Shifting Slowly

Have you ever?
Have you just ever?
Have you ever just wanted to yell so loud, “YOU DON’T GET ME! Never have, NEVER WILL!”
Then you breathe in.
Breathe out.
And it hits you;
You don’t have to yell at all because they don’t get it and they don’t need to get it. I have been in a constant state of panic and validation. Thinking that if only just this once she’d get me. If only just this once she’d say, “ok, I support you. I’ve been wrong all along. You are special. You have made a perfect life for yourself. You are the daughter I have always wanted.” The reality is, she’ll never get me and the bigger reality to that is, that’s ok. She doesn’t have to get me. She got to put me on this earth but then it was up to me to get me. It was up to me to make a life for myself. She gave me life then it was mine to take.
The constant back and forth that I had to get validation from her has been a battle I’ve dealt with for over 37 years. That’s 37 years of the 38 I’ve been living. That’s a LONG ASS TIME and it’s mostly my fault. My fault because I allowed it to go on this long. It’s taken me 37 years to get my ass into gear and ask myself, “wtf have you been doing all this time? It’s been a waste. You have wasted your time on her comfort, her feelings, when all along she has not once, NOT ONE TIME asked you or considered yours.” So I put down my guard. I put down my façade of a perfect anything and I open my heart to me.
I am JUST learning to love myself. I am just realizing how important it is to love yourself without judgement. How important it is to love yourself without being told that it’s selfish to put yourself first. This is what I was taught. I was taught that loving yourself was egotistical, it was selfish, it was wrong. So all my life I lived loving and putting others first and me, well I was somewhere deep, deep behind that line of people I was taking care of. And being that far behind I got lost.
I got so lost I started believing all these lies about myself. I started making up stories about myself. That I wasn’t good enough, tall enough, pretty enough, smart enough, diligent enough, intelligent enough, sexy enough, I JUST WASN’T ENOUGH! I was so not enough I started to believe that my crooked smile was ugly, that my bold legs were embarrassing, that my sloped nose was too round, that my laugh was too loud, that my butt was too big, EVERY SINGLE THING SHE EVER SAID TO ME, I BELIEVED. I then started to believe I wasn’t making the right decisions for my daughter. That I somehow was fucking her up. She wasn’t being raised right, eating the right foods, believing the right things, becoming well rounded. What was I doing?!
That hole she was digging was getting so big and I was burying myself so deep into it I lost complete sight of myself. How did I survive this long without self-destructing into a million pieces?
And then I had an epiphany. I started to slowly come to remember who I had been. I started to remember that I was bubbly, happy and satisfied once. That I was confident. That I had dreams. That I had helped numerous friends out of their own ruts. I had enjoyed life once. That I had style. That I loved my crooked smile and bold legs. That I used to run out of the pure joy of the high of it. I loved to write constantly. I remembered being funny. I made people laugh. I remembered the 1st year of my daughter’s life knowing exactly who I was as a mother and completely astonished at the chance to be raising a human I took part in creating. I had been part of a miracle and I was allowing someone to take that all this magic away. I remembered this person and yet she seemed so very far from me.
And this is what depression does. It angers you, it takes you away from who you once were. It has you doubt yourself. It has you forget who you once were. It has you question whether you can walk out your front door and make it through the day. It has you believe Every. Single. Lie. You. Tell. Yourself. It has you believe that you will NEVER, EVER get back to who you were. It is such a fucked up thing and takes control over your entire being. It is a cancer of your soul.
Depression is repressed anger. And it was not until I got to understand this that I was able to come out of my hole. I thought, anger? I’m not an angry person. I don’t yell and scream and make scenes. And it’s for that very reason that I became depressed. I didn’t yell at her enough. I didn’t stand up for myself enough. I didn’t put myself first enough. I didn’t do enough for myself and along the way, I believed I wasn’t enough.
Life for you starts at your first whimper. In that first cry, you are telling others what you need. What you’re missing. We forget to do that as we get older. We are taught crying is wrong. We are taught that things are earned and asking for more is selfish. So we go along with what’s expected instead of what our desires are. And it’s in the expectations of others we lose ourselves.
How do you live a life knowing you’re enough? Always ask yourself, “Is this what I want or what I think others will expect of me?” The “others” can be anyone. Sometimes we think we’re living our truest self but if in living your truest self you begin to see you’re putting your feelings second out of fear of hurting someone else’s, then it’s time you take a step back and reflect a bit on what your heart is truly desiring and remembering you are enough for yourself and you don’t need validation from anyone.