Someone came into my Instagram comments this week with a very judgmental tone towards my post and everyone with whom it resonated. Of course, it wasn’t her or her words… it was the Truth of the Word. God himself. She takes no responsibility.
I responded to her, “I feel a lot of pressure from you to not be honest!”
When I said that, it was like a light went on. That really is it! I need to be honest. I need to be true to my own self, be my own self, my true authentic self, and not some contrived idea of myself that comes from outside of me. I cannot fit into everybody’s or anybody’s ideal expectation of what they think I should be.
To reflect Dederer, my whole life I was trying to fit my spirit into an idea, and it was dangerous. I stopped feeling from the inside and took cues from the outside about what I should be doing. It lead to injury, and, even worse, dissatisfaction.
This, in a nutshell, is the gist of deconstruction. It’s reclaiming ownership of yourself. It’s taking back the reins, the steering wheel, the controls, of your own life. It’s you becoming self-determining, autonomous, and spiritually independent.
It means feeling from the inside what you need and want, and honouring those.
This goes against everything religious, because religion is all about controlling you from the outside.
In fact, it can be the absolute enemy of your authentic self.
But, of course, this is why deconstruction can be so traumatic.
