I am lovable. I forget that sometimes. I don’t feel lovable. So how can it be true? Am I worth loving? Am I worth knowing? I struggle with self-hate. Self-doubt. I struggle with feeling like I am worth it. I have believed for so long that I am not lovable and I am not worth it and it is very hard to change those beliefs. I find that part of me actually resists changing those beliefs. Part of me resists the truth. The truth that I am loved. That I am worth it. That I am good. I built my view of myself and the world around the lies that I am not lovable. My entire belief system is constructed around this. And now that it is being dismantled, now that I might be lovable, I am finding myself desperately searching for something familiar to hold on to. If I truly am lovable then that changes everything. That changes the way I see myself, other people, the world. This is a good thing, I know, but I’m finding myself resisting it. Because I am afraid of change. I am afraid of my belief system being dismantled. I am afraid of who I will become. What I could accomplish. I could be successful. I could achieve my dreams. I could get married and have kids. I could live a long, fulfilling life. None of these things have seemed possible before. When I used to think about the future it was always filled with darkness, hopelessness, and death. Now when I think about the future it is filled with possibilities, hope. These are good things, I know. But the speed at which everything is changing is very overwhelming. So I am finding myself desperately looking for something familiar to hold on to. Something that will slow the process down. Something that will help me feel like I have some control over all the change. These familiar things are not good for me. No, they are the opposite of what I really want. But I have found myself turning back to them recently. Trying to slow the process down. Trying to feel in control. What’s happening is that I’m really just feeling like shit. Flirting with the things that once threatened my life in an attempt to feel in control. I know how resist them. I know how to get back on the path. But I am afraid of where I am heading. I am afraid of the success.
Walls
I have been angry and frustrated recently with the walls people have around their hearts. With the walls I have around my heart. I have been frustrated with how difficult it is to put down these walls. I have been frustrated that the people I long to be close to have not put down their walls. But I think I understand. I understand that as innocent children we had to construct these walls to survive. I understand that when we were at the mercy of others, when we could not control our circumstances or how we were treated or who we were around, we had to do something to survive. And so we built walls around our beautifully sensitive hearts. To protect us from the pain we didn’t know how to cope with. To protect us from the confusion and sense of powerlessness. Our walls helped us survive.
More than anything, I long to connect with people. I long to share my heart and listen to theirs. I long to be open. To trust. To be known. And I get so angry at myself when I can’t do these things. I get so angry at myself when I shut down or throw my walls up or hide. If I long to share my heart with people, why can’t I sometimes? Why do I find myself fighting against myself? It’s because it takes time to realize I am safe now. It takes time to realize that not everyone wants to hurt me. It takes time to realize that some people love me and some people will stay. It takes time to put my walls down. These walls that helped me survive. These walls that protected my heart when there was unimaginable pain and tragedy going on around me. These walls helped me survive. Over time I will learn how to put them down. Over time I will learn how to let people in. I already am. I am learning to trust. I am learning how to open up. It is taking time, yes. But I am learning. I am growing. I am learning that some people want to be let in. I am learning that some people are safe. I am learning that I am worth being known. You are worth being known. I am learning that to heal, we must put our walls down. We must take that risk. And I am learning that the risk is worth it. I am learning that, as I open my heart, I am feeling the pain and grief I avoided as a child but that I am also beginning to feel whole. I am beginning to feel connected. I am beginning to feel loved. So I will give myself grace. And I will continue to try to put my walls down. And it will take time. And it will be hard. But I believe that, in the end, it will be worth it.
My Family has a Story
I never realized before how important family history is. My father is adopted and I have never known much about his side of the family. I didn’t think it was a big deal though until I started learning bits and pieces of his story, of my grandmother’s story, of why she chose to put him and his twin brother up for adoption. I started hearing bits and pieces of her pain. Of my father’s pain. I started understanding her story. My story. How I came to be. It was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. The puzzle of my story, my parent’s story, my family’s story. There has been a lot of trauma in my family. A lot of loss. A lot of abandonment. A lot of pain and heartache that has never been talked about. It has probable never been talked about because it is too painful to talk about. No one has known how to talk about it. We have been too afraid to talk about it. And the pain has been passed down from one generation to the next. Through the younger generation observing the older generation. Through the younger generation being raised a certain way by the older generation. I have come to fear abandonment. Loss. I have come to fear the same things my parents fear.
There is a lot that I don’t know about my family. There is a lot that I have not wanted to know. A lot that I have not wanted to see. There is pain. There is heartache. There is brokenness. I don’t think any of us want to see it. We have been ignoring it for so long. But I do not want to ignore it any longer. I want to understand it. I want to face it. I want to feel it. I want to heal. I have a lot of anger towards my family. Anger that I have pushed down and that I have turned towards myself. But I think a lot of this anger comes from not understanding. I don’t understand my family. I don’t understand where we came from. I don’t know the things that have happened that have caused us to be the way that we are. The things that have happened that have caused us to be afraid of feeling. Afraid of talking about hard things. Afraid of being rejected. I do not understand the things that have happened that have caused us to build walls around our sensitive hearts. I am ready now to start the process of understanding these things. I am ready to ask the questions and find the answers, however painful they might be. I have a story. My parents have a story. My family has a story. It has made us who we are. This is a story worth knowing. This is a story worth telling. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is not something to hide. My family matters. And our story is not one to hide.
Am I Worth the Price Tag of Recovery?
Am I worth the thousands of dollars that have been spent for my recovery? Thousands of dollars on therapy, psychiatry, treatment. Thousands of dollars on medicine and appointments. Am I worth it? Is my recovery worth it? I feel this burden. This financial burden. I feel guilty. I feel responsible. I feel like it is my fault. I feel like if I had just tried harder all this money would not have needed to be spent. I feel weak. I feel angry. I do not feel like I am worth thousands and thousands of dollars. What makes it harder is that the money spent was not all mine. Much of it was from family members who knew that I could not pay it on my own. And I feel so guilty. I feel like I have stolen their money. Wasted it. Squandered it. If I had just been strong enough to recover on my own then this money would not have needed to be spent. Thousands and thousands of dollars. The things that this money could have gone towards. Vacation, fun, adventure. Instead of spending this hard earned money on pleasurable things, it was spent on me. The weak one. The one who couldn’t get her shit together. The one who needed help. I feel like I don’t deserve this help.
I feel all this pressure to do well now. Is the money going somewhere? Is it being useful? Is it helping? Well yes, if it wasn’t for the thousands of dollars that allowed me to go to therapy and treatment, I probably wouldn’t be alive right now. So yes, the money is helping. But what if I relapse? What if I slip? What if I slide backwards? Will I have wasted this money then? Would I have made none of this worth it? Will I make them angry? I feel like I must continue to do well so the ones who have helped me pay for therapy and treatment are happy with where their money has gone. I feel the pressure not to mess up. Not to waste what they have given me.
Is it my fault I struggle with mental illness? Is it my fault I need help? Is it my fault I needed therapy and treatment and that I might continue to for a while? No. Mental illness is nobody’s fault. It is a disease just like cancer or diabetes and ‘trying harder’ will not make it miraculously disappear just like ‘trying harder’ does not make cancer or diabetes disappear. No, it takes time. It takes medicine and treatment just like any other disease. It takes money to pay for this medicine and treatment just like any other disease. I think the invisibility of mental illness often makes people forget that it is a disease. It often causes me to forget. I often blame myself for having a mental illness. I blame myself for struggling. But when someone is born with another life threatening diseases is it their fault?
I feel the financial burden of my recovery. I hate it. I wish it wasn’t there. I wish money hadn’t needed to be spent on it or on me. But the truth is, I was born with a disease. A disease in my mind. And it takes money and it takes treatment and it takes help to recover from it. I am getting that help. I am getting that support. I am still alive because of it. Others may not understand. In fact, most people do not realize what goes in to the process of recovering from a mental illness. But I do. And I know that it is worth it. I know that the money spent has been worth it. I am getting my life back. I am coming alive. And it is worth it. You cannot place a price tag on someone’s life. Not ever. It doesn’t matter who the person is or how much money it is. You cannot place a price tag on someone’s life. Do I hate that this money has been spent on me? Yes. But I am getting my life back. And you cannot place a price tag on that.
What if I Cry?
I have been feeling this week. I am not typically a person who cries. I used to when I was younger. I would cry all the time. The smallest things would hurt my sensitive heart and I would not be able to stop the tears from flowing. I eventually started picking up on the cues around me that this was not a good thing. I must be strong. I must keep it together. Crying is a weakness. People will think less of me if I cry. People will think I am too sensitive and overly dramatic. So when I was 8 years old, I shut it down. I shut my heart down. I built a wall inside of me that kept my tears locked away. If something hurt my sensitive heart I learned how to disconnect from it. And so I stopped crying.
I am 28 years old now and I am beginning to learn that it is ok to cry. I am beginning to learn that it draws people to me and connects me with them. I am beginning to learn that people want to be with me in my tears and sadness. To me, crying is the most vulnerable thing I could do. It is letting people completely into my heart and completely into my pain. When I cry it feels like I am really letting people see me and that terrifies me. If I am around people and I start to feel my tears come up I immediately shut down. Not because I want to but because I have been doing it for so long that it has become an automatic response. It was a survival mechanism when I was younger and though I want to let people in now this automatic response often prevents me from doing so.
I have been trying to shift this automatic response. I have been trying to allow myself to feel when I am around others. I have been trying not to shut down my sadness. And this week something terrifying happened. I cried. In front of people. I started crying and I could not shut it down. Something had touched my sensitive heart. Something that triggered painful memories. Something that made me so very sad. And the tears started flowing. My heart has been shut down for so long and it is now starting to wake up again. And there are many tears that need to be shed. Tears that I have kept locked away for so many years. Does this scare me? Yes. For someone who believes that tears will scare people away, the idea of allowing others to see them terrifies me. But I want to cry these tears. I want to finally let them out. I want to heal. As time goes on, I hope the automatic response of shutting down my heart won’t be so automatic. As time goes on, I hope that I can let people in to this most vulnerable part of me more and more. The people I cried in front of this week still love me. They still care about me. They still want to be friends.
Is it ok to cry? Is it ok to let people see my tears? Is it ok to let people see my sadness and pain? I think it is. It terrifies me and the scared child inside of me says that it is not, but I think it is. I think it is how I heal. I want to heal. I want to let people see this part of me. And so I will give myself grace. I will give myself grace when I cry and I will give myself grace when I shut down. This is a process. Healing is a process. I am learning. I am growing. And my heart is slowly coming back to life.