My name is Linda Kristien. Some of my friends know me as Apple. And this is my ‘story’.
0-1: Shit my diapers. Learn how to accommodate to other peoples needs by smiling. Get familiar with breasts. Being carried around is annoying, why don’t they understand my needs? There is someone like me in the house, but she’s not bald like me. It’s my older sister.
1-6: Being upright gives me a whole new perspective on life. Using my legs gives me freedom to go where I want to go; everybody around me seems to be annoyed about it. School. Confusion sets in. Another little person like me enters into my life. He’s just not completely like me, I can’t quite figure it out. It’s my brother. Two more of those come into my life and they are identical, wow; I’m confused. How did they get here? They are my twin brothers. I love playing outside.
6-12: Blank. My brothers must not like me. They bully me. My sister ignores me. My sister is cool. She seems to know it all. I pass on the bullying onto a girl at school. What am I supposed to do? My parents are consumed with work. I love playing outside.
12-16: More school; total confusion. My sister is too cool to be seen with me. I get re-acquainted with the phenomena of boobs. It hurts. Why aren’t they big like my sisters? I learn how to gossip; it seems to be ‘cool’. It feels stupid. My parents don’t notice me. I have a best friend. My best friend dumps me. I can talk to my horse about it. She understands. I still love playing outside. Nobody at school knows. I pretend I like the teen stuff. Boys are very interesting. I figured out how my siblings and I came into this world. My parents must have liked ‘doing it’…..since there are five of us.
16-22: I live in the US for one year. I love it. People actually see me. Is it because I am ‘different’? I love sports. I learn how to get attention by being good at something. I try a few short-lived relationships. I don’t fully understand boys. They are easier to be with than girls. They don’t gossip.My parents argue a lot. Increase in sports achievements. Decrease in joy for sports. I learn how to completely ignore the needs of my body by busting my ass in training for the Olympics. I learn a lot about food.
22-28: Olympics seem to come with politics and kissing ass. I fall in love for the first time. Love is restless. Love is hard. Love is painful. Love is cheating. Love is nothing I expected it to be. I am in an alarming state of confusion. I get a degree. I get familiar with fame. I don’t understand it. I start working. Is this life? All I want is to play outside, anyone? Food is my enemy. I quit the Olympic team. I think I have to accommodate love otherwise it would leave me. I hate working in concrete cubicles. It kills me. Love left me anyways. I am devastated.
Fast forward…………..
It’s February 2009, I am 31 and out of nowhere, I start to write. It saved my life! I had been on my knees, literally, asking God, without fully believing there would be such a source as God, to please use me! I was down and out. I could not go on for one more day feeling the way I felt. It really was a now or never moment. I cried. I fell on my knees and said out loud: Please please please God, USE ME! I had read this in a book called a Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. Trust me, I had tried everything to end the misery I was in, and to me, this was my last resource. I don’t know why I said those words, for I did not even fully believe at that moment there is a God, Divine Energy, mo-fo or whatever name you want to give it. But I said them. And then there came peace. I surrendered. I went to bed feeling I could do nothing but trust. Trust that everything would be fine. I couldn’t think anymore, that is how exhausted I was. All I could do was to surrender to what is. I was done fighting. So done!
Days after that, I don’t recall the exact time span, I picked up a pen and started asking myself all the questions I had. And a miracle happened. The pen seemed to move and write the words automatically. God had started to use me….. It felt so good, so re-assuring, so loving. That was the beginning of a journey of getting re-acquainted with myself. A profound journey; it made me trust myself. Something I was not capable of doing before. Through this writing I found what I love to do. Which is writing. I had not written before in my life. I started writing about everything in my life. My life unravelled before my eyes. In doing so, I realized that really everything happens and has happened for a reason and with that, I noticed that I had set myself up for getting to this point of writing, my whole life. Everything started to fall into place. I had created my life, unconsciously, since birth (even before…J) and now I can co-create with this new awareness that I have. We are always in a state of becoming and thus creating. And I’m starting to have fun with it.
Even now, when I read this, I chuckle. Who would have thought that I would be writing about God, Self, energy? Well, for one, not me….
Right now I am finishing up the book (…..) that the writing ended up being. Besides that, I just love life! I have come to know that being connected to God, being, is not sitting in the lotus pose all day. God is all that is! Everything you see, everything you do, is divine. As it is all created by the little Gods’ that we are. And we are all divine. So how can, for instance, smoking a joint or being promiscuous or wanting to go clubbing all week be bad? Do you have to fear ‘punishment’ for it? If it feels good for you to do so, then by all means, do so. It all just is…… man, that just gave me such freedom. It’s the judgement placed on it that takes it away from what it is. And it is all just a divine expression of who we are. LOVE. LOVE JUST IS……….And with getting re-acquainted with myself, I am learning more and more what feels like love and my choices are starting to reflect that.
…. You might notice grammar or spelling errors. The over-achiever in me, feels the ‘need’ to point out that for 29 years I have been speaking, reading and understanding Dutch, a language most of you won’t be able to understand J. I could get someone to check all my stuff before it goes online, but for now, I am choosing not to. For the reason being that it all is what it is. I am not my grammar mistakes. Nor am I my story. It’s just an expression of who I am and with accepting myself comes acceptance of mis-takes. I’ve let go of the need to be perfect, as perfection implies that something is finished. And I’m not finished. In fact, I am just getting started, knowing that I’ll never be finished. We all will always be in a state of becoming within our being. And, I just am……. It is what you make of it. Having said that, writing in English has actually turned out to be a big blessing. I am being ‘forced’ to keep it simple as the vocabulary that exist within me in my native language often times doesn’t translate that which I wish to express in accordance with my feelings authentically.
And now, as the remains of my old beliefs are transformed or about to fall away in physical reality, my new beliefs are manifesting all around me. I am liking myself more and more and this is just the beginning. This blog is a diary of the world viewed through the eyes of Love.
Apple