In my experience, and I’m betting I’m not alone here, it is extremely easy to focus on what you have lost in the aftermath of any major trauma in your life rather than focusing on the positives. I have a semi-sort of theory for why this is the case: one of our largest societal rules is to not ever celebrate your accomplishments more than you mourn your failures.
I’ve talked about failure a few different times in this blog and my journey to accepting what true failure actually means vs what perceived failure has meant. It is important to check, double check, triple check, and so on and so forth these perceptions of our reality and what they actually mean.
I have spent a very large chunk of my life thinking that I was an awful daughter, that I’m an awful sister, that I’m a terrible friend and not worth knowing, that I was an awful grand-daughter, that I was a fucking amazingly bad girlfriend before moving on to being an even worse wife. When my thoughts get particularly dark, I start thinking that it is good that I lost my children because I’d likely have failed as a Mom as well. In my worst of worst moments, the urge to reach out and find someone to just tell me that I’m not as bad as I think I am is intense because then it triggers the “You’re being annoying, you’re being too much, you’re being too present, you’re being too crazy. No one likes baggage, you shouldn’t be talking about all of this. It’s no wonder you’re alone and always have been” thought trains. My depression’s obsession with where I have failed is overwhelming and hard to overcome. And I only mention it like this right now because I need to call it out for the bullshit that it is.
Or well, I guess more accurately, I mention it because both myself and my therapist call it out for the bullshit that it is..because what I’ve gained from everything has far outweighed the losses. That’s a hard pill to swallow when you’ve lost a lot. I do see it, though, and I think it is important that we all acknowledge that as well.
First off, I was NOT and am not an actual failure at most of the things I seem to think I am. Failure for me in my current life doesn’t really exist so much as a negative as a teaching tool. I learned to pivot and change direction so fast that it can make other people’s heads spin.
Second, and probably the hardest for me to really wrap my brain around, really amazing things have come about in the aftermath of the things I have experienced.
I have a career I love, and not only that! I have a career that I cultivated from the ground up, pushing past generational boundaries to get to. Nothing I have done in my life job wise has ever been an accident. I have calculated every move with precision in an effort to create and maintain a stability that I didn’t have when I was younger. Yes, that’s a defense mechanism, but I am REALLY good at what I do. I don’t care if I’m tooting my own horn here. I am good with people. I am good at bringing humanity into spaces where it normally doesn’t exist. And I do it well. I would not be where I am right now had I not lost the things in my life that I thought I couldn’t live without.
I have people in my life who I love and care about to the depths of my soul that would not be in my life as they are now had Alex not died. That’s the cold, hard truth on that one. I have gained family and friends that never would have been in my life without him and that have watched me grow into the version of myself that I am now, cheering every step of the process along the way. And I have people in my life who didn’t know me before that. I have people in my life who didn’t know anything about any of the rest of my trauma, either, that still didn’t run screaming for the hills when they found out about it.
I have built a life that I can be proud of out of the ashes of what has tried to destroy me.
I am who I am now because of what I have experienced. A lot of my experiences have SUCKED. I won’t lie to you about that. It currently sucks to have to weed through all of this for the little pieces of my soul that I didn’t even realize were still there. It sucks to have to realize that you have patterns of behavior that have RUINED things in your life. It sucks to realize that you’ve been abused and neglected. IT REALLY SUCKS to realize that your extreme independence is a coping mechanism and that the very idea of NEEDING someone terrifies the shit out of you because of that. It sucks to realize that you actually have to talk yourself into being vulnerable.
Do you know what sucks worse though as far as I’m concerned? Waking up not knowing if you want to live anymore – where your life is going – if you’re capable of building things out of your own ashes – if you’re capable of standing up – if you’re strong enough to do what needs to be done in order to not just live your life but to create a brand new one. Not having your own back, not allowing other people to have your back, not knowing if you can truly trust. Those things suck.
But I still get up. I still breathe. I still pep-talk myself into asking people if I can call them on the phone for a few days before I actually do it because I have to remind myself that I’m not annoying. I still have days where I have to remind myself to breathe and that I’m a badass and that people love me and to do what needs to be done.
Not 1 ounce of that is failure. Not even a little bit. It’s growth. Because trust me – when push comes to shove – it is better to uncomfortably grow and feel like you’re failing than to do absolutely nothing at all.
You ARE doing better than you think you are. You ARE amazing. You WILL make it. I hope we’ll see each other on the other side.
