Today marks the day of one year being with me and only me. Don't be mislead. I'm not saying I locked myself in a cabin and didn't see a single soul for a year. It was another kind of commitment.
On the 20th april of 2018 I broke up with my last boyfriend, who was my second big love. Like the kind of person you picture yourself growing old with. The kind of person that makes you seriously consider kids as a 20yr old. The kind of person you get crazy about.
It wasn't that I didn't love him. It was that I wanted to love me first. He couldn't meet needs I felt pressing to have met. I did what I had to do, but trust me it wasn't easy.
We were sitting on a bench in a park and after he cried, after he screamed, after he cursed me, after he left, I just kept on sitting there. For half an hour I couldn't move. I sat in tears, knowing I did the right thing, but it felt so wrong. How could I let go the guy who felt like the love of my life?
I wanted to do all the bad things. I wanted to smoke a cigarette, numb my feelings. Wanted to drink or hook up with some random dude. I wanted to really hurt myself. But how could I? How could I hurt myself after doing the hardest thing just to do right by me. That would've made me a cheat.
One week later I ended up talking to an acquaintance about the breakup, relationships in general and the ways we run from things. And that night I made a commitment to myself: To stay single for a year, no matter what. To come back to myself, and to stay there, no matter what's pulling me.
I remember well how my therapist reacted. She didn't take me serious. She asked what would happen if I met someone? Wouldn't it be stupid to force it? I got really mad at her.
This decision felt a hundred percent like my truth. It came from a place within me that's wise, that knows my truth, even before I do.
I on the other hand was feeling so excited. I thought this was awesome and just what I needed, and just about this year anyway, and very bearable. But really, man, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And I keep thinking now that that's a good thing, because if I had, it may would have scared me off. And man, would I have missed out.
In hindsight, I'm calling it the year of inbetweens. I'm really feeling that word. Inbetween.
I was letting go of old stuff, drugs, people, behaviours, just everything that wasn't of any use to my new, self-loving me. But I did not yet have anything new to fill up these spaces. And there still are lot of spaces to fill. New ways to pick up. I'm inbetween, and it's a very scary place to be in, but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world.
Saying Yes to Yourself means saying No to Others
I was a person who'd always put themselves at the end of the row. And trust me, it was a long row. My Mom, my Dad, friends, aquaintances, colleagues, even strangers on the street. I was always in a hurry to please them. I got lost somewhere along the way.
Before learning to say yes to things, to adventure and being spontaneous, I had to learn to say No.
No to doing what they wanted instead of what I felt like, no to friends of friends when they are not my people. No to parties and no to drugs.
Trust me, it wasn't easy. In the beginning while it may have felt a tad better than ignoring my authentic self, sitting home alone on a Friday night felt wrong. Like I was missing out on something. But was I, if what I was missing out wasn't what I wanted in the first place? No!
Like all the areas, change came slowly. As I started to feel better with going with my gut when it came to my need, I started to change the way I arrange my life.
I stopped arranging my life around other peoples wants and needs, and their lifestyle. Instead I started asking, and learning, and sometimes failing my own wants and needs. And whatever didn't fit anymore was tossed out. I may sound like a bit of a dickhead now. And you know what? I was. Still kinda am, though the worst is over.
I'm sorry for every time someone got to feel consequences for something they didn't cause. But to me it was natural.
I'm a hundred percent certain if you want to get in balance and have been living one side of the story, you need to live the other one in the same extent. It may just look a little crazy if you compress in a few months what happened over years on the other side.
I spent years, actually, my whole childhood putting myself last. So now I come first. End of the story.
Don't wait for meaning, create meaning
We, as humans, often look for meaning. In life, but also in the small things. If what happened to us makes sense in a bigger picture, if we can shift our perspective, something bad may not be just bad anymore.
I know there are people out there who went through much more struggles than me, but I also wouldn't say it was all easy.
I think one of the key lessons from my last year was when I turned towards sobriety. First I stopped drinking alcohol – by choice. Then I was forced to quit smoking weed too. The last couple months I've been having my fights with the plain old cigarettes. So slowly turning my back on drugs alltogether.
There was a reason I couldn't start stopping earlier. A family member of mine is an alcoholic, and only when I severed all contact with them, that I could start working on my relationship with alcohol. Everything else was just Domino effect.
I'm not happy about the rough patches in my life. I wouldn't wish tragedy on anyone. But I am thankful for the lessons. In hindsight, everything fits into the bigger picture. As soon as I realized that, I startet creating my meaning as I went along. I didn't wait for the Aha-Moment, I created it.
What can I learn from this?
How is this helping me grow?
Healing is about love a lot. But it seems, healing is a lot about responsibility too. The moment you start taking back responsibility for your own happiness instead of letting it depend on other people and outer circumstances is the moment you will start to heal. I'm not saying you're gonna be magically alright and nothing bad will ever happen again. What I'm saying is you'll be fine with not yet being alright, or not being alright all the time. You'll grow so strong and confident when you realize how much power you really hold, that when a bad thing comes along it might make you struggle , it might even knock you down, but it will not knock you out.
You can think of creating meaning as a time travel – when it's too difficult experiencing the here and now, you can travel to your future self, a few years from that moment, and see how you did benefit from it after all.
Be your own kind of brave
Learning to say No, for me, started with still saying Yes, but then saying No somewhere in the middle. It started with saying maybe to gain some time. And to use that time to realize that I should've said No. It started with more fuck ups, than successes.
Here's a little story about a time I messed up quite badly:
A friend asked me to join him on a holiday. I agreed to accompany him to a trip to Italy, visiting a Rainbow Gathering. (Rainbow Gatherings are not festivals. They're intentional gatherings of all kinds of people who come together for a month somewhere in nature to cook together, sing around the fires, make workshops, share experiences and generally come together as 'a family'.)
We wanted to take a flight there, but the flight was cancelled. We both decided to hitchhike our way down to Italy. But boy, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into.
Being 2 months in on this journey of self-discovery my mind was already overflowing with information to proccess, and these days of hitchhiking were no better. Being constantly surrounded by the noise of the highway, lacking sleep, lacking structure or security in any kind of way. I was worn out after one day already, to be honest.
We were still in Germany, in a touristy town by a lake. The weather was beautiful, there was a fleamarket and the summer breeze rounded it all up. What an evening to be crying. Yet that's exactly what I was doing. I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to run away so badly, be safe, go home.
I knew I couldn't keep it up, I told my friend I couldn't do the rest of the trip with him. Boy, was he upset. And of course he was. That was just anything but cool. He told me I was just being a coward.
But I knew, that I was just being my own kind of brave.
You know, it's a funny thing. I started playing guitar a few months ago. And it's working, without a proper teacher or anything. Okay, that's not funny. But here's something that is:
This is not the first time I'm trying to learn the guitar. I did so 5 years ago, and even with a teacher.
I just didn't have the right mindset. I was the all or nothing kind of person. Way too perfectionist to ever get anything done. I picked up the guitar, tried and failed. It didn't sound like those great musicians I admired. So obviously I just didn't have it in me. Practice was tiring and success so slim it didn't seem promising.
So what was different this time?
I started slow.
I started with a Ukulele which is a way more thankful instrument than guitar could ever be. You get easy success and a feeling for string instruments and strumming. Everything else came naturally. I got bored, I wanted more variety, more possibility.
I didn't fear failure.
When making a mistake stopped meaning that I am a mistake, it was okay. It maybe wasn't fun, but it was endurable.
I could cherish the small silver lining,
instead of waiting for the big fireworks.
Every success, no matter how little, I could appreciate as making some kind of progress. And everything else is just perseverence. And trust me, stubborn I am.
I'm still working very much to stay in that perspective, but it got me way further than being perfectionist ever has.
So be gentle with yourself. Be kind in your words, as you would be with your friends. Let yourself make the mistakes you are learning from. Give yourself the space you need, and fill it with whatever is there. Whether it be laughter, or tears, or screams, or running from things, or letting go completely. Fill it. Let yourself be empty, let yourself be overflowing. Let yourself be.
