I ended a relationship I was in for over two years. As much as I loved that person dearly and yes, there were beautiful moments in it, there was still unlove. I’m not at a point where I want to discuss it openly, but I do think that the title is true. We do accept the love we think we deserve. And I deserved better. I knew I deserved better and yet, for some reason I could not let go. It does make me wonder if I held onto this relationship being mistreated because it was my internal fight. Because if someone mistreated me and they finally change and love me the way I should be, my parents could change.

So I ended that relationship because I wanted change. I wanted to be treated better because I deserve better. Self-esteem is not what many would think it is. It’s really how we let other ppl treat ourselves. Even though I am confident, it became painfully apparent that I do not have high self-esteem. I still suffer from the painful rationalization that I am not a good person, not worthy of anything, and yet, it’s anything from true. I’m very accomplished, accepting, and kind. Still, I carry a wound that I do not know how to fix, except with time and help.

So I end this entry, realizing I have not said much. I’m still unsure of what I feel. It’s a mixture of hope and sadness. A somber feeling of how I was treated with the knowledge I should not have been treated that way. I’m still in conflict with how someone that loved you so much, that should have loved and treated you well, could possibly mistreat and disrespect you. Is it the luck of the draw for parents? And then, is it the choices we make down the road to reinforce that forever trauma in our minds. Our child-like, fragile minds, attempting to find peace.

Yet, somber acceptance is one more step in the right direction. I know I will be a stronger person and I know I will eventually make the right choices and surround myself with the people that treat me the way I deserve.

I accept the love I think I deserve. As I make my way through this personal journey of mine, I now see hope and love that I once thought was not there.

Light and love.

My whole life has been a rationalization about what could have been or what I thought was. I never really understood that I was basically beating myself without the presence of my parents anymore. Because when you are a child, you try to combine in-congruent truths to make everything seem okay. That when a parent does a continuing unloving act, you try to make sense of it. Parents are suppose to love you, but what do you do when they do things that are an outright betrayal to you? As a child, you rationalize; you make sense out of it. I did. I believed I must have been a bad child to have incurred such wrath, and so I went on in life, thinking that I am a bad child…a bad person. That even the simplest thing I might have done must have been the most horrible thing I could have ever done. Everything I do and believe I am becomes distorted…all because of that “rationalization” I made to protect my fragile child mind. And what is so pervasive and wrong about that is that planted seed of low self-worth continues on without your parents, without that toxic relationship. And instead, you become the very thing that destroys yourself, telling yourself that you would never amount to anything, sabotaging everything you wanted for yourself.

So essentially, the child’s mind in defending itself from such a horrible truth, will come up with the most amazing rationalizations to make sense of everything. Rationalizations that don’t even make logic sense and distort every aspect of your life. I used to believe that showing emotions was ‘weak’. That it was ‘weak’ of me to be expressive, but after all these years, I finally have come to the conclusion that is not the truth. I only believed expressing love and emotion was ‘weak’ because I wanted to make sense of why my parents never did so. My child thoughts believed that my parents must have been ’strong,’ for not showing their emotions because why would a parent be so unloving?

So I have been making tremendous progress in my therapy. I am coming closer to the truth and coming closer to un-living the lie.

I actually never thought it possible to “declare my independence,” to tell my parents what they did was wrong. But now as I get closer and closer to the truth, that moment seems to actually seem possible. I remember reading all those books about toxic parent relationships and reading about how confrontation was the last step to finally get things rolling…I remember thinking to myself that it was not possible. But I say now that it is; that if you think it is not possible, that it will be. With time it will come. Remember that it took years of abuse to make that negative voice and it will take time to quiet it.

So now, I’ve trying to find balance in everything I do. Find balance in working for the law firm, find myself, make time for myself, and remember what is important. It’s time to remember who I was before I hid away.

May you find peace in life and in everything. xoxo

I first heard the phrase, “living life in the middle,” from my therapist and it deals specifically with how you must define the boundaries in your life and relationships. For someone like me, who has one of the three attachments, separation-sensitive (the other two, esteem-sensitive and safety-sensitive), I’m commonly known as the “people pleaser.” And logically, the “people pleaser” will please everyone with the reoccuring problem of forgetting about themselves. They go with life, thinking “be all, love all,” taking in all kinds of behavior that most individuals would not take and loving that person no matter what. What happens, however, is that person will give, give, give, give, and give some more until they reach a point where they switch not through the middle-ground of “I think something is wrong and you’re not treating me right,” it goes straight to hate, leaving those who were receiving all that giving, wondering what just happened. So with that example, “living life in the middle” is about not jumping to those extremes back and forth, but living life, well, in the middle. Instead of being the push-over or the stubborn one, it’s best to be in the middle. Because if you’re on the extreme ends, you can be boxed in and your options drastically limited. Whereas, living life in the middle allows you great flexibility in your options. If you’re in the middle and being pushed from either side, you can simply “re-balance” yourself with still plenty of room. Life is about choices and in order to open ourselves to choices is to define our boundaries on how we interact with other people.

Before I continue, a disclaimer: I’m not a therapist, I don’t have any professional psychological training, nor do I intend to offer any kind of mental health advice. These are the insights I had gained from my own experiences in life and in therapy. Also, I do not plan on talking about this line of topic for the majority of my entries. ‘Cause if I’m living life in the middle and redefining my life, I’m rediscovering who I am and what interests me. Though admittedly, I will speak about the changes in my life I have made since and will need to make to get to where I should be.

I will write more later on why I was in therapy and how that came about.