your spirit.

***

I cried on my stories last week. It was accidental, the water involuntarily leaking from my eyes as I shared my existential crisis as of late:

is it possible to be happy? is happiness a sustainable goal?

I know the facts on paper: I am an emotional being, there are highs and lows, peaks and valleys, moments of happiness, and times of deep sadness and melancholy.

You can’t have one without the other because this is the human experience.

Yet… persistent feelings of sadness and depression are here to be addressed. It is not healthy to feel this way most of the time. It’s a symptom crying out for your attention.

If I could tell myself something three years ago, when I was beginning to go deeper into the semantics of human design, I would say — forget about it. Go outside. Smell the flowers. Watch your life. See what happens.

The magic is not found in the intellectual pursuit of the knowledge. It doesn’t matter how much you know. The knowledge will not save you nor change anything in the end.

What matters is you and your life. What matters is your own experiment. What matters is learning to trust yourself and your body outside of what any system, teaching, or modality says on paper.

There is no wrong decision.

There is no need for you to take any of this so seriously.

Life is not static. Neither are you — you are alive with flesh and bones and blood and feeling. You are constantly receiving feedback and information from your body, and only you can learn how to translate the signs.

Waiting can be medicine. When you’ve spent your entire life running around and filling your cup beyond it’s limits, slowing down is the greatest teacher.

But when you become so good waiting — to the point where you could literally wait behind closed doors forever — sometimes the opposite is true.

Sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty and roll around in the mud.

Go make mistakes. Be a fucking mess. Embrace trial and error. Learn from experience.

For those who feel they are “lost”, for those who feel afraid of everything, for those who have been spiraling too long in the endless abyss of mind—

Acknowledge the fear exists within you.

And then choose to walk through the doors anyway. You will find they were unlocked the entire time.