I usually post about client experiences as opposed to specifically my own but feel the need to express some thoughts as of late.
I, as have many of you, have had many hardships in my life that have led me in the past to do things that today I’m not that proud of. In fact, even while I was doing them I wasn’t all too proud of it but quite honestly didn’t have the tools to handle them any differently at the time.
Whether it be a death in my family or a loved one, the destruction of a business partnership, broken friendships or relationships, I’ve had a lot of shit from a young age that has molded me into the person I am today. Some think pessimistic, some think “glass half empty”, but you don’t walk away from adversity without it affecting you and changing your outlook on things.
Even at a young age I, though forced to not by choice, have had to learn to appreciate and even take whatever good could possibly come out of a horrible experience to be able to get though it. I realized that the world doesn’t stop spinning after a devastating blow no matter how much you think or wish it would. Life does go on, new babies are born, birthdays are had, holidays still come and we learn somehow to embrace them.
It’s taken me years, and I mean many, to get to a place of loving myself enough to not allow self sabotage or even hurt myself with what I thought at the time was helpful. I guess some would say self medicating. We all do it. Whether it is food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sweets, smoking, the list goes on and on. It’s a lifelong work in progress, for me anyway. I can easily start baking or eating sweets to make myself feel better but in the grand scheme of things, that’s acceptable to me. That can’t hurt me but instead make my belly fuller, or make money for my dentist..
In the past I would do much worse with little or no regard for my safety or well being. It didn’t matter all that much to me at the time. I knew I had to function at work and be there for my family, but I was also on a slow course of suicide that anyone that has used drugs or alcohol I’m sure can relate to.
Years of therapy and the ever present reminder of what the loss of my sisters life has done to me, and my family, has opened up a world of promise for me. Again, it’s a journey for me and probably will never end, but I am thankfully at a good place.
Recently I became single again and it brought up all of the same emotions, abandonment, loneliness, feeling unloved and unworthy, betrayal, etc. Yes I wanted to do drugs, yes I wanted to hook up with random people, yes I wanted to smoke. Anything and everything to dull the pain and make myself feel better, if only for a few minutes, or a few hours. But I didn’t. I’m not.
Instead, I suffer. I feel the pain. The loneliness. But I refuse to surrender to it. I refuse to let it define me. I am allowing it in and I am feeling it. I am feeling the pain and loss that I probably should have felt decades ago. No filter.
It’s not easy but it’s amazing. To feel. To be present. I drove, and will most likely continue to, drive my friends and family crazy. Crazy with fear for me, worry for me, support for me, but ultimately love for me, and I am forever grateful.
No one said it would be easy. In fact it gets harder! For sure nobody told me that. I was under the illusion that life got easier with age. What the hell was I thinking?!?
But it’s an amazing journey all the same. The people that come in and out of my life. The experiences are not lost on me. My friends, my clients, my family. We share joys and hardships. But we grow together. Even when we weave in and out of each others lives, we grow together.