Lisa Marie Sanders
Time
“I am done! I am just so done with this! No more!!”
I’ve been hearing a voice in my head say this for the last couple of months, but I haven’t been sure just what it is that I’m so done with. Therapy has been painful and exceptionally challenging, so I wondered if it meant that I was done with doing therapy. Yes, it felt related, as though I just couldn’t bear to keep on doing what I’ve been doing into the foreseeable future, I was tired of feeling beaten up emotionally. So very done with feeling all of that pain in regards to my parents, but I noticed that the voice didn’t use the word “quit.” I dreaded the sessions as much as I needed them as a life line, but I knew that I had to go, quitting wasn’t an option.
So what was that voice talking about?
I think that I’m starting to understand. I am completely done with feeling stuck under certain obligations to my parents that have controlled me my whole life. I am done with letting the limitations caused by the trauma reactions keep me from doing things that I very much want to do- keep me from seeing people who I know will help to nurture my heart. I am done with feeling like I have to stay curled up in a tight ball and not dare to breathe. I am done with letting the days slip by and not letting myself really live them, because I am too afraid of the pain. I am done with not allowing myself to fully be me, whoever she might be. I am done with living by the old rules.
I am just so sick and tired of that life. I don’t want it. And I feel as though things are opening up inside and I am slowly seeing that I don’t have to live that life.
I don’t know where I’m headed and I find that frightening. But I also feel as though I might be on the edge of stepping off on to a wonderful journey.
“I refuse to live in a box. I won’t do it for anyone.” That is what it has felt like, isn’t it? Folding myself up into a pretzel and then being walled in by a box. No more.
I know that these things wax and wane and I’m not about to jump up and turn my entire life upside down with revolutionary changes. But, yes, I agree with that voice, I am so done. I’m particularly done with the bonds that have kept me feeling trapped in a tight place with so many of the emotions and memories of when I was a child. I’m no longer that child who had no choice other than to get through the best that she could. Now it’s time to do my best to free myself from what has kept me so tightly tied to that period of my life. It’s time to allow myself to move through the pain and start to fully live in the present with a marvelous husband and heart-breakingly wonderful daughter.
From the depth of the pain that I felt today, this will not be an easy process; I’m not fooling myself. But I can also see that something different happened while I was experiencing the pain today: I both allowed myself to honestly express and fully experience my emotions and I allowed myself to not only take in and really accept acts of kindness and support from Mama Bear, but I was able to take in her intent to deliberately care for and comfort me. Sitting here now, I realize that once it was all over, I felt cleaner and freer somehow, if exhausted.
I’ll do this somehow. I’ll need the support of those who love the full me, but I’m done with staying in this place.
Yes, Freedom!! It’s there for you, when you want it and for as long as you want it. It won’t go away. It’s yours . . . Hugs . . .
It’s a good thing that I can dip a toe in, take a step back, walk to a different side and dabble my fingers in, and take things slowly. I’ve learned, when it’s this big of a shift, trying to push it tend to send me into a panic. But as you said, the reality of the situation isn’t going to change based on whether I take 2 days or 2 months to integrate these shifts.
Hi Cat, your last two posts resonated so strongly and closely mirror my own struggles at the moment. To think other people want to comfort me because they desire to be supportive, kind and loving and see me as deserving of it triggers the most harrowing grief where I feel like I’m struggling for my life and death is so close. I know that’s what it would’ve felt like as an infant and small child because my life and self really were in enormous danger. It is so hard to step into life and be free of the invisible walls we put around ourself so long ago because it reminds us of what we’ve had to disown in ourselves, that we were never guided by an internal compass and supported with love and guidance but instead by the demands imposed by someone else. And that is so excruciatingly painful. But it is the way to a life that is authentic and joyful. Hugs to you xxxx
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