Nothing scares this shit out of me more than my own happiness. That sentence alone is enough to send me into a fit of tears and heavy dry heaving. As I recall becoming aware, and I mean really aware that I had a habit of self sabotage, it was a little more than three years ago. I had just left an abusive four year relationship and almost immediately I dove into another semi-serious relationship with a guy that was completely his opposite. There was no one trying to control my every move, no more yelling and screaming, no one telling me I wasn’t good enough, no one to make me feel like shit every day. Someone had to pick up the slack, and who knows how to make me feel like crap better than anyone else? You guessed it! Me.
If there wasn’t a problem, I needed to find one, if there wasn’t a fight, I needed to pick one. If he wasn’t going to find flaws with my body, then I needed to. I had been in a constant state of fight or flight for so long, I was completely addicted to the rush. I was addicted to the pain. So I “decided” to self sabotage again, and again, and again.
I don’t know precisely when or better yet why I decided this form of emotional cutting was my favorite kind. The feeling of not good enough, the validation of “being right” when someone finally leaves you after you’ve pushed them away. Why it was so deeply embedded into my psyche that being miserable safer than being happy.
As far back as my early teens, my life has felt like one crisis after another. Sometimes it was just seeing how risky of a situation I could get myself into without getting hurt. Sometimes I did get hurt and got to be the victim. For years I was like a violent tornado. I would spin out of control picking up drugs, booze, and toxic relationships one after another flinging garbage and debris from one area of town to the next, destroying everything in my path. Over and over making a mess out of my life and then trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together.
I have spent the better part of the last four years, actively painfully, brutally, digging into every room and dusty corner of my mind, body and soul trying to heal this self destructive teenager’s tendencies. But I feel her all the time. She follows me around like an annoying yipping chihuahua nipping at my heels and barking for attention. I’ve tried meds, psychiatry, emotional release therapy, energy work, solo trips abroad, writing, crystals, essential oils, art, meditating, yoga, and just about every damn self development book out there. Still, she is there. This wounded child that just wont stop acting out.
I have been seeing an energy worker for a couple years now and we were taking about this inner child that’s always with me, the destructive one one who lacks discernment. She asked what I would say to my teenage self and I said, “I want to turn around and scream ‘what the fuck is your problem anyways!? Why do you have to continue making our life so hard? I was there for everything that you were! I was there too! We have moved on, we’ve healed. We are fine ok!? We have everything we have ever wanted or needed, and then some so what the fuck is your problem anyways!?’” She replied, “have you tried loving her?”… I’m trying.
I realized that even though I have come so incredibly far in my healing, and I have done enough self work for about five lifetimes, the work is never really done. “Owning your shit is just the first step, you still have to do the maintenance.” I realize now that even though I may have worked thru the first few heavy layers of sludge there’s a lot more underneath. Ares were I ping pong slightly above complete misery and disrepair, but far enough below real joy and happiness, so as not to get too attached to a good thing for fear I might somehow destroy it.
The only thing you really can do is move forward even though the journey ahead is completely terrifying; full of “what if’s.” I feel like I’ve spent so much life consumed by all the what if’s and constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop that rob myself of the present moment. I am robbing myself. Why? Because of fear! There is more to lose in happiness than there is in misery, so better not allow myself to get too carried away in all my joy and bliss.
I’d like to get to a point in my life where I can let go completely, where I don’t link happiness to fear, but for now I am simply a work in progress.