Confessions part deux

I am sitting drinking a piping hot cup of coffee that at present is barely drinkable, watching my youngest suck on a lollipop while humming and playing and I am staring out into the distance doing what I can to stay present in the time and space that I am. I am sure that sounds easy with all the stimuli that has the potential to keep me planted here in this reality but for me being present and accounted for has lately been an impossible challenge. During my therapy session yesterday my therapist and I spoke about my pretty regular disassociation, these moments in time that I’m not really present because my heart and mind can’t reunite with the other and the results can be maddening. I am surrounded by things that should keep me present and yet it is a task that is only made worse because of how often my mind wanders. I am a dreamer and I dream often of the things that I want and yet struggle to obtain. And then I get lost in a spiral of shame because I know what I should be doing but what I am ACTUALLY doing has done nothing but perpetuate my unhappiness.

A lot of what I am working on in therapy is this idea of self-punishment. I am sure you are wondering why anyone want to punish themselves, why would anyone want to inflict harm on themselves when the world around us inflicts enough harm on us. In my case, it’s because I feel a tremendous sense of guilt all the time about my behavior. I wrote the other day that I had confessions to make, and it’s great to make those confessions in the confidence of my therapist but it is something entirely different to make these confessions here for whomever has stumbled upon this meek blog of a woman who spends a lot of her time avoiding accountability and excusing herself because she experienced trauma in her past. Perhaps taking the time to write is a level of accountability that I am not giving myself credit for so perhaps I’ll just keep writing and see what happens and where I officially land when all is said and documented.

I started reading City of Girls yesterday. I am about 7 and a half chapters in, and I am relating to Vivvie (the main character). Without giving too much of the plot she comes to NYC at the age of 19 and learns that she is entitled, selfish, arrogant, and rich all in a matter of weeks as she amerces herself into the culture that she has been literally dropped into. Vivvie is writing this story to a woman named Angela who I am not sure how they are connected, and it got me thinking this morning about this blog and who I write too when I am sharing some of my most intimate thoughts. This blog was created during a time when I had no access to something that provided me an outlet to communicate. So, I created a different outlet, one that created a paper trail of who I am and who I have been this last year and a half. I would have never dreamed of exposing myself to just anyone but what I learned is that if we aren’t exposed, we aren’t living and if we aren’t living, we aren’t exposed. Life is about taking risks and being willing to live as true to ourselves as possible, that is the lesson that all of my heroes communicate to their audiences. Glennon, Brene, Liz are all communicating a message to their followers that to live authentically you have to take chances, you have to be willing to expose yourself and let the rest burn. My confession today is that I have not absorbed this lesson. I have read the words, but I have not practiced it in my own life. Does that mean the lesson is lost on me because of my rigidity and my fear of living a life that is mine rather than what has been constructed for me? I honestly don’t have the answer. As I write this today, if I am being honest, the answer is yes, the lesson is very lost on me and as a result I am in the outcome of that.

I measured success in my life by titles and outward appearances. So, if you take inventory of my life right now, I am blessed. I have two jobs, I have healthy children, I have a group of friends who are supportive, I have a roof over my head, I am healthy. Isn’t that enough? It is enough in many ways because without some of those thing’s life would be even more difficult than it is. Having some of those pieces in place allows me to rest easy at night knowing that my kids are safe under the roofs they reside under and that I can provide for them the necessities they need. They are happy and because of their happiness shouldn’t I be as well? The answer to that is complicated. I am happy they are happy, but I am not happy with how unhappy I am because of not living my life according to what I want rather than what is best for everyone else.

Listen, I am not going to sit here and say that I am some victim and that someone has forced my hand to not live authentically. I vacillate between what feels comfortable and what I truly want because comfort is easier than challenging everything, I believe in. I am a coward, is what that means. I only stand up for what I believe in if it can guarantee that the people around me will still look at me favorably. Or is it really me who wants to look at myself favorably because I have been brainwashed my whole life into believing that conforming equates success and happiness. Whatever the reason, comfort has caused a shit ton of loss. I mean catastrophic levels of loss. Loss that I don’t know if I can ever recover from. The silver lining, I am still here to tell the tale. To share with you that I acknowledge how much I have messed up, to confess my arrogance, my entitlement, my level of selfish that measures way off the Richter scale. To say out loud to you that I messed up, that I keep messing up, that I will likely mess up some more but that I am doing what I can to let you see how truly aware I am of my mess ups and that I am seeking redemption for my sins, and that I am actively working at stopping the insanity that has been my behavior.

I know that it requires a level of self-awareness that far supersedes what I have been able to demonstrate. I know that, I didn’t want to acknowledge that because that would mean that I was doing something wrong. The truth is that I was doing something wrong. I was not being a good human. I will keep confessing the heinous truth repeatedly until my behavior indicates change and not fake change or conditional change but real, measurable change, where you can see my narrative change from self-loathing to self-love. Where you can feel that my actions are selfless and about anyone else but me. That is my goal. My goal is to refocus my attention to those that I love because you deserve that level of focus from me. You have always deserved that, I was just being to selfish and entitled to see that myself.