L's Journey

I'm continually amazed at the utter lack of understanding I have about myself.  I have good days.  I have bad days.  I have amazing moments of clarity.  I have horrible moments of clarity.  My brain tells me that I should be grateful for every thought, that each is an opportunity to be a better me.  My heart tells me that sometimes its just too hard.

There is an understood thought that one must look inside themselves, to do what truly makes them happy, to be truthful to themselves.  Living authentically is... well, its difficult when all you've ever known is living for others.  This was my horrible moment of clarity today.  I've lived my entire life living for others.  Not even the right people.  People who took without gratitude.  People who without notice or warning, would make me feel like I wasn't doing enough. I've never thought enough about myself to see what these people were doing was wrong.  But even now that I'm aware that how they treated me was wrong, now that I have clarity, I still don't feel right. 

You would think that because I've done an amazing job getting these people out of my life and building relationships with people that really do have my best interest at heart, I'd feel like a whole person.  I don't.  I feel absolutely hopeless.  Anxious.  Frazzled.  I feel, at times, absolute discontent.  Lonely. 

Most people who are getting out of bad relationships are faced with the task of getting back the pieces of themselves that they lost because of the relationship.  My task is harder than that.  I've been forced to figure out who I am from the beginning.  I look in the mirror and have daily reminders of how little I thought of myself.  I have to style my hair in certain ways because it was pulled out so many times that it won't grow back in certain places, I have skin issues because out of being nervous all the time, I picked at my skin.  These are things that would be considered only "skin deep" by some, but they are more than that.  They are my daily reminder that I didn't even give myself a chance to figure me out before getting involved in relationships that forced me to only believe in the other person.

I don't like to think of myself as a troubled person.  I don't like to think of myself as a lost cause.  I don't like to think of myself as a person that is nothing without someone else.  The problem is this:  I have never, in my life, been anything unless I was standing next to someone else.  Its hard to stand alone, especially when you don't have anything to stand for.