When's the last time you took stock?
When's the last time you stepped outside of your comfort zone and looked at your life~your current situation~with a dose of healthy detachment and judgement-free appraisal?
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If this past year was the 'winter of my discontent', then this summer kicked off my pursuit of contentment. It was a summer of big changes...and little ones. It was a summer in which I forced myself to make uncomfortable choices and difficult decisions. It was a summer in which I forcibly cancelled out everyone and everything else, replanted myself, and began to grow anew.
By the tail end of last school-year, I was completely wrung out. My innate (inane and insane?) compulsion to be all things for all people had left one big, gaping hole. In filling the needs of everyone else, I had completely (and perhaps subconsciously on purpose) neglected myself. By using up all of my resources on others, I had successfully put-off addressing my own problems. Very much a case of taking the speck out of others' eyes while ignoring the much larger blockage in my own. What can I say? It's a talent! And one I've been honing for years. Much to my own detriment.
When the meltdown finally broke through all the busy-ness~in all it's epic, melodramatic glory~I broke into a million pieces. And most of them were whiny. Whiny childhood fears and insecurities that had just been lurking underneath all my steely resolve and multi-tasking. Whiny childish doubts that I had never silenced or grown through. I was, on the inside, just an abandoned kid playing at being an adult and hoping no one would notice.
My inner voice was about 12 years old and full to the brim of self-loathing. The manifestation of growing up in an environment of criticism and emotional abandonment.
My inner voice was living my life for me...in fear, in doubt, in anxiety, in embarrassment...in pain.
My inner voice was living my life as an open, untreated wound.
Something had to change.
I had to change.
I had to figure out how to listen to that inner voice...listen, and then let go.
Address her fears from an older/wiser place...and dismiss them.
Send her back into the past, where she belonged, and lock the door.
What I had to do
~really~
was scrape off all the scar tissue on all the wounds and slowly, painfully re-grow myself.
I had to feel it all over again...and force myself to grow in a different direction than I had the last time.
I had to let go of the comfort of my discomfort.
And to do all that, I first had to take stock: of my faults, of my failures, of my mistakes, of my weaknesses, of my past, of my present,
of who I want to be and how I want to be.
To do all that, I had to tear everything down and throw everyone out and learn how to be myself.
...to be continued...
~Leanna