Disclaimer: This post intentionally uses triggering language. I invite you to explore the metaphor behind these words/terms used. This is NOT a post about drug addiction. Please get help if you are struggling with this condition. ![]() I haven't written on this platform in a while because I actually have another blog site on my official website but I guess this platform always felt more unfiltered. It always smelt more like red wine and streams of consciousness strung together at 3am. So here we are. You're probably thinking from this title 'Uhh...Mayfair...Yeah what are you on?" but stay with me a minute. I genuinely believe that by nature we are all drug addicts; perhaps to varying degrees but nonetheless we're all hooked. Good old' Webster defines a drug as: "a substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" Let's start by establishing a common understanding of the word 'disease'. The word disease breaks down to 'dis-ease' or a lack of ease. In other terms a state of being (physically, emotionally or spiritual) that makes us feel a lack of ease or in one word - uncomfortable. To have a disease is to be in a state charecterised by discomfort So it was at 1am on this Saturday night/Sunday morning in this city that never sleeps that it hit me - shit I think I'm a drug addict. I was alone in my apartment - just listening to music. Now, I'm alone 90% of the time so it wasn't really anything new, my craft just requires it. It's near enough impossible to write and think introspectively around people. But anyway I got the sudden urge to get rid of the 'dis-ease' that sometimes comes with being alone. I was in need of a fix. So my mind scanned the catalog of drugs on the market to cure this dis-ease that at one point or another had been a drug of choice. Some more socially acceptable than others (as is with drugs right?)... Text a guy I used to talk to? Grab a bottle of wine? Aimlessly scroll through social media? Buy some cigarettes? Binge watch some Netflix? On another night I may have just picked any one of these 'drugs' to 'diagnose, cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent' my alone and be done with it. But tonight was different. I decide to take a step back and question: what if I just sat with this dis-ease for a while? what if I embraced the discomfort that was showing up in my current state? What if I explored it? What if I sat with it just for the night? It got me thinking - how many of us avoid feelings of dis-ease, of discomfort through various means? how many of us are drug-addicts by nature? For you - the state of discomfort you may be trying to 'diagnose, cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent' may not be being alone but if I know anything about humans it's that you have something. Humans are addicted to comfort. We are wired to pursuit comfort/remain in it, which by default means we have a strong tendency to find things or vices to avoid a lack of it. Drug addicts. But sometimes (i.e. all of the time) sitting in the discomfort for a while leads to magic. It leads to strength, it leads to growth, it leads to evolution, it leads to the unraveling of oneself. So from a recovering addict, I invite you to join me on this journey of rehabilitation, of dropping our vices in the name of...growth. All my love Mayfair
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So after a long day working from a coffee shop, I did what all true New-Yorkers did; I stopped by a McDonald to get some 'dinner'. So anyway, I order my food and the waitress brings it to my table. She had a warmth to her that I can't really articulate - maybe it's because she was a black woman so reminded me of the women I grew up around. I thank her for bringing the food and she replies "Your welcome baby."
I burst into tears as soon as she says this. For the first time in this big city, I felt alone - like a little fish in a big pond. A new year often brings with it a fresh sense of motivation and optimism, and that is so wonderful and beautiful but as I write this I am reminded that some of these days will feel less like becoming and more like breaking but they are becoming anyway.
Give yourself permission to feel. Give yourself permission to not be okay on some days. Give yourself permission to weep if you must, to sit with sadness if and when it knocks. To not run from it but to let it sit because soon it will leave. It will realise after a while that your soul is too warm for a feeling as cold as sadness to survive for very long. And to my brothers, it’s okay to not be' made' yet It’s okay to decide that on some days your shoulders are too tired to carry the weight of the world. It’s okay say that some days it hurts. It is okay to feel. And I know this is not the message you may want to hear when you’ve planned and pictured a year of ‘ more life and more blessings’ but dark days are a part of becoming. You will be great in your own right, you will touch the things you dreamed you would but first you must experience the becoming. On some days you will not know the difference between breaking and becoming, On some days they will look much the same but they are not. Sometimes becoming is painful but I swear to you it is still becoming. I’ve learnt that progress and good emotional health is often a balance of honoring your emotions enough to let yourself sit with them (both the good and the bad ones) but honoring yourself and your evolution enough to not let yourself be led by them but rather to be led by your convictions. I hope this year you find peace with your emotions, I hope God grants you the courage to be weak. I believe in your becoming. You’ve got this,! Remind yourself as often as you need to that no matter what the day looks like, that you’ve got this. I promise. All my love Mayfair x The question of “What is my purpose?” is a big question which I think occupies many of our minds and rightly so. This is such an important question to ask because the answer to it determines much of our lives; how we spend our time, what we do and do not do, what opportunities we take up and which we ones we turn down, who we associate with and who we don’t…the list is endless. The vast amount of books, YouTube videos and even courses dedicated to answering this question confirms just how much we want to find out the answer to this huge question. I won’t pretend that at 20 years old and in one blog post I can answer this question in full for you, but I will share with you some keys based on a source more reliable than any other known to man, from a wisdom incomprehensible to man on how to find your purpose firstly and secondly how to walk in it/what to do once you have found it. So will guide you through a process of purpose based on Psalms 37 Step 1: Trust God (vs 3) The process of uncovering your purpose must begin with a trust in God, an unshakable belief that no matter what He has your back, that whether you know what it is or don’t – He made you for a purpose. Step 2: Delight (vs 4) Grow to be a lover of presence; immerse yourself as often as you can. At first this may feel like a chore, but I promise you, the more you learn about Him, of how loving and beautiful He is, you won’t want to do anything else. As humans we get distracted, that is inevitable but keep delighting after you do get distracted, pick up your Bible even if you haven’t for a few days – master the art of failing and getting back up. As you then continue to delight, His desires become your desires. When the Bible says he will give you the desires of your heart, it literally means that He manifests His desires into your heart. It does not mean, like a lot of us misunderstand it, that he will gives us anything we want. Step 3: He then gives you the desires of your heart (vs 4) Imagine God with this great big heart, with all of these desires – to help people, to heal people, to set people who were bound free, to bring emotional healing, to bring light into dark places etc. But God being spirit cannot make any of those things happen in a physical world without a physical body, and so that’s where we come in. We do have a physical body - the capacity to touch the world in a way that an invisible God cannot. So we, after delighting in God (which should be continual) now carry the same heart of God, the same desires as God AND the physical body to execute them. And this is where the idea of purpose comes in. God will impress a specific desire on your heart based on the way He uniquely designed you in order to make that desire a reality. For some he will impress a desire to educate people and so has uniquely formed them with an ability to express complex ideas in a simple way For some he will impress a desire to set people free and so has uniquely formed them with a gift to create music that does just that. Step 4: Act (vs 5) So once you know what your purpose is – how God uniquely formed you to manifest an aspect of His desires for the word. What then? The answer is, just move. The verse says to ‘commit your ways unto the Lord’ – unless you act then you have nothing to commit. Unless you write that song, contact that agent, start that blog; then what ‘ways’ do we have to commit? What actions do we have to commit? I will encourage you with this – you already know what the next step is. The later part of the verse tells us that ‘The steps of good man are ordered’. Once you become aware of your purpose, your steps naturally work towards your purpose weather you see it or not; but you must actually step to realise this. This idea of committing, simply means that as you move and act, you do not run ahead of God. You keep delighting in Him. Step 5: God will make it happen (vs5) Once you have begun to act, begun to gain momentum; it is God who causes your purpose to unfold. “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this” Yes, it is you who acts but it is God who makes it happen, It is him who ensures that your steps are not taken in vein. So always remember this – it is not your duty to bring your purpose to life; it is Gods, all you have to do is take step, to move. Step 6: Trust and wait (vs7)
This step is essentially reiterating the point made above, which is to relax. Do not stress about the things you cannot control – immerse yourself in the things you can and trust that God himself will take care of the things you can’t. This is how you enjoy the journey and avoid the stress and anxiety that often comes when people try to make it on their own. You cannot ensure your song will be a best seller – sing it anyway. You cannot ensure millions of people will read your blog, write it anyway. You cannot ensure your channel will gain thousands of subscribers - start it anyway. You cannot ensure their healing will come – lay your hands on them anyway. You cannot ensure it will sell – write the book anyway. As you do this, as you take the steps toward your purpose, not getting caught up in the thought of fame or money or success (although those things will come inevitably) God promises to make it happen. So, I hope this helps you as you navigate your way to your purpose but always remember that the beauty is in the process. As you work towards the destination, never forget to look around you and see the sights, to smell the flowers, to stop and stare at the sunset, to love those around you deeply and to laugh often. All my love Mayfair x It goes without saying that breakups are highly emotional experiences, for even the most thick-skinned of us; involving many tears, plenty of anger and lots of confusion. But none the less, they are experiences. So, after I got past the initial breakup stage – perhaps the most fragile, I decided that this experience had cost me too to not learn something from it. I’d cried too many nights, endured too much breaking, too many moments where it felt like the ground beneath me was falling, too many days which felt more like lifetimes – not to take all I could from this experience, to not grow from it. I think we often ignore the fact that experiences themselves do not make us better – in fact they can make us bitter, it’s rather the reflection of these experiences that holds the potential for us to get better, wiser. By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. ~ Confucius Let me make it clear that when I talk about reflection, I am not talking about asking what you could have done differently but asking what you can do differently based on what you now know. Notice how the former question is based on the past, something which would do you no good to reflect on since you cannot change it whilst the former focuses on the future. It is a question that reflects a commitment to your growth – what can I do differently? Looking at the past, not for the sake of it but for the sake of who you want to be. Its really easy after a breakup to look at what the other person did so wrong, why you deserve better, how badly they messed up, how they weren’t that great anyway – and whilst for a while I admittedly went through this process, I had to ask myself what the point was of focusing on the flaws in someone that was no longer in my life at the expense of looking at the flaws in my own life; the only person I am guaranteed to live with forever. So, I guess with that – in a commitment to always being open and honest with you all in the hope that you learn something from me baring my flaws in all of their blood and beauty, I will share with you one of the major reflections I came to from my breakup, which is this: I had prioritised my relationship and this ideal of being a wife above God. And I cannot express to you how much of a hard but honest conclusion this was for me to come to and it would probably require more words than this blog post would allow for me to fully explain. But I will say that perhaps it happens more easily than we think. I didn’t even realise I had it in me to love a person as much as I loved him, on some days it felt as though my heart beat only for him, we were best friends. And whilst this is beautiful; it wasn’t as beautiful as the love, the life I had in Christ, but on some days, I forgot this. On some days I forgot that whilst his arms may have held me, the hands of the invisible God had formed me. That whilst the boys’ words made my heart melt, the breath of God made it beat. And I finally saw what Moses meant when he said that God was jealous for us. God doesn’t want to be your Top God, he wants to be you only God. So, with that I make this vow to the man that God has for me: I will love you like I love myself. I will be your number one fan. I will listen with eagerness to every wild, dumb dream you have and commit to it as if it were my own. I will be your safe place in a cold world. But I will not, I will not find my worth hidden in your words of affirmation, I will find it in the Word of God. I will not spend more time with you than I do in the presence of my saviour. I will not find more joy at the thought of being your bride than I do the thought of being the bride of Christ. I will not put my relationship with you above my relationship with my first love. I will not make our relationship an idol. I hope you see the magic in reflecting on all experiences – good and bad; your growth depends on it.
All my love. Mayfair x So, I’m single now. And it dawned on me that most of my adult life had been spent in relationships. For the sake of clarity, I will define two terms, or at least how I intend for them to be understood: ‘adult life’ and ‘relationship’ I am only 20 years old, meaning I have not experienced a huge amount of ‘adult life’ so I don’t say I have spent most of it being in relationships to emphasis the length of time but rather the familiarity of it – it has been characteristic of my adult life thus far. So, I would say my adult life began when I started university – this was when my life drastically changed in terms of independence and freedom to essentially make my own decisions and in turn face the consequences of them. As for ‘relationship’ this is an unsuspectingly hard classification to make nowadays. As Drake put it: “We live in a generation of not being in love, and not being together, but we sure make it feel like we're together, because we're scared to see each other with somebody else” The term relationship is not as straight forwards as someone who you have formally agreed to being boyfriend/girlfriend with. I guess we all have our own clarifications, but I would say that a relationship is being in regular and frequent contact with someone, where it has been established by both of you that there is an attraction and a commitment to some degree to one another. In my short adult life, I have experienced almost the full spectrum, from a situation where we both liked each other and had discussed commitment but were never ‘official’ to being engaged to someone with the obvious direction towards marriage. And I would describe them all as relationships in some capacity. And now I find myself very single, a lot of questions and thoughts on the matter now sit with me – Do I want to be in a relationship? What’s enjoyable about being single and what’s not so enjoyable about being single? Do I thrive better in or out of relationships? How do I actually know how to be ‘single’? When I took the time to honestly reflect, it seemed logical to conclude that I did enjoy being in relationships, more than I do being single. This was a surprisingly difficult conclusion for me to come to, especially in this ‘men-are-trash-you-don’t-need-him’ generation and because I would describe myself as an independent female which is in my mind and perhaps in some of yours, is synonymous with being able to live a fulfilled single life, one where I don’t need a man to be happy. The thing is though, as of late, I constantly have love on my brain – the taste of love, the feel of love, the smell of love, the warmth of love…I think about lazy Sunday’s in bed, cuddling and talking about nothing, about someone missing me and adoring me in a way that they do no one else. And I consider…maybe I’m just suited to relationships – maybe I’m happiest in relationships. Then it occurred to me – that comfort does not mean happiness and equally a lack of comfort does not mean unhappiness. I was certainly comfortable/used to being in relationships, after all this was the state in which I’d spent most of my adult life and in (and in many respects, this did breed happiness). So then; this place I now find myself in, where I desire to be in a relationship may not be because I’m unhappy being single and is certainly not because I don’t love myself enough but perhaps just because I am uncomfortable being single – it’s not something I’m used to and so naturally something I will avoid (consciously and subconsciously) We are creatures of routine and comfort – we do things and crave things, sometimes because they make us happy but a lot of the time because they make us feel comfortable, the familiarity of them makes us feel safe and this is exactly the way addiction works. After a while, a substance, a thing, or a person does not even have to make you happy to get you to seek after it – it’s enough that at one point it did – the relationship drug. But like I touched upon before, what is comfortable is not necessarily what is best for us; contrary – there is often so much to be gained and enjoyed in the uncomfortable, in the unknown. Which reminds me of this quote… Why is it that people prefer known hells to unknown heavens? So, upon this realisation, I came to this conclusion – singleness isn’t necessarily bad for me and wanting a relationship is not an indicator that it is good for me.
I am determined to explore the treasures to be found in this ‘unknown heaven’, From now on, I will learn the rhythms of singleness like a samba or a waltz. I will look at myself in the mirror and be okay with knowing that today, someone may not call me beautiful but I still am. I will smile at quirky lines in books and movies instead of cute ‘Good morning beautiful texts’ I will go on dates and be okay with the fact that the guy sitting in front of me may be unimaginably boring or might make me laugh until I cry – I will be okay with the fact that I don’t know what he’ll order because he is new to me. I’ll ask a friend to go to that new fancy restaurant with me instead and take myself for coffee on winter afternoons. I’ll take myself to Paris and call it lovely. I will become comfortable with the uncomfortable. All my love Mayfair x Hey guys, So I have been gone a while and honestly I have no excuses, I've had more time on my hands than I've had in a very long time, yet I still have not been consistent in the thing I've promised myself I would be. As I promised you guys, I will be open and transparent with you - so there is my truth, as undesirable as it may be. So I was pretty much giving myself a pep talk as you do and I figured that someone else may need a firm voice in their ear as well so here it is. So I've noticed that there are these 'shift' moments in life, where something in you is awakened, a sudden awareness of the current season you are in and what it demands of you. It's like when its been winter for a while yet the weather has been pretty mild so you barley notice that it's come about, until one day the snow starts falling and the temperature drops to a stupid temperature and its like winter announcing "I AM HERE, NOW NOTICE ME". In the same way new seasons in life announce the very same thing to us, demanding that we notice their presence and meet the demands of the new season or die trying. So today was one of those days where life announced "I AM HERE, NOW NOTICE ME". This is the season to give it your all, its going to require everything from you, every moment matters and every second counts. You cannot afford to fail so DO NOT FAIL. Life is too fleeting to accept average, to be mediocre. This is your masterpiece, now work like the world is waiting for its grand unveiling, work like half the world is waiting for you to fail and the other half is cheering you on. No more mistakes, no more excuses, no more wasted days. You can't afford afford it, this is game time, main stage. It's time to do exactly what you said you would do - grind like you said you would, hit the gym hard like you said you would, get on your knee's and pray like you said you would, burn holes in those books like you said you would. You know what you deserve, now command that life gives it to you. I will have it all, I will smash every goal, I will succeed in every area - you are THAT girl. Now close your eyes and see it, smell it, be it, believe it. GRIND TIME! I hope this encourages some of you guys, lets shine!
All my love Mayfair xx Hey guys ! Sorry I've been gone a while, life has been a bit crazy (but beautiful) however I'm back and hope to be as consistent as I can. So when I started this blog I vowed that I would be real , authentic and vulnerable with you guys and believe me that is not easy but in a world full of pretense and 'fronting' it can be a saving grace. So this post will be just that..me being real and open with you guys. So anyone who knows me, knows that I am zealous, fiery or as some like to put it 'hard-headed'. I'd say this is one of my biggest strengths - If I believe in something, then I'm all in, if I see something that I want then I will exercise sickening work ethic to get it, In most cases I'm driven by what I believe (my convictions). But as with most great strengths it can also be a double edged sward, with just as prominent weaknesses...
When you're someone who is passionate and aims to be driven by convictions rather than just seeing where the wind takes you, I've found that it often means that I commit to things without fully exploring my thoughts on the issue, without giving myself the benefit of time to bring to light the very complex workings of my mind and the sometimes very gentle whispers of my soul. I then find myself in situations where I've bound myself by my words or deeds to uphold a certain conviction or belief without really allowing time to reveal where my head, my heart and my spirit are really at, to assess weather I'm actually fully committed to that which I say I am... Weather it's 'Alcohol is literally poison to you're body - I never want to touch it again' and then realising that I actually really do love the occasional glass of prosecco or red wine or weather its my on going journey of self love and self acceptance... Now this is a funny one; I believe I have come a really long way in this area, there was a point where I literally could not stand to look at my face in the mirror because my skin (in my eyes) was horrible and wouldn't dream of going to an event without makeup on because I had to 'look my best' as if my natural form wasn't Gods absolute masterpiece. I now love my skin, even when its breaking out or is really dry because of the summer heat and I can now walk confidently into in a room with my bare face knowing that I am beautiful and don't have to compare myself to anyone. God truly began to transform my heart and show me that even without makeup I AM ENOUGH. So for those of you who are loyal (real mvp's) you may have read my blog post on 'why I'm giving up makeup' and this decision did genuinely come from a transformation which first began in my heart but what I realised was that it's okay to be in a process, It's okay to not be there yet and to be 100% real with you, I am not there yet. There are still days where I wake up and feel like wearing makeup and beautiful dresses I see whilst I'm shopping which make me think 'that would bang with a red lip' so I'm sort of faced with this battle of 'I've committed to doing this because of x belief and 'But I still want to do x'. So whats the answer? Give yourself time, it's okay to be in a process. Its okay for a work to have stated in your heart but to not yet be complete, Its okay to decide that you don't like the idea of animals being killed for us to eat but still be transitioning to vegetarianism, It's okay to realise that your body is a temple and your health matters but still struggle to get up to go to the gym sometimes, It's okay to realise that you want a better relationship with God but still be in the process of letting that show on the outside. It's okay to not be there yet, you will get there so don't be so hard on yourself. Work on the inside and everything you desire to be manifest on the outside will come. All my love Mayfair x Questioning my convictions. Lost in this circle of why do I believe what I believe? who am I and who do I wanna be? I'm questioning my convictions. Nowhere feels like home anymore, are our souls in a constant state of limbo settling only for a while to breath, to listen? I'm questioning my convictions. Are my thoughts really my own thoughts? are my conclusions really my conclusions? or am I trapped in a state of thinking adopted from this ideological state apparatus? Questioning my convictions Are mistakes ever really mistakes, if all we know how to do is assess that which is within us and act accordingly? But what is that which is within us? what is that which is holding us, driving us, in a sense controlling us? What are my convictions? Am I dreaming? if I'm dreaming, am I sleeping? If I'm sleeping, am I seeing? if I'm not seeing then I am just being, no not being but being controlled by someone else's convictions. Which begs the question what then are my own convictions? Do I have any convictions at all because you see the every act of questioning a conviction is a contradiction, you cannot question that which is seemingly unshakable, seemly unquestionable To question your own convictions is a contradiction. So, if I have no conviction, I must be driven by addiction, the man that is driven by addiction requires no existing convictions, he requires no existing convictions because his actions are not the product of his thinking but his addiction. So, what then is the source of our addictions, what then is the source of this enslavement we find ourselves under and where then are our convictions Where is our freedom? Where is our freedom? Oh, I need my freedom. The irony in a word that that suggests bondage but really means freedom. Freedom to be led by what I believe, what I believe and nothing else. To be guided by my conviction 's Freedom, There is freedom in our convictions, yet I still find myself questioning these convictions Questioning my convictions. So guys that was a poem I wrote a while back, during a time where i was really evaluating life, my actions, the place they come from and the things I believe.
I hope that as you read this you get a little insight int my mind and the very internal questions I was asking myself and that perhaps it stirs some questions within yourself. Life is about adaptation, never be afraid to question the person you are and the person you are becoming and to ruthlessly edit it. All my love Mayfair x I always hated looking at old photographs because even though there’s that small, moment where those memories make you feel all warm inside, so warm inside that you convince yourself that you can almost feel that experience of happiness again.
But inevitably there’s that crash back to reality, that realisation that you could look and look at that old photograph and long and long for it to be a part of your today and still, that moment of happiness wouldn’t be here right now, it wouldn’t be your present. It would still just be a moment of happiness that you had. One that you will never have again. Happiness is transient, made up of elements which existed at a time, those elements which made us feel all warm inside, which we labelled as…happiness. Those elements change constantly, there won’t ever be a moment again where all of those elements collide again to form a present happiness. One element which is constantly changing is us, I’m a different person now to who I was when that photograph was taken. My expectations of love may be different, my mental state might be different, my perception might be different so even if those elements were to collide in the way that they did in my past, It would not give me the same feeling of happiness because I am different, my perception of that experience would be different. It wouldn’t be the happiness that I was so desperately clutching at. It does us no good then to hold on to a past happiness, to grasp at a happiness we won’t ever experience again, at least not in a way that’s anything close to the fullness of reality. So, instead of looking at old photographs and attempting to grasp at past happiness, I’d rather put all my energy into experiencing the moment I’m in right now. The elements which exist right now, the ones that I don’t have to wish for or grasp at because they exist right now and the me that is experiencing them won’t ever exist in the same way again. I’d rather relish in that experience, the one I’m having presently, weather ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – just to sit with it, not label it but just sit with that reality, breathe it in and be with it. Ps. So, I lied a little, I love to look at old photographs but the point I wanted to make was that there’s no use in trying to grasp at the past, by all means reminisce on past experiences but just don’t grasp. In doing that you rob yourself of the fullness of the moment right now and become the very source of your own disappointment. Don’t grasp, Stay present. All my love Mayfair x |
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