In the process of healing, I learned to respect myself. Respect my own limitation, the situations I encountered and my own feelings. After one traumatizing event it seemed like all the brick of my foundation fell down, I thought it was pathetic that I did’nt want to get back up, and start re-building like I would usually. Normally, I would keep pushing through despite being hurt, fuelled by hurt and resentment, and my need to glorify an ego that was the basis of all my happiness. Academic success was everything to me, it was reason for some closure with my family who I barely saw and the reason I had friends because I had nothing else to give. I wasn't talkative kid, a loner really. And yet for all my life, I didn't let myself understand the depth of each individual incident I had suffered, and how these somehow kept piling up in my subconscious. Till one day, when a much weaker version of my self couldn't take it, and she was forced to confront everything in her life, every think that was forced, words she was hurt by. At first, she thought it was just because she was sensitive, and tried to move past it all. But, soon she dropped everything. She dropped going to school, and gave herself a break. It took her 10 months to accept her imperfections and realize that a self-actualization is more of seeing how you don't match your ego. How you don't fit that picture, if anything it living with your flaws. I found myself being a kind of protagonist that I could be friends with, which made me want to write about my own change in this period, which I came to realize after the 10 months were over. I allowed myself to want, and to love things. To listen to others advice, but follow my own heart. Following your own heart is so important, it is what makes living worthwhile. I was living my family’s version of who I should be, I didn't get the opportunity to explore what I liked, what my interest were because I wasn't given the opportunity. Instead, I found a therapy to be the simple act of going to the mall alone and learning about what I liked, the kind of scents I liked, the kind of books I should read. In ways, it made me feel light as air, far from the weight of expectations, ineffective by harsh words of critistism, I could talk about how I felt without being burdened by my own mind as to how I would be perceived. Taking a pause, is sometimes destiny, and sometimes it really depends on you. And to be honest for me it was the harder thing to do, than moving on and pushing through to post-secondary. But, nevertheless I ignored societal expectation, my ego, and choose to take a pause that has healed me and learned that I too can be happy and not be a martyr in all situations.
