Over and Under It.

Turning 36 in a month, I’m over it and under it. Exhausted. I’m ready for change. I’m more than ready to cease self destructive behavior for good. I’m ready to give myself permission to love myself unconditionally. I’m so tired of this recurring drive to self destruct.

I’m no special case. Abusive childhoods, even mildly abusive, cause trauma, and trauma more often than not causes lifelong mental illness. But I’m old and overwhelmed. I know this story. I know every plot point. There’s no more excitement in turning the page. I’m just done. Spent.

I don’t need my worth to be determined by anyone else finding me worthy. I can, somehow, find my own worth. My worth is in being a contributing member of society, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, and hopefully a good friend. It’s not in the negative G-forces spiraling through a clothoid loop on a coaster of my own self infliction. It’s not the highs and the lows. It’s the middles. It’s sustaining one note and reveling in its lifelong consistency.

The world around can spin on. I’m on an urgent quest to find peace. It starts with accepting that being broken is not a chronic illness. It starts with healing myself–enacting the advice of a thousand self help books—more sleep, more nutrients, more exercise, more quiet, more music, more doing, less seeking, less wanting, less thinking, less boozing, less obsessing, less escaping, more accepting, more loving and nurturing.

I wish I knew what it was like to not be the product of childhood trauma. What is it like to be a mentally healthy person? To believe that I deserve all of the goodness in the world, as long as I give that goodness back? Everyone has their issues. But some people weren’t taught that they’re always wrong, that they’re not not trying hard enough, that they’re ugly and broken—what would life be like if I was taught to love myself from day one?

Unfortunately, I’ll never know. I owe it to myself to try to understand how to have healthy thoughts and make it a priority to think that way. I can’t spend the next however many years of life being this way. It’s suffocating and debilitating. I can’t do this much longer. I’m shifting my focus. I’m reincarnating my ego. I’m cracking myself open and hoping that after all of my yoke has run out there’s still some sustenance of value left. 

I’d like to believe there’s something there, someone there, who can exist without want, without need, without all these unhealthy tendencies. It’s time to shut this book once and for all and tear out all of its pages, shredding them into a million pieces, and levitating in the lucid lightness of being scraped down to the bone and rebuilt anew.