The theme of my personal growth right now is acceptance. I have been fighting for a long time and while I am proud of my resilience and efforts to keep my life in tact in spite of the ongoing obstacles and challenges, I simultaneously feel humiliated and ashamed both for whats happened and my inability to fully keep it together and persevere. I guess acceptance for me starts with accepting that it's okay for me to break down. It's okay for me to have this diagnosis and as a result need a more structured world of support, and taking time to care for myself does not mean i am f**king up my life, but accepting the need for help. It's okay that I can't meet all the expectations i have for myself and I must accept that my family is unsupportive, that my past employers actively sought to undermine me, and that my life does not feel like it is structured in a way that I am proud of.
I've tried to let things go, but I think I've been ahead of myself because you can't let go until you have truly accepted. I've needed validation and sometimes even when I've gotten it, I didn't hear it or believe it and I just felt like I wanted more and more and more. But it will never be enough - the validation from the outside world until I truly accept my circumstances, stop questioning my decisions, stop blaming myself, stop hating myself for not being strong enough, good enough. Accept that I am tired. Accept that that the next logical step is not that my life will always suck, that I should never be excited because I will ultimately be disappointed. Acceptance does not mean that I should hate myself for having too high of expectations and I should have known better. Acceptance is not mistrust in the world.
That desire, that very American desire to believe that good things happen to good people, that hard work pays off, is still embedded in my DNA. Avoiding that desire is what I was chasing in the developing world. Fundamentally, I feel like working with my client base I should know better. But again, I am accepting that society has an impact on me.
Just like letting go is too far down the road, so is self forgiveness. Acceptance is where I am at. That I need more treatment, that its been hard for me, that it is a long road from here to an easy life, that I can't analyze and intellectualize my way through problems on my own.
Accepting my limitations does not mean I am admitting weakness.
Accepting my limitations does not erase my strengths, my value.
Accepting does not mean analyzing and just saying it out loud, it's deeper.
I have successfully accepted things in the past and just because life has hurt me and challenged me in new ways does not erase my progress either.
While validation facilitates and plays an important role - acceptance is me and only me.
I want to get to a point where I don't need to say it out loud at all to accept it.
I've tried to let things go, but I think I've been ahead of myself because you can't let go until you have truly accepted. I've needed validation and sometimes even when I've gotten it, I didn't hear it or believe it and I just felt like I wanted more and more and more. But it will never be enough - the validation from the outside world until I truly accept my circumstances, stop questioning my decisions, stop blaming myself, stop hating myself for not being strong enough, good enough. Accept that I am tired. Accept that that the next logical step is not that my life will always suck, that I should never be excited because I will ultimately be disappointed. Acceptance does not mean that I should hate myself for having too high of expectations and I should have known better. Acceptance is not mistrust in the world.
That desire, that very American desire to believe that good things happen to good people, that hard work pays off, is still embedded in my DNA. Avoiding that desire is what I was chasing in the developing world. Fundamentally, I feel like working with my client base I should know better. But again, I am accepting that society has an impact on me.
Just like letting go is too far down the road, so is self forgiveness. Acceptance is where I am at. That I need more treatment, that its been hard for me, that it is a long road from here to an easy life, that I can't analyze and intellectualize my way through problems on my own.
Accepting my limitations does not mean I am admitting weakness.
Accepting my limitations does not erase my strengths, my value.
Accepting does not mean analyzing and just saying it out loud, it's deeper.
I have successfully accepted things in the past and just because life has hurt me and challenged me in new ways does not erase my progress either.
While validation facilitates and plays an important role - acceptance is me and only me.
I want to get to a point where I don't need to say it out loud at all to accept it.
No comments:
Post a Comment