DailyBlog: It’s Okay To Not Always Be Okay

I’m having a hard day. Nothing happened, but I just woke up with a weight on my chest and I knew that today was going to be an emotional struggle. (A metaphorical weight mostly, but my cat was also laying on me so, there’s that. Lol.)

It’s super easy to say that as an adult you have no excuse to still be weighted down by the struggles of your childhood because you have the power and ability to take full responsibility for your life now, but if only it was that simple in reality as it sounds in theory. I grew up with parents both on their own spectrum of narcissism; a mother who had emotional struggles of her own and she took out her issues on me, a father who has always lived in his own reality; if something is unpleasant to deal with, he just decides that it doesn’t exist and he doesn’t have to acknowledge or deal with it, and a stepmom who has never had either the interest of ability to empathize with a messed up teenager. I didn’t have a single adult in my life who provided a healthy example for me.

This resulted in me feeling incredibly vulnerable and alone, and that led to me being taken advantage of by another adult who abused me because in some super twisted way he was the only person that seemed to view me as an autonomous person at the time. Of course that’s complete BS and I know that what he did to me was sick, depraved, and soulless, but again, I was a vulnerable kid at the time and easy to manipulate. I’m not going to get into any details, but a handful of years ago I would have never said or wrote or admitted this at all, so I’ve come a long way in accepting the truth and seeing it for what it really was.

That messed me up far more than I was willing to face or admit for a very long time. It took me many years into my adulthood to admit to myself what happened and where so many of my struggles stem from. I spent years lying to others, but mostly to myself, because I couldn’t face the truth and therefor there was no way I could face the idea of others knowing the truth about me, as well. I was so deathly afraid of people seeing or knowing my secret; in metaphoric terms let’s just say I was gripping said secret with my left hand, so I kept waving my right hand around so that people wouldn’t even think to look at my left hand.

It took me years to realize that the shame surrounding what happened was NOT MY SHAME. Shame on the sick adult who preyed on a vulnerable kid. Shame on my parents for being so into themselves that their kid was vulnerable to that type of manipulation and shame on them for not even noticing what was happening, But NOT shame on the lonely kid who was just looking for some type – any type – of validation. Again, this was not my shame.

After many years of struggling in life, I’ve managed to find a sense of purpose, and some peace. Most days are pretty decent now. I’ve had to let go of some dreams and desires in order to get to this place, but I suppose in their own way, everyone does. As cliche as it sounds, I used to be desperate for someone to save me from what felt like a hopeless and desolate existence, but in the end, I had to rescue myself.

Most days I’m okay with the things that I’ve had to do and the choices that I’ve made in order to find purpose and peace, but every once in a while, I wake up feeling overwhelmed by my past and resentful of certain things I had to let go of in order to stop treading water in life. I had to let go of the idea of a relationship, because, in psychological terms, my “love map” is so messed up that I either get way too co-dependent, or I’m way too emotionally absent. There is no middle ground that I’m capable of. I never had human children because I didn’t want to bring kids into this messed up world. Did I want them? At one time, yes. But am I unhappy with my myriad of pets? No. So, it’s confusing. I second-guess my choices, but then I remember why I made those choices and I don’t feel like I made the wrong ones. I suppose sometimes making the right choices doesn’t always mean that they’ve been easy to make. Therein lies the struggle.

Why am I writing this and posting it out into the world? Because it’s okay. Because we all have different struggles, we all know what it’s like to work through things that are painful and difficult to process. Not everyone has been through what I’ve been through, but there are things that people go through that I’ve never been through. The details don’t matter, pain is pain and struggle is struggle. I used to work so hard to tell people how OKAY I was, what a GREAT and purposeful life I had before I felt that way at all, and now that I have some purpose and peace, I feel that it’s okay to say that not every day is a great one. Not every day is sunshine and rainbows.

Will I ever be “over” my past? Probably not. But can I live with not only my past, but with the person that I am because of it? I hope so. Yeah, I deal with confusion, and pain, and sometimes feelings of loneliness and hopelessness, but it’s not all the time, and I’ve made a LOT of progress. That’s the best that I can do, and I feel like that’s okay. I get frustrated sometimes about goals that i have that I’m struggling to accomplish, but I’m doing the very best that I can with what I have. Would I be as passionate and empathetic as I am had I not had trauma in my past? I don’t know, but I’m grateful that those qualities are a part of who I am. I would never say I’m grateful for my past, but I’m proud of the fact that I would NEVER hurt anyone the way that I’ve been hurt, and I’m proud of how much I’ve grown and changed since being caught up in the worst of my struggles.

One day at a time, through a lifetime, and not all days will be great. And that’s okay.