there is more truth in fantasy than reality

“I slept in today. And I really needed that. But then I spent all day daydreaming and being on my phone, and boy do I feel shitty right now. I am restless. And angry at [the ex]. And I feel like I’ve been neglecting myself all day.”

From My Journal, Day 64

When I failed to feel positive, I daydreamed. In fact, I daydreamed most of my time outside the office and classroom.

Daydreaming was my primary coping mechanism since early childhood. Having no influence over my external conditions, I habitually retreated into my internal, more accurately mental, experiences. My rich imagination was my refuge. I spent much of my life in this disassociated state. I believe it was my daydreaming habit that enabled me to preserve my child-like curiosity and openness, idealism and softheartedness. By escaping the present moment, I evaded its blows. By disconnecting from my sensitivity and receptivity, intuition and creativity, I saved myself from the harsh elements of life. By separating from my truth, I remained true to myself.

A friend asked me once how I resisted submitting to my circumstances and changing – hardening – as a result. The fact is I fragmented my psyche and hid various parts of my self in the shadow. One cannot manipulate that which is not accessible.  

The only place I could see a glimpse of what was desirable and dear to my heart was in my daydreams.

During those early days post breakup, I felt much resistance to facing reality and instead spent countless hours daydreaming about a different version of me in different circumstances surrounded by different, that is loving and supportive, people. I daydreamed about the self I hoped to become someday and the life I hoped to live someday years down the line. I always measured the time gap between my current self (at any given moment) and fantasy self in years because, although I intended to become that person, I knew the transformation was so dramatic it would require heaps of time and effort to change the ingrained patterns of being and behaving. Yet, the person I saw in my daydreams felt more like self than the person perpetually riding an emotional roller coaster, relentlessly obsessing over relationships, bulldozing through (repeat) situations with tunnel vision, and inflating herself with empty cheer.  

As a result of my compulsive and excessive daydreaming, I procrastinated on schoolwork, which piled up and increasingly added to my stress load, that I then attempted to escape by more daydreaming. I neglected my body and home. My sink was full of dishes, my sheets needed changing, and my legs were overdue for a shave. I felt disgusted and annoyed and angry. I was mostly angry at my ex. I felt restless. I was alone. I was lonely. I was experiencing a lot of fear and anxiety related to school, which I harbored for decades as a consequence of being in an abusive educational system, wherein unfulfilled educators dumped their frustrations onto and exercised their limited power over powerless children. These emotional wounds were once again peeled open by an ongoing unhealthy power dynamic I observed in a university.

In essence, my reality was too painful, and I was too weak to endure the pain.  

More than anything, I wanted two things in life: to love what I did and to love the person I was with. And no matter where I was in life, what my influences were and how much personal work I did or avoided doing, this simple truth did not change. And if there was anything more excruciating than the circumstances I found myself in, it was the realization that I never had the experiences I so deeply longed for and they continued to be out of my reach. Thus, I daydreamed.

I argue that daydreaming is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms I developed. The danger of daydreaming is that it can become obsessive and take over one’s life. It can steal many, if not most, hours from anyone’s day, if not checked, similar to an addiction to Internet, TV, gaming, and in some cases reading. Unlike the latter, however, daydreaming is more challenging to unplug from because, plainly, it does not run on electricity (even reading requires a light source). And, of course, it makes paying attention in important situations, i.e., driving, conversations, classroom, etc., far more difficult.

The major advantage of daydreaming, however, is that it allows one to explore their deepest desires without inhibition, whilst remaining crystal clear about what is fantasy and what is reality. The fantasy I played out in my head while laying on a couch and staring at a ceiling posed much less threat to my psychological development and quality of life than the fantasy I lived out when I fanatically convinced myself that I was happy, and grateful, and blessed, and life was good. The imaginary relationships I created in my mind were far less of an obstacle to achieving true intimacy than the real-life relationships I entertained for decades, which were shallow, inauthentic and manipulative. My fictional love served both as an escape and encouragement to believe that safe and profound intimacy was attainable (if I faced my fears, limiting beliefs and unhealthy patterns of feeling, thinking and doing, and learned to take responsibility for myself rather than project an image of a parental figure onto a partner). The fantasy bonds I forged in reality, on the other hand, numbed my senses, diluted my passions, and misled me into thinking that now that I was chosen and I had a warm body by my side, I was validated and complete. They stunted my growth and made me more delusional than any couch fantasy ever could.  

My daydreams were a gateway to my shadow self. They stored the fragmented parts of me – my unmet needs and dormant desires, my neglected talents and undeveloped passions, my large ambitions and even larger personality (which I worked so hard to squeeze into a size zero bodycon dress and adorn with a smile). They pointed in the direction of my fulfillment, which ran opposite of my codependent attachments, avoidant tendencies and compulsive obsessions. They laid out a path to my self-actualization and individuation.

My daydreams were a portal to my potential. They revealed the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be, and guided me towards filling said gap. They informed me which habits I needed to break and which habits I needed to form. They demonstrated the qualities I was lacking. They unmasked my resistance, be it doubts, fears, limiting beliefs, and my conditioning for comfort, complacency and codependence. By sheer imagination, I could sense which relationship dynamics and financial pursuits made me feel empowered, and which made me desire to be small. Interestingly, I always daydreamed about the former, but perpetually leaned towards the latter in real life. For, it is easier to be small, and quiet, and invisible, to be absolved of responsibility and told what to do and what to become, to be protected and secure within the confines of prison walls. In my fantasy, I could see beyond the razor barbed wire fence of my conditioning.  

In my daydreams, I could see the truth.  

positivity is a tool for self-deception

“I handled the day and my emotions well. I can feel the shift in my personal growth. I am slowly becoming the person I want to be. And I like it. I feel like I am more open to life, a little less fearful and a little more confident. I am excited for spring and I am eager to continue working on myself. I like who I am. I like who I am becoming. I feel inspired.”

From My Journal, Day 70

I was lying to myself in almost every journal entry. I told myself I enjoyed conversations which I did not. I told myself I was passionate about schoolwork, which I was not. I told myself life was good, which it was not.

I tried to show up as “my desired self” everyday instead of observing, accepting and simply being with the self that I was, the self that needed me.

I told myself that “my desired self [was] passionate about what she [did], and she [was] great at what she [did].” I heard somewhere online that passion grows with skill. So, I did my best to become good at whatever it was I was doing (and expected to do) at the moment, and to see the positive in it. I employed all my willpower and discipline to stay focused, aware and in the present moment. I eliminated distractions, set a timer and concentrated my mind. In fact, I was so zoomed in on the present moment that I missed the bigger picture. Fixing my attention on a task, circumstance or a person in front of me served as a distraction. It was even therapeutic. It was as remedial as a painkiller in case of a chronic migraine. It may relieve the pain but it does not change the fact that our lifestyle choices, or our environment, or a person, or an underlying health condition is causing a recurring migraine.

I often had the experience of losing myself in a conversation or my work, when I would not notice time go by. I believed I was achieving the state of flow. I convinced myself these moments of oblivion were indicative of my interest and passion. In reality, I mobilized all my faculties and became hyper focused in the face of perceived stress. When chased by a wild animal, we are also present and absorbed in the moment, but the biochemical pathways we activate are very different from those when in the state of flow.

I felt proud of myself. I felt gratified for pushing and persevering at becoming the person I (thought I) desired to be, or rather acting like that person (for short stretches of time because this charade was not sustainable). I was intentional about my time and behavior. More accurately, I attempted to curate my self-expression and the state of being to shape myself into the person I wanted to be. I remained mindful of my thoughts and feelings throughout the day, and the story I told myself. And I played tricks on my mind to change the story. I even believed I was enjoying myself. I fancied that my experiences – my physical environment, schoolwork, interests and social interactions – were enriching me. I felt happy. I felt I was becoming open to love, light and life.

When, in fact, my heart was encrusted with thick bark and overgrown with dense thorny shrubbery.

I was dishonest with myself and disingenuous with others. I was avoiding my inner experiences and escaping my outer reality.

I was discrediting my pain. I was disrespecting my actual thoughts and feelings, and disregarding my natural limitations. I was ignoring the reality that I was surrounded by people who were harming me. I was discounting the truth that I dreaded the work I signed myself up for at school. I was glossing over the fact that I constantly got distracted, and I talked incessantly because for as long as I was talking, I was not listening and paying attention. And it was all for the sake of feeling good.

Since it was too painful to be with the current self and in the current circumstances, I neglected myself in an effort to become someone else. Except this time around, it was not to please others by meeting their expectations of me, it was to distract myself by aspiring to some social media inspired artificially manufactured ideal of self. Working on myself was the means to bypass the acknowledgment of who I really was and how I really felt about the life I created. If I was a different person, and I had a different life, I would not have to look at the truth, let alone accept it.

In essence, I abandoned myself.

My life was a show, and the self I presented was a mimic. I simply was not there.

The messages of positivity and gratitude have saturated our culture. They are propagated by social media and western spirituality. There is this idea that we attract the energy we exude. Whether we call it by its spiritual name, i.e., the Law of Attraction, or refer to it by the term rooted in sociology and psychology, i.e., self-fulfilling prophecy, there is indeed some truth to this phenomenon. However, the key is that the point of attraction lies in our unconscious rather than our conscious. It is our beliefs which are unspoken and, often, unthought of, and behavioral patterns which are rarely perceived by the conscious mind, that selectively color our subjective and, to a degree, objective realities. Therefore, it is of little to no significance what we tell ourselves and others, what we write in our journals, proclaim on social media feeds and pin on our vision boards, and how hard we try to make ourselves feel a certain way. The forces that paint our fate will elude our conscious mind for as long as we turn a blind eye to what is for the sake of that which we want to see.

Whereas some encourage us to gloss over our reality, others teach us to merely cope with its symptoms. Although, the field of psychology is broad and sometimes contradictory, its most popular and palatable to the masses ideas, the kind we are most often imparted while sitting on a therapist’s couch, aim but to help us get by. That is until the next appointment. For example, challenging our thinking and reframing our perspective are valuable tools, which most certainly belong in a toolkit of any intelligent individual, but there is a fine line between being an objective critical thinker who is able to entertain multiple viewpoints and gaslighting ourselves. Similarly, emotional regulation is critical to our wellbeing and that of everyone around us, but when it is exercised in contrary to our inner and outer realities, it is but means to tranquilize and domesticate ourselves. Modern psychotherapy prescribes tools and pills that assist us in adapting to and managing our circumstances, our relationships, and our own body and mind to ensure we do not ruffle others’ feathers too much and fit into our societal structures just enough to survive and procreate.

And, of course, our friends and family want us to be cheerful and hopeful. They just love seeing us happy. Our smiles put smiles on their faces. Our joy warms their hearts. Our laughter tickles their tenderness. Our grit inspires their strength. Our faith gives them hope. Our positivity is convenient. Our brightness saves their energy. Our serenity lulls their distress. Our optimism excuses them from thinking. Our fortitude makes everybody else’s life easier. The truth is that our less than pleasant demeanor irritates the senses of those around us. More often than not our reality is bothersome, distasteful, troubling and threatening to the unsettled souls in our lives. We avoid our reality and we encourage others to do so. We are conditioned to separate ourselves, more accurately our ego, from our essence – sometimes exuberant and blissful, other times animalistic and sexual, and on occasion dark and violent – and we condition the next generations to follow suit.

It is but weak leading the weak.

Too afraid of truth, we build our lives on lies. In an attempt to feel good, we deplete ourselves of all that is good. We live the life of inauthenticity.

This is how I got in my way of co-creating the life that actually fulfilled me. And in order to end this sabotage, my stories, defenses and pretenses had to fail me.

I needed to fall apart.

achievement and productivity are rooted in survival

“I am the woman I want to be. […] At this time I don’t need to go out of my way to seek out new opportunities. I can focus on what I have, appreciate it and do my best at it – do my best at work and do my best at school and do my best (taking care of myself) at home (the home that I love) and see what opportunities come my way.”

From My Journal, Day 35

The foundation I had built my entire life on cracked, and I was in denial about it. Moreover, I was adamant about pushing forward and building on top of a fractured base.

Instead of allowing myself to process the end of a relationship, I was concentrated intently on achievement and productivity. I had a full-time job, and I was studying in school.

My goals were to maintain a 4.0 GPA and do research in school, and get promoted at work – all at the same time. As I wrote in my journal, I wanted to “be so good at what I [did] others [talked] about it.”

If that was not enough to distract myself with, I was fixated on following healthy lifestyle habits, which included regular sleep, clean diet, hydration, running, strength training and yoga, meditation, reading and journaling, everyday chores, and extensive daily and weekly self-care regimens. Brainwashed by social media, I wanted to be “that girl.” I strived to embody an image of a girl who, citing my journal, had “a beautiful white smile,” “supple clear skin,” and “a fit body;” who “[looked] well-groomed at all times and [felt] confident about it.” I wanted to be an epitome of perfect health – inside and out. I wanted a glow up.

None of these habits were new to me. In fact, I invested a lot of effort into establishing some of them in the years prior. They brought value to my life, and I follow many of them today. I say many but not all because combined all these practices make for a very busy schedule. Individually, they may facilitate physical and mental health, but when piled on top of each other they leave no room to think and feel, rest and recover, shed and rejuvenate, and simply allow my emotional body, my lungs and my skin to breathe. For, if there is anything more vital to health than doing, it is non-doing.

Thus, in a persistent attempt to be healthy, I was neglecting my health. Furthermore, I was ignoring the urgent wounds I immanently suffered from the breakup.

It was as if I had broken a leg, and I insisted on continuing to run. In fact, training for a 20-mile run was also a part of my plan, and I did incur injuries while running due to overstraining, which then deterred me from running for some time altogether. I also pulled a glute muscle while doing yoga, which took me months to recover from.  

I was completely out of touch with my physical body, my surroundings and my inner reality.

In truth, I was in a survival mode. And I had been in a survival mode for many years. The biochemical signature states of my nervous system were that of arousal and stress. On the surface, I needed to achieve and prove myself. Underneath my ambition and perfectionism, however, I was merely trying to be safe. The belief that I needed to excel was deeply ingrained in my unconscious. I can trace this belief to as early as middle school. I do not remember its origin, but I can infer that it developed as a defense mechanism against criticism. Growing up in a household and educational system where praise was scarce and criticism was abundant, and being quite intelligent and capable by nature, I learned to shield myself with excellence. Thus, fear of failure and anxiety to perform took the driver seat in my life. I was not motivated by recognition and reward. In fact, those made me largely uncomfortable because they put me in a spotlight and added more pressure onto me. I was simply protecting myself. I believed that if I did well and I looked well, nobody could touch me.

Relaxation and stillness felt unsafe. I had this strange conviction that in order to do well and be well I needed to stress and obsess over everything. Unknowingly, I believed that I needed to be tense and I needed to try hard regardless of where I was, what I did and who I engaged with. It took me a long time to see that the need for self-preservation was at the root of this skewed thinking. In other words, if I was not alert, I was in danger. Afterall, vigilance is a primal survival instinct of all animals, including humans. It is for this reason that I have always found deep breathing so agitating. Deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and activating the parasympathetic nervous system felt self-defeating and unwise because it hindered my ability to defend myself. If I was not on my toes and paying attention, who would protect me?

I set goals and built habits precisely so I could feel confident and calm like, I imagined, a lion strolling through a jungle would, but the very states of confidence and calmness felt unsafe. I was no king of a jungle. I was a rabbit surrounded by snakes. As a child, now woman, as someone who was never taught self-care, self-respect and boundaries, I was a prey, and it would have been foolish to forget that.  

This is why I found myself unwilling to pause after the breakup. I was trying to push hard because that was the only way I knew to survive. However, I was too hurt to keep it up. I was like a wounded animal – too weak to fight.

The reality was that I did not follow through with the daily routine consistently. I never completed a 20-mile run. I did not turn meditation and reading into a regular practice. My lifestyle habits regressed as weeks and months went by. My physical body and home were neglected. I had bad acne. My home was messy. And I would eventually drop research work, and then leave school altogether.

I slid in a downward spiral, and it was only the beginning.

we are all codependent

“I am afraid to face the world. I am afraid to be criticized, blamed, make a mistake, fail to do something. I believe I am incapable of taking care of myself, in particular managing my money and investments.”

From My Journal, Day 2

It was discovered, surprisingly, that family members of alcoholics and other addicts benefit from the addition much like an addict does. Moreover, addict’s closed ones often encourage and support the addiction.

This relational dynamic is termed codependence. Some deny that there is such a thing as a codependent relationship outside of the context of a clinically diagnosed addiction. Afterall, “no man is an island” and we all must depend on each other to a degree. Many confuse codependence with interdependence. Although, both phenomena describe the dependent nature of a relationship, the latter is characterized by healthy dependence, whereas the former exhibits unhealthy dependence. The definitions of “healthy” and “unhealthy” dependence are challenging to agree upon, and the matter is further clouded by the notion of adaptability. While a few attempt to set a more objective measure for healthy dependence, e.g., the ideas of love one may come across in Buddhist teachings, others advocate that any form of an adapted behavior is healthy as long as it serves all parties involved. The latter is particularly propagated by psychotherapy. 

Enabling one’s addiction does serve an addict by helping them escape reality, as well as it serves an enabler by absolving them of personal responsibility. As long as one is focused on someone else’s issues, they do not have to face their own. Thus, an addict is trapped in their addiction, and an enabler is stuck on deflection. This is the dance of codependence.

I was a codependent. Rather more accurately, I have seeds of codependence within me. Perhaps, we all do. Perhaps, when environmental conditions are favorable, the seeds of codependence sprout in all of our lives. Those seeds certainly germinated and grew into a rampant invasive foliage in the garden of my life.

I was a rather independent, at times rebellious, child. I insisted on walking to school by myself. I did homework without anyone’s assistance. I did not come to teachers for help, nor did I need my parents to check my work. I did well in school, regardless. I never cared for study groups, nor did I care for friend circles. I had friends, but I resented the hierarchy inherent to any social pack. So, I enjoyed much of my time alone.

I have been living alone and providing for a rather comfortable life for many years now. I thoroughly enjoy my financial self-reliance, and I found living alone to be the most enriching fulfilling experience I have had so far. In fact, I found it to be more profound than any relationship, platonic or otherwise, I have ever had. I dreamt of living alone when I was a child, and now that I do, it never grows old or tiresome on me.

I have always cherished my alone time. And I have always admired my sovereignty.

Yet, I found myself obsessing over and chasing after romantic relationships for as long as I could remember. I feared that come holidays and birthdays I would have no friends to enjoy a party with. There had never been a time when I was not entangled in some friendship drama and hung up on a man I dated or wanted to date. Both persisted in my life like weeds infesting a neglected flowerbed.

I routinely got up at five in the morning and went for a run before starting my workday, but I depended on a man to wake me up on a weekend. I scheduled home and car repairs and paid bills, but I depended on a man to check my mail. I regularly spoke up in meetings, but I followed behind a man’s back in a restaurant. I made good money, but I needed a man to tell me what to do with it. I had good taste and a developed sense of style, but I let a man dictate how I dressed. I was a deep thinker and a skilled debater, but I allowed a man to censor me.

I savored the peace and quiet of my home, but I talked incessantly and uncontrollably around friends. I had deep understanding of and empathy for others, yet I indulged in gossip and criticism at their expense with friends. I developed insights into human nature and cultivated wisdom in my solitude, and I shared the “Woe is me” attitude with friends. I had great ambitions and solid work ethic to support them, yet I acted like I had no choice but to be overworked and overwork myself in front of friends. I had the strength to pull myself through and out of the darkest of depressive episodes, but I constantly lost my composure and threw my hands up in helplessness and despair around friends.  

Around others, I entered a dream-like state, unconscious of myself and unaware of others.  

I showed up as a strong independent woman, as cliché as it sounds, when I was alone. And I was once again a child – powerless and helpless – in my relationships.

It was an interesting dichotomy. It was mental really. I was able to shapeshift between the two states and their associated roles as little as within a single day.

In my childish state, I required constant reassurance via text messages, phone conversations and in person. I frequently got upset, and I needed to be calmed down and talked off a ledge (figuratively speaking). I lost sight of my own strength, endurance and independence. I questioned whether I had those anymore. I was so dependent on external validation, I could not cope with simple everyday frustrations without picking up my phone, complaining and venting.

There were many reasons to explain these maladaptive behavioral patterns. They were a response to an early life trauma, an inheritance of multigenerational trauma, a product of our culture and societal expectations, and a mechanism to cope with my immediate environment. Whereas trauma and culture planted the seeds of codependence within me in rather complex and unavoidable ways, my environment watered those seeds.

Within the boundaries of my personal microcosm, which included my platonic and romantic relationships, I was consistently subjected to the very things I feared to face in the greater macrocosm, that is the world as a whole. I experienced blame, criticism, disrespect, deception, control and manipulation. I simply did not know that I deserved better. Some attempted to change me and led me to believe that I was the flawed and troubled one, that I needed saving and fixing, which is the conviction I further reinforced through therapy. The support I experienced was ingenuine and inconsistent. My challenges and pain served as an ego boost to others. Like many, I was a victim of gaslighting. I was drenched in gasoline, and I blew up in response to the slightest spark only to be faulted and fault myself for it, and then look for more ways to fix and change myself.

In reality, my environment needed to change. My environment nourished the seeds of codependence within me. The seeds were within me, but the food supply was not. The seeds remain within me, but I am conscious of their existence now, and I am aware of my environment. I accept all that I am and all that I have the potential to become – healthy and dysfunctional, – and I reject the influences that nurture the worst of me.  

It is not about eradicating the seeds of codependence within us. It is not about exterminating any seeds that give rise to various parts of our shadow self or shadow aspects of our collective. That is akin to death. There simply cannot be light without darkness. Rather, it is about bringing awareness to those, otherwise hidden, parts of ourselves. It is about accepting and respecting our dual nature. It is about utilizing the tools of awareness, understanding and patience to consciously cultivate the environment within and outside of ourselves wherein the seeds of all that we desire to be may flourish, and the seeds of that which harms us and those around us may remain dormant.

we attract what we are

“I am enough.”

From My Journal, Day 1

On a seemingly unremarkable night, I found myself rolling on the floor and screaming that I deserved to be loved for all of me.

A few hours prior, I ended yet another relationship. I was alone. I was angry. My pain was so intense, the image of me curled up on that floor has since vividly imprinted on my mind.  

The truth is I did not believe it. I did not believe I was deserving of love. I did not believe I was enough. I yelled it. I wrote it in my journal. But I did not believe it. I did not understand it. I did not see it reflected in any aspect of my life.

The objective reality was that I was a very unhappy person, and I was unhappy to be around. My mindset was marred with negativity. I was trapped in victim mentality. I had a history of battling clinical depression on and off for years. I was crippled by anxiety. I routinely gossiped and complained; and I envied, judged, criticized, blamed, and guilted others. I had frequent arguments and meltdowns. I often acted like an inconsolable child. I was reactive, volatile and explosive. I lashed out, I cursed, I yelled, and I cried. In short, I was an emotional roller-coaster.  

Below my eruptive surface, I experienced helplessness and powerlessness. I felt unsafe, insecure, unloved, and neglected. I perceived manipulation, control, and oppression. I was haunted by persistent guilt and fear. What appeared to be an unstable unpredictable emotional roller-coaster to others manifested as a constant unyielding swing of a pendulum to me. On one extreme, I felt like a child – abandoned, abused, lacking support and protection. On the other, I was boiling in resentment and rage, which I expressed in a haphazard attempt to protect myself.

At various times in my life, I indeed experienced neglect and abuse, deception, control and manipulation. I did miss a strong supportive hand and a soft soothing touch. My subjective experiences were minimized, denied and in other ways invalidated. I was accused of being too sensitive, and I was mocked for my endless attempts to devise effective strategies to cope with my reality. I was not taught respect and appreciation, patience, tolerance and acceptance, boundaries and self-care. I was akin to a sponge – readily and indiscriminately absorbing undesirable mental and emotional experiences of others, which were conveniently projected and deflected onto me.  

It comes, therefore, as no surprise that I leaked negativity.

It was my norm. It was my reality. It was the only reality I knew. It felt familiar, comfortable and, in a warped manner, safe. I experienced it to different degrees in my platonic and intimate relationships. I sought out bullies and I sought out the bullied. I validated oppressors, and I protected the oppressed. I was a victim, and I was a tyrant.

It is what I unconsciously believed I deserved.

I believed I needed to fight for everything I desired – dreams, goals, accomplishments, recognition, attention, appreciation, consideration, respect, love. I believed I needed to earn my place at a table – every table I sat down at. I believed it was my responsibility to manage others’ reactions – to be sensitive around the narcissistic, self-sufficient around the neglectful, soothing around the distraught, strong around the weak, weak around the insecure, small around the envious, quiet around the irritable, resourceful around the demanding, quick around the impatient. I made faults of others my own – I blamed myself for manipulating the manipulator, failing to provide support to the selfish, being unavailable to the avoidant, taking the ungrateful for granted. I molded myself to accommodate doubts, fears, expectations, and fantasies of others.

It was not enough. None of it was ever enough. I did not believe myself to be enough.

It enraged me. Anger was my signature emotion. Since I did not have boundaries, self-worth, self-respect, and self-care to protect me, nor was I surrounded by people who were willing or able to protect me, I resorted to anger. I perpetually disrupted the very harmony I worked so hard to create. I brought about turmoil. I rattled the cage I built for myself.

And then I kicked myself for it.

It was a ceaseless cycle.

The commonplace advice on how to end this cycle is to find people we can forge healthy relationships with (or attempt to change those we have an unhealthy relationship with). We are encouraged to search and wait for those who will show us that we are lovable and deserving of respect, teach us how to love and respect ourselves, affirm how worthy we really are; in other words, mirror all that is good and wholesome back to us.

One of my therapists told me I would find healing in my relationships. Yet, no matter how many relationships (mostly platonic) I ended and began, no matter how often I set spoken and unspoken intent to forge a conscious relationship founded on respect and appreciation, no matter how many conversations centered on awareness I held with people, I found myself caught in the same dysfunctional relational dynamic – either I was enabling a victim or gratifying a perpetrator.

The harsh truth is that people who have a healthy sense of self-worth do not have close relationships with people who do not feel worthy. They may extend a helping hand, impart words of wisdom to us, point at the beautiful lovable aspects of ourselves (that we cannot see), and even embrace us with tenderness, kindness and love. But they do not lay in bed with those they help. They do not kindle a friendship with those in need of saving. They do not weave the strings that are ragged into the fabric of their support system. They do not build their life on top of a foundation made up of chipped, cracked and otherwise unstable pillars.

I was ragged alright – neglected, worn out and ripped. My entire life revolved around avoidance, obsession, addiction, and compulsive need to validate and prove myself. The only love one could mirror back to me was the codependent kind.  

In order to attract different, I needed to become different.

I know it now, and I knew it then. But I was not capable of admitting and accepting it. I was not ready for everything it took to change. Sometime before the breakup, I wrote in my journal that I wanted to “live up to my own standards, be secure [within] myself, be proud of myself, feel powerful from within, be in charge of my own life, take good care of myself, think kindly of myself, treat myself with respect and set boundaries; and everything else [would] follow.” In other words, I knew I needed to develop a better relationship with myself instead of seeking to distract myself with others. I knew I needed to be alone. Yet, I tossed and turned at night unable to tune out the incessant “But I need validation” in my head.

I did end my romantic relationship shortly after (somewhat to my own surprise), but it would be a while before I was able to truly focus on me – to go within, stay there, and mend my relationship with myself.