I seem to post a lot about emotional and mental problems that I think I have. I'm coming to a new place in my life where I no longer believe in them. I think that a lot of what I think is wrong with me are just excuses I use to allow myself moments of weakness without accountability or responsibility. I realize that that line of reasoning keeps me as a victim. I now believe that there are no such things as moments of weakness. All there are, are times when you are giving your strength to the wrong things. You are always strong, it's just a matter of if you're consciously choosing where you're placing your strength.
I see that there are plenty of times when I feel weak, but that's because I'm giving my energy to believing that I am weak. In that state of mind, I am actually being quite strong in forcing myself to act in ways that are completely against my nature. We are all naturally free, fearless, joyful and seeing the world with wonder. When we are children, a drop of water on a window can be endlessly fascinating and magical. We enjoy watching particles of dust illuminated by sunbeams.
One thing I always have to ask myself is, "what am I putting my strength into right now?" If I don't know, that's scary. I could be carrying out someone else's agenda. Or worse, I could be acting out of some subconscious attitude. I have grown up hating myself because of some childhood trauma. I often act out of an unwitting self-hatred. Of course, anything I do will sabotage the good thing that I think I am trying to do.
I often tell myself that there is a part of me that hates me and a part of me that wants to do good things and a part of me that is hurt and a part of me that is stupid. The truth is that they are all just me in my entirety. There are no parts of me, just things I have chosen in my past to be oblivious to because it hurt too much to think about them. I might have used to try to think about different ways to do things. Then, some authority figure came along and told me that I only had one option as to how to do something. I soon gave up even trying to think at all and bowed to authority. I no longer gave myself the respect of thinking because it hurt too much to have my freedom to act on my own ideas taken away from me. I chose to take it away from myself because that hurt less. It put the control squarely in my own hands. If I'm the one taking away my freedom, how can someone else come along and take it? The only problem was that I wasn't in control of giving myself back any of the things I took away from myself. What this shows me is that I wasn't in control at all. I was merely reacting to someone else instead of creating anything for myself. Only a creator has the power to give and to take away. I only pretended to have that power because it made me feel better about myself to believe that I had it.
I can actually pinpoint the moment I gave my power away. I was about four years old. I always observed my little sister being defiant against my parents and crying. She would always got into trouble and seemed miserable. I decided not to make those same mistakes. I made two conscious choices: Listen to what mom and day say and do it and crying is a bad thing. If I look back on it now, what I was really saying was: Bow to authority and never express your true feelings. My freedom, joy and self-awareness disappeared from that moment on and I've not recovered them yet.
I was just looking around at my family, my home and my stuff and I realized that I live in constant fear of losing it all. That is why I don't feel a closeness with any of it. I don't want to risk becoming too attached to anything or anyone for fear of the pain of losing them. Therefore, I feel nothing, love nothing, care about nothing and am quite miserable despite all the reason in the world I have to feel otherwise. Ironically, that is why I stand to lose everything. You can't keep what you do not take care of. I don't even take care of myself, but somehow I'm still stuck with me. I've lost so many friends, family relationships and things because I fear pain. Now pain is all I would have except for the fact that I have blinded myself to this very truth about my fearful nature. It feels better to think that I have lost these things because everyone out there is mean or hurtful or stupid, etc. I have no identity because I relate with nothing, no one and nowhere. There is nowhere I belong, nothing I truly have that matters to me and nobody that I know well enough to make smile. That is a tragedy.
I was thinking the other day about some of my past friendships and what went wrong with them. I realized that I had a more active role in my friendships going sour than I had previously thought. What this shows me is that my friends were not as hurtful as I thought. I now see that it was more safe for me to think of them as hurtful people. This removed any accountability on my part. I painted a picture in my mind of me as an innocent victim of every relationship I've ever had. I had to take a good hard look at myself and see that I have not been as innocent as I have always thought.
This is the mask that I made for myself. It is a shiny, pretty mask, but it hides a sinister truth. It hides the fact that I'd rather make everyone else the problem so that I don't have to face my own ugliness. If I care enough to remove the mask, I will see my ugliness, but it will at least be my true face. As ugly as it may be, it is the only truly beautiful part of me. It is me. The mask is what is ugly. Anything that hides a living, breathing being with a heartbeat is ugly. No one deserves to be hidden. Everyone deserves to be seen and known and celebrated.
One last thing that I've been thinking about is the fact that my family is not as bad as I thought they were. Similar to my friends, I needed to vilify them in order to keep myself from having to face my own ugliness. Yes, they have their flaws. Everyone has flaws. That is what makes them beautiful because that is what makes them different. If we were all the same, how boring would that be? I'm getting to a place in my life where I can actually recall some good times that I had with my family, with the church, with the Navy, etc. If I can forgive the ugliness of the people around me and appreciate their goodness, maybe I can finally do that for myself as well.
I see that there are plenty of times when I feel weak, but that's because I'm giving my energy to believing that I am weak. In that state of mind, I am actually being quite strong in forcing myself to act in ways that are completely against my nature. We are all naturally free, fearless, joyful and seeing the world with wonder. When we are children, a drop of water on a window can be endlessly fascinating and magical. We enjoy watching particles of dust illuminated by sunbeams.
One thing I always have to ask myself is, "what am I putting my strength into right now?" If I don't know, that's scary. I could be carrying out someone else's agenda. Or worse, I could be acting out of some subconscious attitude. I have grown up hating myself because of some childhood trauma. I often act out of an unwitting self-hatred. Of course, anything I do will sabotage the good thing that I think I am trying to do.
I often tell myself that there is a part of me that hates me and a part of me that wants to do good things and a part of me that is hurt and a part of me that is stupid. The truth is that they are all just me in my entirety. There are no parts of me, just things I have chosen in my past to be oblivious to because it hurt too much to think about them. I might have used to try to think about different ways to do things. Then, some authority figure came along and told me that I only had one option as to how to do something. I soon gave up even trying to think at all and bowed to authority. I no longer gave myself the respect of thinking because it hurt too much to have my freedom to act on my own ideas taken away from me. I chose to take it away from myself because that hurt less. It put the control squarely in my own hands. If I'm the one taking away my freedom, how can someone else come along and take it? The only problem was that I wasn't in control of giving myself back any of the things I took away from myself. What this shows me is that I wasn't in control at all. I was merely reacting to someone else instead of creating anything for myself. Only a creator has the power to give and to take away. I only pretended to have that power because it made me feel better about myself to believe that I had it.
I can actually pinpoint the moment I gave my power away. I was about four years old. I always observed my little sister being defiant against my parents and crying. She would always got into trouble and seemed miserable. I decided not to make those same mistakes. I made two conscious choices: Listen to what mom and day say and do it and crying is a bad thing. If I look back on it now, what I was really saying was: Bow to authority and never express your true feelings. My freedom, joy and self-awareness disappeared from that moment on and I've not recovered them yet.
I was just looking around at my family, my home and my stuff and I realized that I live in constant fear of losing it all. That is why I don't feel a closeness with any of it. I don't want to risk becoming too attached to anything or anyone for fear of the pain of losing them. Therefore, I feel nothing, love nothing, care about nothing and am quite miserable despite all the reason in the world I have to feel otherwise. Ironically, that is why I stand to lose everything. You can't keep what you do not take care of. I don't even take care of myself, but somehow I'm still stuck with me. I've lost so many friends, family relationships and things because I fear pain. Now pain is all I would have except for the fact that I have blinded myself to this very truth about my fearful nature. It feels better to think that I have lost these things because everyone out there is mean or hurtful or stupid, etc. I have no identity because I relate with nothing, no one and nowhere. There is nowhere I belong, nothing I truly have that matters to me and nobody that I know well enough to make smile. That is a tragedy.
I was thinking the other day about some of my past friendships and what went wrong with them. I realized that I had a more active role in my friendships going sour than I had previously thought. What this shows me is that my friends were not as hurtful as I thought. I now see that it was more safe for me to think of them as hurtful people. This removed any accountability on my part. I painted a picture in my mind of me as an innocent victim of every relationship I've ever had. I had to take a good hard look at myself and see that I have not been as innocent as I have always thought.
This is the mask that I made for myself. It is a shiny, pretty mask, but it hides a sinister truth. It hides the fact that I'd rather make everyone else the problem so that I don't have to face my own ugliness. If I care enough to remove the mask, I will see my ugliness, but it will at least be my true face. As ugly as it may be, it is the only truly beautiful part of me. It is me. The mask is what is ugly. Anything that hides a living, breathing being with a heartbeat is ugly. No one deserves to be hidden. Everyone deserves to be seen and known and celebrated.
One last thing that I've been thinking about is the fact that my family is not as bad as I thought they were. Similar to my friends, I needed to vilify them in order to keep myself from having to face my own ugliness. Yes, they have their flaws. Everyone has flaws. That is what makes them beautiful because that is what makes them different. If we were all the same, how boring would that be? I'm getting to a place in my life where I can actually recall some good times that I had with my family, with the church, with the Navy, etc. If I can forgive the ugliness of the people around me and appreciate their goodness, maybe I can finally do that for myself as well.
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