I realize that my last post was back in late April, but I don’t have any apologies. Since then, I’ve finished my final exams, spent two weeks doing absolutely nothing, and then went back to working at a law firm for the remainder of the summer. During that time, I have made several key realizations on this journey I’m currently on.

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