Verandering
Becoming part of a ESC-project does not only change your surroundings. New people and a new culture will eventually create a new you and make you grow in a way you haven´t known before.. if you let the change happen.
One month ago I wrote about how I have been experiencing those changes.. here it is:
post scriptum: If it was not for one very special person in my life I would not have been able to learn so much about me.. thank you.<3
Drogeham, 19.05.2022
Changes. And more changes. And then sometimes it feels like nothing at all. Like being stuck. Like getting so used to being not the same person anymore that it is hard to see the change, to acknowledge and also to celebrate it.
The why and what´s behind it.
I feel like a stranger to me sometimes.
Which is weird because I actually never really knew who I was but I have been starting to get to know myself better during the last months. I am letting go of the idea of me, of who I think I was, who I wanted to be because I thought that was what I was supposed to be. The idea I started to call my life not because of me but the people around me for whom I created images to force me into: The perfect daughter who wants to please everyone because I am so scared of disappointing my family. The loving girlfriend who goes along with lacking attention in her relationship because I didn´t want to be needy. The caring friend who puts herself, her doubts, anger, struggles back because I did not want to steal anyones stage, because I wanted to give my friends the full attention as that is what they deserve. The more it hurt when this image wasn´t appreciated. When I got yelled at by my parents, accused by my ex and rejected by my friends. I tried to please everyone, tried to put myself in as many images as possible to make them all happy. I tried to not forget myself in all of it as well but when I did, I seemed to disappoint all other people around me. So I decided to slowly fade away.
Creating illusions, building and keeping up images for others, holding back myself because of fear and glorifying others while keeping myself at a really low level of worth. I have been doing it all because I thought I needed that in order to survive. Reality is hard for me as soon as it gets real. No one asked me to put up those patterns, I did it all by mysef and thought it was what would allow me to be. What would give me permission to exist because I would not think of myself anymore but about others. Their behaviour, their thoughts, their actions. I like to care about the people around me way more than to care about me. But the “Care taking” I have been giving because I thought this was it what allowed me to be was intoxicating. Because you can not take care of others if you can not take care of yourself. I need to help myself first. I need to learn how to love myself, more: learn that I am worth to be self loved. That everyone makes mistakes and I am a part of everyone. That I am not no one. Same rights for me. I am equal.
Writing this I am trying to convince myself because I am not there yet. I have been telling myself opposite for a really long time and it is hard to admit that I deserve what is best for me. And to find out who is me.
I feel like a stranger to me and I know why.
Because I am starting so see the idea of me behind which I have hidden for so long. I realise more that all the hatred, darkness and fear is not me. Yes, it is a part of me but it is not what defines me in total. So I feel like a stranger to me when the darkness takes over. When I want to be in control so badly so I don´t get hurt, so I can shut off and have the power which others had so often over me. The darkness hates the change I am going through because it doesn´t want me to change. It hates the change because this is the part of me which hates me. Which doesn´t think I deserve better, which wants to give up on me. Which thinks I am a bad person or at least a lost soul where all effort is lost. I feel like a stranger to me then because I know the light so much better now. On the other hand the darkness arouses and attracts me as well, pulls me in when I let it come to close. It lures me with self destruction that feels like home to me as I fled there so many times. I know this place. I know its dark corners, the numbness which I chose over real happiness because it took away the fear of getting hurt. The fear that comes when you love, are happy and yourself because than you are vulnerable and open for pain and getting hurt. So the darkness offered me numbness instead and I gratefully took it. I know this dark place and how it tempts you to self destruction so it becomes an addiction. All little senteces in your head, no one can hear, sometimes not even you. They whisper, talk and shout sometimes. They can be ignored but only sometimes and you can always call them back if you feel too good. Too secure. Because they are for sure insecure, so you can hide behind them. Shut out the world and hug the demons while you let them break you. “Because that is what you deserve” they whisper in my ear while I feel them stomping on my heart. While I am breaking my own heart. I am heartbroken. Because I broke up with me many years ago. But I have never given up my hopes up completely. And that is why I can change. Why I am changing.
The how and the steps I have figured out
Seeing changes within myself is difficult for me. It seems really abstract to me to talk about change which is not visible on the first sight. The change I am talking about and going through is not as obvious to people as the one you might have after visiting a hairdresser. It is much more subtile but also much more powerful then another hairstyle could ever be. Change is a process which for me starts with seeing and realising the momentary circumstance. The “problem” if you want to call it like that. The patterns which I have developed and stopped to reflect on because from a certain day on I just accepted them as “normal” and the way it is supposed to be. After the realisation comes more realisation. The moments when I behaved a certain way. The emotions I am having, the people who are involved. With those realisations the next step isn´t far away: the getting to know the origin of the pattern. This is a really hard one. But after breaking through this one, breaking through the pain it gets better. It feels like drowning while I am going through those steps, drowning in memories, emotions, disbelieve and belief until by seeing where it all began I am finally reaching the bottom of the ocean. And from there I am ready to see the light above me and start swimming towards it because I know the way so much better now.