Not An Expert

I'm definitely not an expert on all this change stuff.
It took me a really long time to get this close to becoming ready
TO become ready to make changes.
It's been hard because a part of me found some security
in the way things were, even though they were getting uncomfortable.
When we outgrow certain things, they start becoming uncomfortable.
Like certain situations and being around certain people.
I felt like nobody I know can see that I'm changing
and they won't acknowledge my growth.
Even acknowledgement is encouraging.
I know it doesn't matter what they can see and what they can't.
It isn't even about them.
It's that they want to keep me in the box that I don't belong in.
Maybe I never belonged in that box.
But this is the only reference that they have of me.
That's the only way they can see me, the way they always have.

Anyway, I'm getting near the end of this book.
There are some things that stand out in this last chapter.

"As we change, others experience discomfort.
They don't know don't know how we are going to be.
Or how these new changes are going to affect them."

They become confused, scared, or critical.
We react to their confusion, fear, and criticism
by reverting back to our old ways.

"All things are difficult before they are easy."

It's really hard to adjust to a big change.
Even little changes can be hard to adjust to.
But a new environment can be a safe place to experiment with growth changes.
We can't afford to keep ourselves contained.
Or unconsciously discourage growth.
I've gotten a lot of discouragement in my life.
More discouragement than encouragement.
The result is that I got used to the discouragement.
I learned how to discourage, rather than encourage.
Even when I get the encouragement that I need, I tend to dismiss it.
Lightly, but somewhere in the back of my mind, it's still a dismissal.
Because I'm not used to it. Everything we're not used to feels weird.

It's about training. Making changes is about training.
Training ourselves to get used to a new 'normal' gradually.
I'm not a coach, I'm not a trainer.
But somehow I must develop such skills
to facilitate my own growth. Because I must support myself.
I must learn how to encourage myself.
I used to get really mad at myself for not being at the level
that I think I 'should' be at, at this stage of my life.
Developmentally, emotionally, professionally, in all ways.
But getting mad at myself and frustrated with myself....

I saw a pattern. People got mad at me a frustrated with me
because I wasn't growing at the rate they wanted me to
and expected me to. Like my family for instance.
They had these crazily high expectations of me when I was a kid.
It was at a point where I didn't have much of a childhood.
I had to help my mother with my brothers.
I didn't want to learn in the ways I was being taught.
Plus other stuff was going on that I won't get into on here.

I guess they thought it would be easier if I grew up faster.
But I wasn't able to mature that fast. I still wanted to be like kids my own age.
It wasn't a supportive environment to begin with.
My growth was being forced and expected and not encouraged.
I resisted and rebelled. As much as I could which made it worse for me.
Constantly getting scolded and worse. A lot worse.
So that 'encouragement' factor just never was there and I have to learn it.
Encouragement goes a long way, it really does.
Any little bit of support goes a long way.
Any little bit of empathy. Any little bit of hope.
Back then, I didn't believe it would get better. It was bad.
I didn't believe that things would change.
Of course, I was a kid and it's hard to see that things do change.
But they change when we do.

Of course, I've grown in a lot of ways since then. Not just physically.
I'm just seeing a lot of residual stuff from even way back then.
I left that house, but I still remember what it felt like to live there.
I still remember a lot of things about living there.
That was like 27 years ago and I'm definitely not 8 years old anymore.
The first 7 years of a person's life is when they develop so much.
They develop their beliefs and their identity.
They form their identity according to their beliefs about themselves.
I remember being confused at that time. A lot was shifting.
That was near the end of the physical abuse, but the mental and emotional abuse
were just as bad and scarred me pretty deeply.
That's where the wounds came from.
That's when my self-esteem started being extremely low.
Not that it was ever really high or anything. But it goes back to that time.
Feeling unworthy of love back then.
Feeling unable to trust. A lot of instability and unpredictability.
To me, all that was 'normal.' I thought that's what life was like for everyone.
I do remember being extremely disappointed a few times,
then ended up accepting it because I had no choice.

It's hard to explain what going from that to where I am now has been like.
A lot of different transitions. Not even full transitions, semi-transitions.
It's weird going from zero freedom to more freedom,
to all kinds of freedom, to zero freedom,
to discovering that you have more freedom than you ever thought you had.
But a different kind of freedom. That you never thought possible.
My inner child still feels like I felt when I was a kid.
Like all I'm good for is just doing what people expect me to do.
Even though I know there's more to me than that. So much more.
I don't have to allow myself to be used and abused anymore.
I can walk away from that pain and trauma. I'm not that little girl anymore.

I used to do this thing where when I crossed that road,
when I crossed the yellow line, I told myself that I could assume another persona.
That my actual life was on one side of the road,
and by crossing that line, I was free from that. Until I had to go back home.
I allowed myself that freedom. It felt like a relief until I had to face 'reality' again.
If only in my imagination, I was free, for a time.
I needed that escape, even back then. Especially back then.

A lot of the unworthiness and stuff like that came from that time.
A lot of rejection issues and a lot of that kind of stuff.
Started accumulating emotional baggage. That never really got fully unpacked.

I keep thinking that nobody really understands that part of me.
Unless they went through similar things.
But even then, they didn't go through the exact things I did.
A lot of it I forced myself to forget.
Because remembering it would probably really, really hurt me.

But the people in my life who were cruel to me never knew any better.
They were probably cruel to me because people were cruel to them.
Not that it is an excuse to be cruel.
But people who don't know better weren't taught better.
They were affected by their own experiences. In certain ways.

I discovered that when someone has experienced a trauma at a certain age,
they stop growing at that point. Their growth becomes stunted.
Like people can be perpetually a certain age mentally, and emotionally,
even when they pass that age chronologically.
Like someone can be in their 50s and still act like they are a teenager
because something from that time keeps them stuck psychologically.
It's weird, but it does happen.
So they only 'mature' up to a certain point and stop maturing.
They might not even know this, they just still feel and think the same.
They never experienced any significant growth after a certain point in life.

My only explanation is that due to trauma, they didn't feel safe
to continue growing and maturing. Or resisted any change
because they were too afraid that change was bad and unsafe.
That change would just bring them pain,
potentially equally as intense as the pain in that traumatic event.
Or in the series of traumatic events.

For me, that's why I have so many trust issues.
Because the people I was supposed to be able to trust in my life
couldn't be trusted. Even though I still really wanted to trust them.
So I kept trying to and every time I did,
they showed me why I shouldn't and couldn't trust them.
But that spilled into trust issues with myself, too.
Because I kept f*cking up and couldn't trust myself not to f*ck up.
So whenever there was someone or something important in my life,
I just kept f*cking up. Even though I wanted them to trust me.

So part of this 'developing a relationship' with myself
is about developing trust with myself.
A lot of it is working on being open and honest.
It's easier to do in writing than any other way.
So in the future, I'll probably be getting a lot deeper.
Showing parts of myself that I haven't shown anyone, ever.
Not even just hiding them out of fear, just generally hiding.
Because hiding's been what I've been used to for a really long time.
Back from those days that it served to protect me from actual pain.

Part of the growing process means revealing more.
Resisting the resistance and the reluctance and just becoming free
from all that restriction and going beyond my limits.
Becoming comfortable with things that haven't been comfortable.
Exposing myself to the new and retreating from the old ways.