Forgiving Myself for Being Myself

shallow focus of person holding mirror

Life has a funny way of mirroring the ways we still need to heal. As someone who excels in escapism and hiding, showing up in the world is a life long challenge. I’m trying to figure out why.

I’m in therapy to help identify the ways I self-sabotage so I can course correct myself and get on track with the vision I have for myself. 

Vision is something that is a big deal for me and one that I wasn’t sure would hold so much value in my life. I guess in many ways I hid from life because deep down I felt a guilt for being born. I figured if I could keep myself from being seen, then I wouldn’t take up the space I felt wasn’t for me. 

I hate taking pictures and while it’s easy to assume it’s because I have self-esteem and body issues, the root to why I don’t want photographic evidence of my existence is because I don’t feel entitled to having the privilege of a life. 

This nuanced perspective of living has shown up in so many ways over the years and while I am finally comfortable enough in naming, confronting, and addressing it – I still default to intellectualizing my insecurities.

I feel that if I talk in circles I will eventually bore others and convince myself that I am OK when the truth is I am not and never have been.

Therapy has been helpful and I look forward to the additional growth that comes with medication to help manage and stabilize my unruly emotions. I am reliant on medications to sleep and my forgetful nature scares me when it’s time to take the pills that help mitigate insomnia.

Self-trust is a big issue of mines so imagine how much anxiety I get when I forget if I’ve taken my sleeping medication. The million dollar question of whether I still take it without confidence that I haven’t taken it yet can keep me up all night. And then when I do take them, I’m in another frenzy of anxiety wondering if I’m unintentionally overdosing.

Life doesn’t have to be this complicated and yet I make it so because I thrive in chaos, no matter how much I try to avoid it.

There’s a calmness to living in madness because when I’m stable enough to know better and don’t do better, I feel the gravity of how I’m failing at life.

It’s probably why I’m so prone to addiction. Numbing or disassociation from reality is how I’ve stayed alive all this time.

Mondays are therapy days and my history of suicidal ideations has been the unplanned focus of the past few weeks. While I am feeling more comfortable talking about it, I am still having a difficult time reconciling with who I used to be while having those thoughts.

I never want to feel like I’m throwing my former self under the proverbial bus and yet I want to create distance between the me now and the me back then. 

I still think about dying quite often and after a certain age it becomes more about the consequences of poor lifestyle habits and less about it being what I always thought would be the solution for poor coping skills.

I still have a ways to go with forgiving myself for being myself.