It is a long walk forward.

Therapy, as it turns out, is scary for a reason. All of these dark corners that I have either forgotten about on purpose or have just not wanted to venture into for a while are suddenly getting a flood light left on them. I’ll be honest with you..this little venture forward to heal and learn to work with everything hasn’t been the easiest of walks.

I feel like I’m getting a LOT Of my power back, that is definitely for sure. At the same time though, I am gaining a lot of awareness of things in my life that just don’t serve me anymore but are extremely hard to let go of. I’ll give you a great example that has been coming up a lot lately: I basically think that every person in my life is 1 piece of information away from leaving my life. It’s a pattern that has been present for a very long time for me and has sabotaged good relationships with people for as long as I can remember: I will hold crap back if I feel like it will change your opinion of me. I didn’t come up with that little dark patch on my own. This was a carefully cultivated manipulation tactic that I didn’t realize was even still there until like..last week.

I think by now I can be straight up honest with you, whoever is reading this, and myself. I’m grappling with the fact that my late husband was the last person to perpetuate the negative things I was taught to believe about myself. I don’t think for a half second that he did this on purpose, it was just all he knew how to do. I’ve been told my whole life that I was too much for people to one degree or another and to hide myself or portions of myself because I was too weird, too eccentric, too smart, too vanilla, too plain, too boring..etc. I wasn’t likeable or lovable but the masks I could wear often made up for it. And yes. My Father told me this. My sister told me this. My husband told me this. I have had friends tell me this. And it is only now with some clarity that I understand my fear of this has caused others to walk away from me, too. I am always expecting that there will be 1 piece of information….1 behavior…1 wrong move…and people will leave. And so, I retreat. Even if I 100% trust you, there will be a moment where this wonderful *sarcasm* dark thought train will tell me that you are going to find something bad out and you’ll be gone…so mask up. Use armor. Do not be you under any circumstances.

I’d like to not do that anymore. I’d like to not be afraid of it anymore. And I want to be fully open with the people in my life because I think the ones I have now are more likely to go “Wow, you’re weird. I like it” than anything else.

I’m learning. I’m growing. I’m pulling knives out of myself and I’m trying desperately to piece these things back together. It’s a long road forward, but my feet are moving.

❤