Let Me Be Clear

In the beginning, this writing was never intended to be seen by anyone other than me. It was a place where I could let it all out and not worry about how my words impacted others. Where I could explore uninhibited by guilt. I didn’t know it at the time, but getting it out on paper was only the first step. Eventually I realized that keeping it all to myself felt a lot like hiding a shameful secret. I had to share it.

I have made some revisions over the years, but most of what I have published on this site so far was written two to three years ago. When I wrote No More Apologies and Digging Deep, I was in an especially fragile state. I was hurting and trying desperately to figure out why. Throughout this process, the words would be out on the page, but it would often take me weeks, sometimes months, to fully comprehend their meaning. Which seems crazy! The words came out of my own head, and yet I struggled to make sense of them. Wild. I never even thought to consider how others would interpret my words. It didn’t matter back then, but now that these words are out there for others to read, is this something I need to think about?

Most of my life, I have stopped myself from saying things, from digging into thoughts or emotions, out of fear of hurting someone, causing drama or appearing ungrateful. I hate drama and I hate conflict. I am extremely grateful for the life I have had. I never want my loved ones to feel pain. I certainly don’t ever want to be the one inflicting the pain. As I have mentioned, I have put a great deal of effort into keeping the peace. I would much rather that everyone just get along and that no one gets hurt. Obviously, this wasn’t sustainable. By protecting others, I was hurting myself. I was carrying the burden. I was preventing myself from healing. The second I pressed publish for this site, I felt a giant weight lift off my shoulders.

Let me be clear, I am not a victim. I have incredible parents and was fortunate enough to have had a, mostly, wonderful childhood. I am proud of the traits and morals that were instilled in me. I have so much gratitude towards my family and my friends for surrounding me with love and support. Life has been kind to me. As this site evolves, I'm sure I will share some of the wonderful stuff. Realistically, I could dedicate another entire site to happy memories and praise. But this work isn’t about the good times. This work is about understanding where my pain comes from. It’s about healing. In order to do that, I have to dig into the unpleasant stuff. And it sucks. The hardest part of all of it is knowing that, sometimes, the ones I love the most will get hurt in the process. The hurtful parts are only a small part of my story and by no means do they discount all the good parts. But, for some reason, these small parts have stuck with me and continue to harm me. This work is about figuring out why and about learning how to stop them from controlling my current life.

When I sank into depression, I blamed myself. What kind of a selfish, horrible person feels this kind of pain when they have had such a great life? I must be the problem. Unfortunately, it took me decades to understand that I can feel gratitude and pain simultaneously. Feeling pain didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful. It is possible to acknowledge the hurt without laying blame. After years of messy hard work, I now see that even the most fortunate of people have scars and we are all perfectly justified in exploring them. In fact, if everyone explored their scars, if we could all get past the guilt and let ourselves feel what we have been trying so vigilantly to suppress, I think the world would be a much better place.

I have written about the harm caused by comparison. This has a double meaning. Not only do we compare ourselves to the seemingly impressive aspects of others’ lives. We also compare our traumas to the traumas experienced by others. We convince ourselves that compared to the hell other people have been through, our hardships are insignificant. We haven’t earned the right to be hurt by our less-than-earth-shattering experiences. But just as there will always be someone who has accomplished more, there will also always be someone who was worse off. If only I had allowed myself to accept this and feel what I needed to feel, I could have saved myself so much turmoil.

All of my struggles can be traced back to guilt and shame. I hid my anxiety because I was ashamed. I blocked out any pain associated with my childhood experiences because acknowledging it made me feel too guilty. I can no longer censor myself because of how others may react. I recognize that I have not had a hard life. But I can’t go on pretending that I haven’t been hurt along the way just because others have had it worse. Likewise, while the accuracy of my childhood experiences may be questionable, they were real to me and I have been impacted by them. I won’t apologize for that. I was a child. I saw it all through a grossly underdeveloped lens. I hadn’t yet acquired any sense of emotional maturity. I was too young to understand what I was seeing, hearing or feeling. I didn’t choose to interpret things the way I did. Just as my parents never intended to hurt me, I never intended to be hurt by their actions. I wouldn’t change a thing about my childhood. If I could do it all again, I would still take the bad with the good. I know the hard stuff gave me strength, taught me valuable lessons and helped me achieve my goals. The only thing I would change is the way I treated myself as an adult. I wish I had been kinder and allowed myself to do this work before it destroyed me the way it did.

Some people feel better keeping certain things private. It works for them and I respect that. If this were someone else’s story and they opened up to me but asked me to keep it to myself, I would absolutely do so. But the thing is, this is my story. Factual or perceived, this is what I experienced and I am going to share it. The hard stuff, the hurtful stuff, is all part of it. I had to go there. Keeping it private wasn’t working for me anymore. Keeping it private was feeding the shame. So here it is. All of it. With the sole intention of healing; for myself and for anyone else reading this who needs to hear that we are not bad people for being negatively impacted by good intentions and it’s okay to talk about it.