Loving Myself Through It
I’m anxious as fuck these days. I feel like the trauma I’ve been through as a child doesn’t really warrant the way I’m living now. I can’t even consider working right now. I push away people when things get tough, and I’m avoiding relationships out of fear of getting hurt, and losing whatever stability I have left. When I imagine settling down under these circumstances, and building a life, my fight reaction gets triggered and I can’t wait to get away from Montreal. The only way I can live right now is in a state of impermanence, where I don’t make long term commitments to anything or anyone. It gives me a sense of peace, and a way out of situations that trigger me.
I’m ashamed of myself for this. I want to be there for other people, to take care of them. I want them to be able to rely on me, and right now, that’s probably not the case. In fact, my family, whom I love the most, probably tries to ask as little of me as possible, and that’s probably for the best! I’m glad they don’t expect much of me right now, because I could not deliver much. I am healing from shit they’ve put me through, to put it softly. But they’re also the people who are holding me as I grieve the losses I’ve suffered. I’m heartbroken, in ways I could not have predicted, though I tried. I miss things I can’t remember or describe. Most of all, I’m mourning the loss of the person I thought I would be by 31, and the hopes and dreams I had attached to that person. Somehow, my life feels like it’s over before it really began, and I’m only at the beginning of it still. Losing hope feels natural, easy, and even necessary sometimes. For example, I feel like hoping to have all of my shit together by 2023 is a disservice to myself.
New hope emerges though, and takes the place of the old one. I hope, for example, not to be controlled so much by societal expectations and trauma from my childhood. I hope to see through the parental conditioning that I once conflated with identity. There is no timeline on these, especially as it took decades to implement them. I don’t blame my parents or society. These things were implemented in me almost unconsciously. My father placed his fears on my lap and told me to carry them for, and with him, without even trying to. That’s how he had learned to live life, and he was teaching me the same thing. Changing that during a pandemic that has turned everything upside down has been challenging. Fresh starts feel impossible right now, and all I can do is to continue working through my anxiety, talking about my feelings, and living life in the meantime.
Some days, I feel like I’m regressing, and I want to press the eject button, and get far away from Montreal and my family. Christmas time was especially hard, because it was dark out early, and I was indoors with my mom, with whom I have never spent this much time alone since I was a baby! My brother is stressed out, and we all feel it when we get together. My dad is processing the role he had to play in our family trauma, and that’s a huge step. My mom is going through something similar. It’s a challenge to focus on love and growth when I’m looking back all the time. Having fun seems frivolous, but it’s possible, in a space where everything is allowed, especially accountability and care. I want to believe that this is all healing me, but I’m not sure. I’m just putting in the work, and hoping for the best.
