~ Just so you know, this will be a long one.
Whenever I want to post one of these, it's always tough to start. I never know what to say first, my thoughts are all tangled and I cannot feel anything clearly. But hey! That's one of the main reasons I write these, to gain some clarity, to put my thoughts on the table so I can sort them out.
As you know, I spent around 5 years of my life (from 22 to 27) living with my parents up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. Far away from society, surrounded by nature. It sounds idyllic, doesn't it? Well, sorry to ruin it for you, it wasn't.
The thing is, it was nice at the beginning for sure. A change of air, a lot more space, magical landscapes, it felt like freedom for a while. I won't deny it was most convenient during the pandemic as well, we surely didn't feel as locked down as people in the city. The hell came after.
I lost my job when the pandemic hit. I was sad but grateful I could live with my parents and we were so free of the repercussions of covid up there in the mountains. But when things slowly started to go back to "normal", I realised how isolated I was from the world, how secluded the house in the mountains was.
Have you ever felt guilty for feeling annoyed about something you "should" feel grateful for? That started to be me. I had a roof over my head, food, clothes, my own room, internet, etc. and still I felt like I was rotting inside. Like I had became a ghost in this world. I felt tiny and insignificant, I felt like my existence had no place in this reality. I couldn't get myself out of bed, couldn't get myself to take a shower. I barely ate. I stopped singing, I stopped drawing, I stopped dreaming. I saw no future for me, while still I longed for better days.
It really sucked. And it was really hard to start living again. Forcing myself to get a job again, to socialise, to appear as a normal human being in front of others. I didn't see any friends for 2 years during that time, so having to arrange time to see them again when I felt chronically exhausted was the worst and I felt guilty for it as well. I still loved them with all my heart, I just didn't have the energy.
Ok, so, to put the pieces together here, this experience really shattered me and my sense of reality into pieces. And recovery was really hard. Specially, because my sense of self and sense of reality before was never really grounded to begin with.
I dealt with years of bullying in school since I was a little girl. I used to victimize myself for that, but not anymore. However, I can't deny the impact it had on me or obviate the effort I had to put into changing my internal speech about it. Even though I've worked hard on healing that wound, it was still triggered from time to time. How would it show? Well, basically I would very often feel like I had no place in other people's lives. Like no one really cared about me or what I had to say. I think, unconsciously, I was choosing these people in my life who wouldn't listen or who would interrupt me when I was talking, just to name some examples. And I was really afraid to take up space anywhere, or in any human relationship. The sole idea of asking for something I desired or setting the tiniest boundaries would scare the hell out of me. So I didn't do it. And that would constantly reassure the speech in my head about me being unworthy of having a place in this world or unworthy of being seen or heard, which are basic human needs. I was creating this self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, that was a little retrospective context, but coming back to right after the pandemic time, finding myself isolated like that, and of course it was no one's fault, but I had completely lost my sense of self. I was just surviving day by day, I had no purpose. I had nothing to live for. I had no reason to get out of bed. I've always had very vivid dreams, so I used that as my escape. I would rather sleep and have vivid dreams that were way better than my reality.
It's been 2 years since then, and I will keep it short here because I've already talked about this season of my life before.
I intensely went to therapy, more specifically to family constellations, for about a year and really focused on getting my shit together and recouping my desire to live basically. That really saved my life. But still, I was stuck in the mountains, and as much as I loved my parents and the house and the landscapes were dreamy, I couldn't get my self to feel comfortable with it. Everything was so hard for me from there. Getting to the city and back to the house was a whole journey in itself. And I started to feel tired of it more and more every day. There was nothing I wished more than to live in the city again! But, I didn't seem to fin a way out. Cause getting a decent full-time job to pay for a decent living on my own, was hard enough already and it was even harder living so far away from the city. So I didn't know what to do.
Long story short, I decided to get things moving in a different direction and I started letting people know about my situation, hoping that the power of networking would do its thing for me. And one day I was telling a good friend of mine about my dilemma, and I, very suddenly, ended up getting a good job thanks to him. Everything happened so freaking fast that in the matter of days I found myself packing my stuff an moving to my aunt's place in the city because I didn't have time to get my own place in such short notice.
Since then, it's been a year. I found this little cute place I've been living in with my cat Nina, my black little panther, about 2 months after moving to my aunt's place and I moved in here. I kid you not, I couldn't be happier in that moment! I don't have enough words to describe the feeling of lightness and relief I had when I finally got a place to live on my own.
It was a good start, and I still to this day feel immensely blessed that I found my way back to the city, however, there were still unaddressed issues in my life. I have come a long way addressing them since I moved out but I still have a long way to go, cause we never really stop healing and learning you know?
Remember what I said about feeling like I had no place in this world? This experience of having to find myself a job and a place to live and providing for myself and Nina, making sure to have my basic needs met like grocery shopping, and doing laundry and eating three meals a day... All that helped me feel a lot more grounded in my existence in this world. I have definitely grown a lot through the challenges I've faced and I was actually starting to feel comfortable... But you know how life likes to throw shit at you to wake you up when you're falling into autopilot again, right?
Shit suddenly hit the fan, and really hard! It truly caught me off guard. (That rhymed hehe)
One of the things I've been addressing since I came back to the city, is intentionally cultivating relationships in my life, both friends and family, but mostly friends. This is because I made it a point to work on that issue of feeling out of place among people, more specifically among equals. Friends.
Social relationships are tricky when one deals with feelings of inferiority and unworthiness. I've cut ties with people in my life there was no point trying with, but with the rest, I've really put on an effort to bond deeper. And I've made an effort to meet new people too, and cultivate new friendships. But it's not always easy.
People are going to trigger you for your own good. That's the way it is. There's no such thing as a perfect relationship with anyone. But before, I used to shape shift in order to prevent any conflict, because I was so afraid of rejection and abandonment. Facing this fear is fucking painful.
So, the other day I was on a trip with a group of friends. All of them were new friends in my life (less than a year), but between them, they've been friends for years. So I was the new one, basically. We were walking and they started talking about random things and everyone was telling stories about things that had happened in their lives and I felt like I wanted to share a story too. And it immediately hit me. The discomfort, suddenly feeling out place, thoughts of "no one is gonna care if I talk", "they're not gonna listen anyway", all that.
As I was walking, I internally stopped to listen to those thoughts and, since I've been trying to break patterns lately, I decided to take some deep breaths, ground myself and go for it.
I started talking and telling my story, and it wasn't long until one of them interrupted me and I realised none of them were paying attention to me. You know that feeling when you're talking but you notice they're in their heads and you're talking to a wall? That was it. That was the feeling I got.
I felt the emotional pain, but since I had already grounded myself before, instead of being angry at them, I just went immediately quite to stay with the emotion in my body. When this shift happened in my energy, one of them immediately noticed, and he was like "oh, what were you saying again?" It might seem small, but it was such a magical moment for me, because I learned right there, that being consciously quite is also a way of taking up space.
The feeling didn't go away, and more little things kept triggering me durin the trip. I actively stayed with all of them in my body, just letting them move through me, observing them, while externally having fun at the same time of course. It's really interesting how you can be having two contrasting experiences external and internally at the same time, the two of them just coexisting in the present moment if you allow yourself to hold space for them.
Thank goodness the place we were at had a water body, a magnificent river. I've always felt such incredible peace whenever I'm submerged from neck to toe in a river. Water is also directly connected to the emotional world as well. So there was this moment when I started feeling an anxiety attack building up inside me and I was sitting on a rock under water, only my head was out and I was hugging my legs against my chest.
There were people around me having fun in the river and my friends were each doing their thing, jumping off of small cliff into the river and capturing pictures and videos, just normal stuff. And I was there, sitting still in the middle of the river, feeling incredibly small and invisible, trying my very best to stay grounded in my body and feeling the water around it.
I closed my eyes and focused on breathing and the water moving around me. Then, I started lovingly asking my body "what do you need?", and it answered. Very deep in my mind I heard something: "I belong". As simple as that.
So I followed that voice. "I belong", a few times just in my head. Then my body wanted to say it out loud, so I started whispering "I belong", my throat felt tight at first. "I belong", more and more clearly every time. Breathing into it, until I was able to say it soundly. "I belong", it became a mantra. I could feel the vibration of the words in my body against the water. My mind went quite, except for this mantra. My body felt peaceful. And I entered this unexplainable state of trance in which I could still hear every happening around me, but I was here, melting with the sound of my words. Until one of my friends came and brought me out of it by asking "you okay?"
It was truly an amazing experience, completely intuitive. This is what I've been practicing lately, but this specific moment was very special and deep.
After that, I felt so peaceful interacting with my friends for the rest of the trip, and I actually noticed their energy toward me shifted and they started talking to me more and they would listen whenever I said something, and it was effortless.
I learned so much from this trip and I'm so grateful for all the things in my life that brought me to where I am today internally and externally. I am definitely eager to have more learning experiences and see the vision of the woman I want to become turn into reality.
I'm thankful for the people in my life and for all the lessons they bring me through our friendship.
That's all for now.
Cheers! 🥂
