With age comes the need for self-discovery and reinvention. There’s a clarity that comes with years etched into the corners of our eyes, lined around our mouths and veined into our hands. Call it wisdom, call it enlightenment. Call it the maturity of our frontal lobes.
According to science, hours and minutes move slower for young people because their brains have yet to fully mature and are not capable of capturing the full actualization of time. And here I am, on the edge of forty, looking at the time behind me and the hours ahead, reviewing how quickly it all went and wondering about the blank space ahead of me. I’m trying to build up hope for the unknown future, trying to learn from my past so I can move wisely into my future.
Having struggled with severe depression and a lifetime of trauma, I’m at a crossroad where I am trying not to loop back around into the same destructive cycles again. For me, it took coming to a dead halt, finding myself at the bottom, and looking up at the sky through the downpour to finally allow me to feel just how much heartbreak I was suppressing. It took losing everything to finally allow myself to taste my sorrow, to let it wash over me, and to let it slowly drain away. I’d carried it with me for so long and at times, I wasn’t even aware it was there. It’d become defense, solace, and torture all in one, wrapped around me like a familiar safety blanket, caked in muck and heavy on my back.
Coming home to my parents was not the easiest thing for me, but now I understand that it was necessary. It has been challenging throwing myself back into the fray of emotional and mental abuse but I needed to go full circle, back to where it all started, so that I could end it. I needed to see things clearly as an adult and not from the half-fuzzy lens of a child. I needed to understand the root of the things that I carried with me — anger, rage, resentment, pain.
So much of who I am came from those early experiences, defining my self-worth and my level of acceptance and tolerance for abuse. From my personal relationships to the professional, I accepted and put up with so much more than I should have. My entire childhood prepared me to take being belittled and make it feel okay, even expected. Being constantly rained on was what I knew. When you’ve been in the dark your whole life, the sunshine burns. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself, and more importantly, how to walk away. It took almost forty years of talking to Death in my dark moments, of struggling to find reasons to go on living to make my skin thicker against those who were entrusted to love and care for me.
I often asked, “Why is this happening to me? Why is my life so hard, so dark?” It took a long time to accept that it was me. I didn’t deserve it, but it was something subconscious in me that accepted less than good for me. From my choice in partners to the long, unappreciated hours at the office, I was a mule that could haul incredible loads of bullshit uphill in the rain, always struggling to reach the top. Only there was no top. Just a lot more mud and rain; and a lot more uphill. It was a cruel joke of sorts, being taunted with the carrot of happiness and success on a string in front of me. The way it was going, I was never going to get that carrot, but it kept me focused on everything except the realness of the situation.
In hurricanes, there is a center of calmness. It is called the eye. Throughout my life, it has been that eye that has kept me sane. There was always calmness deep in me that held me together, allowed me to objectively pull my mind out of my situations and calculate how to survive. All grown up now, I now recognize my PTSD for what it is. When I can, I look for quiet moments. I find solace on mountain tops and along river beds, my dog as my silent and steady companion. I’m not quite through the storm yet, but I’m working hard at it. Cutting out the parts of your life that poison your soul is not easy, especially when they are blood.
There is a heavy social emphasis on “family” and an ideology on what that’s all supposed to mean, but truth is, sometimes certain parts of family aren’t worth holding on to. You owe yourself peace. That is the most important thing you can give yourself. Loving yourself will follow. I spent twenty years of my life running away from the cesspool of my parents’ toxicity only to learn that the stench of their swamp had leached into my skin. It’s time to wash it truly clean this time, and instead of running away, it’s time to walk away.
