All my life, I was never a forgiving person. Ever. I was not taught forgiveness, nor did I have the capacity for it, much like I didn't have the capacity for love or happiness.I was raised in such a way that it became quite necessary to just feel nothing at all while putting on an act; the mask was more important than the girl. I was known as a bubbly girl all in pink when I was in Junior High/High School, but that wasn't me. I was very, very unhappy but too numb to actually FEEL unhappy. I just felt dead.
There is no worse feeling than feeling nothing at all. The actual things that you feel, the pain that caused you to go numb in the first place, just writhes inside of you, trying to find a way, any way, out of the bottle that you shoved it into. It's a feeling of being both out of control and so completely in control that nothing phases you. Your ups and downs are unique in that no one can see them because technically, they do not exist.
One can only live so long like that before they reach the breaking point. When I broke, it was with a bloody tear and I am still paying for it. I was an unsteady support that held certain things up and when I finally couldn't take it anymore, someone paid for it because I honestly believe that at that point, I was the only thing holding them up. Growing up, I carried a lot of weight on my shoulders and as such, I have always been a very responsible person and I have always and probably will always put anyone and everyone else before. The guilt ate me alive for years as I learned how to feel, how to be human.
When you go from feeling nothing at all, to everything at once, you feel things much more strongly than the average person, I've learned. You feel pain and anger with a white hot passion and with the same new intensity that you feel happiness and love. It's truly staggering. The transition was... interesting, to say the least.
I still feel things a bit stronger than most because I know what it's like not to feel at all. I feel emotions with my whole body and all that I am, which is both a beautiful curse and a terrible blessing. I have such a high capacity for love and happiness that sometimes I bubble over, but I also have a high capacity for pain and grief. Surprisingly, my anger has dissipated over the years. That wasn't expected.
The point of all this is that I'm doing something new: I'm "burning bad bridges." I'm bringing things up with people that have hurt me (but that I just let slide) and putting them to rest; I'm confronting the various elephants in the room. I've done this with at least two people so far. One of those two was concerning an issue that's been weighing on me heavily for well over a year and I feel much better for having talked about it. It felt like having a weight removed from my heart.
I have learned to forgive. I will never be the "forgive and forget" type because I do not forget. However, I can now forgive and move on and learn from things that have happened instead of bottling them up.
I said before that I have always put everyone else first. The day I broke was, for me, the first time that I ever put myself first. I put my health, life, and mental well being first and the fact that it had such a wretched backlash that it nearly did me in. To everyone else, my "breaking" made me some sort of hero. I ran away and started a new life. I did this, I did that, blah, blah, blah. No one saw it for what it was: I RAN AWAY. I couldn't take the strain of the life I was supporting and I RAN. To me, I broke. To a normal person, I put myself first. For me, those were one in the same.
I'm tired of feeling like I did wrong. I'm tired of putting everything before my feelings. Starting this blog was the best thing I ever did because it allowed me to start talking. It allowed me to put my health first and it helped me make goals and start to achieve them. I said in my progress page that I wanted to become a better person. One way of doing that is to let go of the past and just live for now and live for the future. As I said before, I'm burning bad bridges. I'm ridding myself of negative connections to people.
It's going to be very hard and take awhile (working up the nerve to say, "Hey, remember when this happened and you treated me like crap and you totally thought we were passed that? Yeah, we're not yet. Let's talk about it" isn't easy) but I think that it will be worth it in the end. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I have the sort of mentality where I just jump headfirst into these sort of awkward situations and then figure it out from there. While it frequently puts me into uncomfortable spots, it's a good thing, because if you never leave your comfort zone you never grow as a person.
I'm not saying that this sort of thing is for everyone, but it's sure helped me feel better about my life. If you ever want to talk about something, I'm right here.
<3 - CFC
There is no worse feeling than feeling nothing at all. The actual things that you feel, the pain that caused you to go numb in the first place, just writhes inside of you, trying to find a way, any way, out of the bottle that you shoved it into. It's a feeling of being both out of control and so completely in control that nothing phases you. Your ups and downs are unique in that no one can see them because technically, they do not exist.
One can only live so long like that before they reach the breaking point. When I broke, it was with a bloody tear and I am still paying for it. I was an unsteady support that held certain things up and when I finally couldn't take it anymore, someone paid for it because I honestly believe that at that point, I was the only thing holding them up. Growing up, I carried a lot of weight on my shoulders and as such, I have always been a very responsible person and I have always and probably will always put anyone and everyone else before. The guilt ate me alive for years as I learned how to feel, how to be human.
When you go from feeling nothing at all, to everything at once, you feel things much more strongly than the average person, I've learned. You feel pain and anger with a white hot passion and with the same new intensity that you feel happiness and love. It's truly staggering. The transition was... interesting, to say the least.
I still feel things a bit stronger than most because I know what it's like not to feel at all. I feel emotions with my whole body and all that I am, which is both a beautiful curse and a terrible blessing. I have such a high capacity for love and happiness that sometimes I bubble over, but I also have a high capacity for pain and grief. Surprisingly, my anger has dissipated over the years. That wasn't expected.
The point of all this is that I'm doing something new: I'm "burning bad bridges." I'm bringing things up with people that have hurt me (but that I just let slide) and putting them to rest; I'm confronting the various elephants in the room. I've done this with at least two people so far. One of those two was concerning an issue that's been weighing on me heavily for well over a year and I feel much better for having talked about it. It felt like having a weight removed from my heart.
I have learned to forgive. I will never be the "forgive and forget" type because I do not forget. However, I can now forgive and move on and learn from things that have happened instead of bottling them up.
I said before that I have always put everyone else first. The day I broke was, for me, the first time that I ever put myself first. I put my health, life, and mental well being first and the fact that it had such a wretched backlash that it nearly did me in. To everyone else, my "breaking" made me some sort of hero. I ran away and started a new life. I did this, I did that, blah, blah, blah. No one saw it for what it was: I RAN AWAY. I couldn't take the strain of the life I was supporting and I RAN. To me, I broke. To a normal person, I put myself first. For me, those were one in the same.
I'm tired of feeling like I did wrong. I'm tired of putting everything before my feelings. Starting this blog was the best thing I ever did because it allowed me to start talking. It allowed me to put my health first and it helped me make goals and start to achieve them. I said in my progress page that I wanted to become a better person. One way of doing that is to let go of the past and just live for now and live for the future. As I said before, I'm burning bad bridges. I'm ridding myself of negative connections to people.
It's going to be very hard and take awhile (working up the nerve to say, "Hey, remember when this happened and you treated me like crap and you totally thought we were passed that? Yeah, we're not yet. Let's talk about it" isn't easy) but I think that it will be worth it in the end. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I have the sort of mentality where I just jump headfirst into these sort of awkward situations and then figure it out from there. While it frequently puts me into uncomfortable spots, it's a good thing, because if you never leave your comfort zone you never grow as a person.
I'm not saying that this sort of thing is for everyone, but it's sure helped me feel better about my life. If you ever want to talk about something, I'm right here.
<3 - CFC
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