Skin

Are we comfortable in it? It's an interesting question. I find that most people are not. I fully confess that I struggle to be.

It's an uncomfortable and seemingly never-ending process--becoming comfortable in ones own skin. It requires constant shedding: shedding of prior and previous layers and understandings of self; the awkward, the insecure, the inconsistent. And it feels like it never stops, this shedding of self. Just when we think we have arrived at ourselves, yet another layer sloughs off, revealing further uncomfortable realities and revelations.

But, we must slough off ourselves, again and again in order to reach any real sense of who we are. It's a necessary journey through the very rawest parts of self: who we thought we were, who we want to be, and who we will actually become.

It's a step into the vast void of the unknown, this shedding, realizing, and becoming comfortable in ones own self and skin. And it's a scary step. What's out there? Or more accurately, what's in here? Not questions we all like to ask ourselves.

Yet, if we refuse to ask, we subsequently refuse to become. Becoming comes through knowing and knowing comes through asking and asking comes through shedding and shedding is what ultimately brings us to a place where we can say, and perhaps even with confidence:

"I'm comfortable in my own skin."

But, in order to get there we must first be willing to do a little shedding.