I’m stoked to be sitting here on a Saturday afternoon with no priorities. I woke up late, browsed on Amazon for far too long, took a slight nap, did some laundry, and now we’re here. It sounds like a typical day in my life, but to my surprise, life has been far from typical recently.

I don’t know how to describe it other than I feel like I’m slowly rejoining society after two very introspective years. I used to be the girl who needed to know plans days in advance before I would go while now, I find myself going out most nights of the week.

That’s the thing too. I’m twenty-one. You’d think going out would be no big thing but to me, as someone who has spent years either depressed, lonely, or downright uncomfortable in social situations, this is huge.

Also, while I’ve tried to be a ‘go-with-the-flow’ person for years, flowing has always brought on extreme anxiety. I hate the feeling of being out of control or not knowing what is going to happen next. I try desperately to stay in the moment, but in the back of my mind, I’m constantly analyzing what every situation I am in means.

If I’m seeing someone, my mind likes to go to places where it plays out an entire relationship before it even occurs. It goes over potential problems we would face or bitterness that would occur down the line before the line has even begun. My mind wants to prepare for every possible scenario because if any of them happen, the ‘I told you so’ part of me gets its validation.

If I find myself trying new things, things I never would’ve done even a year ago, I see two parts of me go against themselves very vividly.

There’s the part of me that sees life as a canvas to paint and experience while another part is desperately afraid of losing direction.

If I’m being completely honest, I’ve spent the last month having a mini-existential crisis. I feel that I’m shedding so much of the person I used to be and I don’t know if I like who I’m left with.

So many of the things I used to preach feel so distant from me now. I used to force exercise on myself all the time. I used to treat my body as this temple where I never let anything ‘bad’ enter it. I hardly drank. No drugs. No smoking. I was going to say no junk food but that was less of a choice and more so because I was terrified of it. Food used to be the number one thought on my mind.

I had these strict routines. I’d strive for a ten o’ clock bedtime and be up by seven on a good day, three/four if I had work. I’d go through three pages of journaling and meditation every morning. I’d have the same breakfast, same coffee. The only coffee I really felt good about drinking was this superfood coffee I found on Amazon – anything else felt less than or not ‘pure’ enough for me.

I’d go out every once in a while, but never for long. I had reading to do, blog posts to write. Home became the only place I felt comfortable, but even then, home still never felt like home. It still doesn’t sometimes, but I think I’m finally starting to accept things will never be how they used to be. I live where I live now and all I can do is go with the grain rather than against it.

I’ve touched on this before as well, but during my introspective years, I felt a complete disconnect from society. I couldn’t relate to anyone anymore and felt more insecure than ever. I told myself I was ‘enlightened’ or ‘no one gets it’ when in truth, my feelings of isolation were my own doing.

I blamed others for not caring about ‘real’ things or making me feel alone. Thing is, we all exist with our own ideologies and beliefs. I took no one seeing the world my way as meaning they were wrong and I was right. I saw people enjoying themselves in this external reality while I was trapped in my own mind. I took their joy as ignorance and my suffering as understanding what life is really about.

As time has gone on, I’ve completely obliterated this perspective. Life is not about being the odd one out thinking the world is against you. It’s about integrating with those around you for connection and as a result, understanding more about yourself. People are our biggest teachers which is something I never wanted to believe. I wished for independence and the idea that I could do it all on my own. I know now I can’t and I wouldn’t want to.

A life spent in pure solitude goes against the very purpose for our existence. We’re here to learn from each other and let ourselves be students.

We all have our different experiences because from there, we find our expertise.

For example, we suffer and overcome to become an expert on dealing with that specific trauma. In time, we meet someone else at the beginning stages of that pain. Since we’ve been through it, we can offer sound advice. Whether the person takes it or not is up to them, but nonetheless, you came in to their experience to share your own. It’s a cycle that repeats with everyone we meet.

It doesn’t always have to be pain either. Sometimes, we meet people for the sole purpose of bringing joy to each other’s lives. The relationship is like a tunnel with each of you being a light at the end of it for one another.

We can try to teach ourselves about life all we want, but in the end, people will continue to be our biggest mirrors. Closing ourselves off from those mirrors only keeps our trauma suppressed.

As I write, I pick up on when I know I’m going to lose some people.

I’ve used the word trauma a lot so far and I can already hear some thinking internally – I don’t have any substantial trauma in my life. You think you’re good, great even. There are bad days, of course, but as a whole, the boat isn’t too rocked.

You were never abused. Money has never been a real issue. Your parents are together, or if they’re not, you feel it is actually for the better. You have friends, a significant other. You’re finishing school and on your way to good job or maybe, you already have the good job.

I could go on, but for most of us, we have this list in our minds of everything that is right about our lives. It’s this list that we use whenever we feel upset because we don’t feel we deserve to be upset.

When we don’t have a turning point event in our lives that is deemed traumatic by the majority, we believe we’ve never experienced any real pain at all. If we were never raped, abandoned, or completely homeless, nothing about our lives can truthfully be traumatic. Or so we think.

 

Thing is, trauma is not characterized by an event itself. It solely has to do with the emotions we felt relative to that event.

 

Listen to me here.

We do not have to go through complete turmoil before we can believe we deserve any level of sympathy. Anything that brings on a negative emotional response within you can be deemed traumatic.

This could be your father ignoring you for business calls as a kid or not spending enough time with you. Also, major side note – what you believe to be ‘enough’ time could be completely different from what your father thought was enough. He could have set aside quality time with you once a week and seen that as enough. However, if you needed him any other time and he wasn’t there, that is where you began to feel abandoned emotionally. Which leads to negative emotion. Which, believe it or not, could reside as a trauma within you.

So now, if someone is only there for you when it is convenient for them, you’re triggered. You may have moments with this new person where they feel you are overreacting when in reality, you are re-experiencing a past trauma through them. New body, same situation.

On a surface level, Dad was around. He was physically there. All of the qualifications of a stable parent by society’s standards can be checked off. Yet, he wasn’t there emotionally. It’s not his fault either because it only means he has his own wounds to bear. However, you can’t discount how this scenario made you feel. It may not be his fault, but you were still hurt. It’s understandable and justified which I think is the hardest thing to believe.

You tell yourself you’re okay or you had it good when as a little girl, you didn’t feel cared for. You don’t feel justified in this pain because the circumstances seem so minuscule. You weren’t abused. You weren’t left alone for days. You wanted emotional support, sure, but we’re told this is the bottom of the scale when it comes to trauma.

It feels silly because you tell someone you’re fucked up due to not receiving enough love when they may have been receiving literal beatings. You can’t compare apples to oranges though. They may be in the same food group, but they couldn’t be more polar opposites.

This is how trauma needs to be seen.

We all have our own issues relative to certain areas of our lives, but we can’t compare them to each other. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to one-up each other’s pain when it doesn’t matter what occurred to us. It matters how we felt about what occurred.

Someone who was emotionally neglected can feel the very same pain as someone who wasn’t physically cared for. I’m telling you.

 

It doesn’t matter how good or bad something appears to be because our thoughts and subsequent emotions about those thoughts are the only thing dictating our lives.

 

I didn’t realize how much trauma was on my mind until I sat down to write today. I started this post talking about how much I’ve changed and here we are again, reflecting on the past. As much as I want to move on from my traumas, I’ve found I have a hard time letting go.

At least with my little tragic stories, I have a reason for being how I am. I’ve spent the past year trying to nurture my inner child and letting her feel validated in every emotion she felt back then.

It’s only the moving past the validation that seems to be troublesome. I know I have a right to feel every pain I’ve felt in my life, but I can’t cling to it forever. There comes a point where you have to turn the page and let go.

The past cannot be undone and continuing to live there only disrupts my future.

As for next steps, I think the only thing I can do is be open with where I am. Not in a matter-of-fact way but in a way that says ‘I’ve struggled for a long time, but I’m trying to move past it. I don’t know where to start when it comes to _____ , ______ , or _____ but if you’re willing to be patient with me, I’ll do my best to be honest with you.’

I know, I know, vague as hell.

To be honest though, I don’t even know how to fill in the blanks. I have so many answers flowing through my mind that I don’t think I could narrow it down.

Well, I said I was going to write a long post today so maybe let’s work through this on the page – with an audience. Claps for vulnerability.

I talk a lot about how I didn’t feel enough love as a kid which is both true but confusing. Even a little awkward since both my parents read these and we don’t really talk about those parts of my writing. We tend to keep it light.

Which actually might even be part of the issue.

I know my parents love me. I don’t discount that for a second. It’s the overwhelming reason why I believe it has been hard for me to pin point the exact events that shaped some of my toxic behaviors. I figure out little snippets here and there that may have affected me, but overall, I have no clue why I struggle so immensely with relationships.

I have since a very young age.

I was a quiet pushover in school, my friendships never felt super secure, and I have yet to have a romantic relationship that doesn’t cause a large wave of anxiety or upset.

The other day I realized it doesn’t matter how personal I get with someone, I still never feel like they are a close friend to me. I never feel that they truly see into me. The only reason I ever felt like I had best friends growing up is because that’s what we called each other. It’s who I saw all the time.

I asked on my Facebook the other day if anyone wanted to go see Panic! at the Disco with me in July. Once my friend commented and we actually made plans to go, I was hit with a blunt realization. I actually do have a best friend. I could’ve easily texted her in the first place and she would’ve been down to go yet in my mind, I’m still completely on my own. In my mind, I was either going to go alone or not go at all because I didn’t think I had anyone to go with.

Remember when I went to Emo Nite back in November? I went alone then because I didn’t think I knew anyone who could actually ‘get it’ like me. That’s actually such a fitting perspective to have going in to an event called Emo Nite – us former emo kids never feel understood.

But do you see this though?

I don’t know exactly what occurred that has shaped me in to someone who feels so different from others.

 

I’ve always felt like a triangle block trying to fit in a square-shaped hole.

 

In my mind, if I can figure out the exact trauma that did this to me, I believe I can fix it. I’m looking at my life in a problem-solution format when it has never been that simple.

I think this is also why I don’t let myself get too close to anyone. First of all, I don’t truly know what that feels like. But most of all, I’m scared that I’m not healed enough to bring people truly in to my experience. I’m afraid I’ll mess everything up or somehow dampen their life.

I’ve hurt people before because all they wanted was to get close and I kept them at arm’s length. I’m scared of losing myself in other people (had to mention codependency once) but also, I’m afraid of what I’ll do to the people I’m not losing myself in. I seem to find myself on a spectrum of two extremes.

Either I want to be everything to someone or I have people wanting to be everything to me but I reject it.

 

I never believe I can have myself and others too.

 

Like I said, I wish I could figure out what started this whole mess; a singular event I can place all of the blame on. As the days pass though, I’m starting to realize that I don’t think it was any one thing. I don’t think my dad ignored me once and I immediately saw myself as unlovable. I also don’t think my mom dealing with depression left me feeling like I had to fend for myself.

What I do know though is that both of you reading this right now need to do the same thing I am – stop looking for all the ways you went wrong.

If I don’t even realize what occurred that led me to being who I am, there’s no way you can either. No more pity parties over things we can’t change, much less things I don’t even remember happening. All I know is my thoughts are my own and I was given a soul that takes things to heart very easily. I could’ve gotten upset over being told ‘no’ once and that was the basis for where everything started.

Thing is, I don’t know and I’m tired of trying to create this little story that outlines my pain. More than that, I’m tired of holding on to what might’ve happened two decades ago when I’m different than who I was even a year ago.

As humans, we’re constantly making decisions. Things I would’ve done a decade ago are much different decisions than I would make now. I’ve changed. I’ve grown. Holding on to decisions that were made in my childhood is only keeping me stuck there.

Yes, things could’ve gone differently if such and such happened. I could’ve had better friendships, been more social, had more experiences, and so on. But, reflecting on the ‘what if’s’ of my past can’t change what actually occurred.

 

It’s with that truth that I think I’m ready to move on.

From the nostalgia, the could-have-been’s.

 

I can’t ever expect myself to grow with such a tight grip on what the past meant to me.

Wow. This is getting a little deep.

I actually feel a stillness coming over me though. I don’t have to hold on to the past anymore. It happened, it shaped me, but it is not my destiny.

All I can do is learn from where I am now, in the present moment.

I usually write these posts in about an hour, but I’ve been sitting here for roughly three. This has been more than a post tonight. It’s been a full-blown therapy session.

 

I feel ready to let go.

To let myself change with the days.

To not focus too much on what the mirrors mean, but how they make me feel.

My traumas exist. They happened to me. I felt them. I lived through them.

And yet, I no longer have to be them because that was never asked of me.

I got tripped up along the way.

Now that I’ve slowed down, they don’t seem so troubling anymore.

They are not my reality. They haven’t been for a long time.

 

It’s the beginning of a new story.

Not even a chapter, but a completely different novel.

I’m not sure how to feel, but I’m okay with that.

The idea of moving on seems far out until it overcomes every bone in your body.

 

I feel numb.

I don’t have many words left to say.

All I know is I don’t know what to think anymore.

And with those old thoughts trickling out, there is no telling what is on the horizon.