What If I'm Ordinary?

I can do nothing else today, but present what is there. I have tried too many times before to conjure something profound and spin it into something alluring, but the lack of recognition—the low view count, the stunted growth, the hardness of it all—keeps me frustrated.

I pulled cards this morning that pointed to the idea that everything in my life would be a journey uphill, worthwhile, but uphill nonetheless, and this discouraged me. For the girl who wants her name in sparkling lights, what solace is there to find in spiritual ascension? In a valiant fight?

I’ve tried to be as honest as I can. I’ve tried to be what they needed me to be. None of it seems to work. I’ve tried gratitude and releasing expectations. I’ve tried active manifestation, but then something will happen. I won’t receive the front-row concert tickets I thought for sure were mine and I’ll question everything. Did I make it up? Am I delusional?

Just yesterday, I looked to the sky with tears in my eyes and overflowing gratitude in my heart. I knew with absolute certainty there was a force much bigger than myself smiling down on me, moving in sidestep with my rhythmic flow, calling me toward my great destiny. Today I am sullen, moody, and uninspired, trying to convince myself I didn’t make it all up.

Is there a taste of vinegar in my laboratory? Do I have an unresolved issue around self-image and success? The biggest resistance I feel is toward non-attachment. I can’t seem to let go of this idea that there is a bigger dream waiting for me to realize it. If I let go of this vision, what does it say about me? That I’m ordinary? That I’m destined for struggle? That my story won’t mean anything to anyone else?

Probably. Maybe.

And what if I am? Ordinary? What if I am destined for struggle and my story won’t mean anything to anyone else? That the views on my videos I’ve spent hours upon hours perfecting will never cross the 1,000 count threshold and that the cards were in fact right all along: You’re meant to suffer. To find Truth, no matter the cost. And then air that on display for the world to see that you are broken and ugly and getting older by the day. And it’s not for any glory or recognition. It just is what it is.

Ah, but the internal war wages on. I want to believe it isn’t true. That I am the hero, the protagonist, in my story, in a lot of people’s story. But I’m thirty. I’m not getting any younger and it just feels like there are so many people who can and do do it better than I do. Do what, you might I ask? Life. Make-up. Video creation. Confidence. You name it.

I want so badly to be special. To stand elbow to elbow with Emily Ratajkowski and know with unwavering certainty that we are the same. That even though she is beautiful and coveted, sexy and successful, that I am made of all those same things. Maybe people just aren’t seeing it. Maybe I’m not standing in the right light.

I feel sick to my stomach thinking about how I may never get there. That as others continue to make more money and grow in their career, that maybe I will be starving and striving forever. That even though I’ve done all this work to take myself out of all these boxes—the ones others have created, the ones I’ve created for myself—to stand bare in front of the world, that they may still say, “We want nothing to do with you. You are uninteresting. You aren’t anything to write home about.”

And then what? Maybe that’s what I’m searching for. The words on the other side of that question: And then what?

If the world wanted nothing to do with me. If I was making art and every single time I presented it, I knew not a single eye would see it, would I still create it? I don’t know.

In so many ways, it brings up this question surrounding what it is I’m actually chasing? I have told myself repetitively in the past few weeks that I have everything I need, and it’s true. I don’t need to make more money. I have a warm home to return to, a husband that loves me. But there’s a small part of me that thinks I need more money, and maybe that’s true? To get to the house I fantasize about in my head? To buy the $1,600 coat with zero remorse. What else am I chasing? To be known?

But do I know myself? How can others see me if all I am doing is chasing? All then that is there is the chase. Who am I? Who am I? Who is Tiana? What does she stand for? What does she like? What does she desire?

Not the fantasy house because it seems beautiful or serene or smells nicely. Not the audience to show others my story is worthwhile. What do I desire? What do I want right now in this moment? I’ve scoured every crevice of my brain it seems like. At first I thought I wanted to feel good. And I do. But that thought alone seems too trivial. To feel good doing what? I want to be successful. But what is success? I want to not feel like I’m fucking everything up. Like I’m some problem to solve and everyone else has the answer but me. I want life to be easy. Then they say, “Well then let it be easy,” but I don’t know how. With that, it seems like I give up this dream I have of an audience, a stage, and without that dream, I am nothing.

But maybe that’s the whole point? To get really comfortable with being nothing. Would my life would still be filled with richness, even if no one noticed. Even if no one appreciated my art, could I still be happy? Am I happy?

I woke this morning feeling much of the same: nothing. I found myself holding my breath a lot and I wonder if there was a part of me that just wanted everything to stop, for the pain to not be so violent for a spell, for the world to suspend on its axis like it does in the movies.

In the center of my despair, I began to write, as I do every morning with a single question in mind, a subtle shift of perspective: If I have no control over where I can venture, where then do I go? I decided from the beginning that I would accept whatever answer presented.

It opened with darkness, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course,” I thought. I had heard time and time again that was my calling: to seek Truth and be unafraid. That in darkness we find deeper depths and sacred power. But who wants to hear that their life should be hard? That even though it may be worth it someday, that the suffering is a part of their narrative? Would you continue to hope for the light if I told you your future held so much black?

My morning journaling was its own series of highs and lows and the details were too many to count, but miraculously, I ended up at this thought: I am on this journey through what feels like a desolate wasteland of emptiness aching to express myself because I am an expression of God. And when I awake to that idea and relinquish control over what that should look like, strapped with the possibility of anything, I awaken to the fullest spectrum of what it means to be a human being.

Do I want to sing? Then I must. Make a YouTube video? Then I must. Stand on stage? I must. Live in a fantasy home? I must. Because this creative Life Force from which I am created longs to create; this vitality that continues to spring forth within me must press on. Ponder this: A first breath. The idea that at one point in history, we were all but a thought. It is of no importance if we are good or bad, what we believe to be right or wrong. Call it God or Spirit or Intuition or The Great Unknown. Call it whatever you want to call it, but one thing is for certain: it creates. How do I know? Because I see it in the face of my husband who is generous and patient and funny as hell. I see it in Emily Ratajkowski with her sex appeal and her modern feminist approach. I see it in my best friend who is talented and generous and holds her heart close to her chest. I see it perched on the infinitesimal leaves in the trees and when I stand at the foot of the shore and staring into the vastness of the horizon.

I don’t pretend to know all the answers, in fact I know very little. But when I stare down the barrel of the question What if I am ordinary?, for the first time in what feels like perhaps ever, I hear loud and clear: “But how can you be ordinary if you are an expression of God?”

And so is he. And so is she. And so are you. And so is it. And so is everything. For once I felt peace knowing I have these violent urges on my heart to unpack my trauma, to stand bare in front of an audience, to write without apology and blast it to 300+ individuals because there is something much bigger than me that has much more power and benevolence than my human brain could ever comprehend that wills it so. And if that’s the case, why limit myself to what I think “good art should be”? Why limit myself to just the fantasy house or the $1,600 coat or the audience? From this very creative force sprouted everything we know to be true. And that I can be a part of that? That I am a part of that? Well that idea alone leaves me so awestruck and hopeful I know with absolute certainty there is no way I could ever be ordinary…and neither can you.