Inward Focus (Patreon)

I want to preface this post by saying things are good. Even though I will be talking a lot about struggles and pain, the way things are now is good. This is my journey of healing and growth.

How are you all holding up in isolation? I know all the restrictions we are facing are hard on some (if not all) of you. The past months, in fact, I have chosen to remove myself from the world - even after quarantine has been lifted. I have chosen self-isolation in order to heal and reflect, though I didn't know it at the beginning. In the beginning, I was simply tired of people in general. At one point I just grew overwhelmingly anti-social and felt the need to withdraw to preserve my energy. In this post, I want to let you into my internal world a little bit. It's not cute and fluffy. But you say you want to get to know me better and the best way to understand me is to understand my thoughts. 

I certainly am reaping the rewards of keeping to myself lately. Every introvert will relate to what I'm about to say. But I couldn't help but realize just by the simplest tasks like grocery shopping and laundry, how much being around people really drains me. It drains me because it derails me. Because as soon as I am in a place where I could potentially be seen by somebody, my defenses are way, way up. I never knew it but I rely so much on being seen a certain way just to feel safe. Because my authentic self has been attacked time and time again since I can remember, I hide behind my coping mechanisms - including appearing as dark and mysterious and powerful as possible. I dress like a badass witch bitch, but if you read the energy it's more that of a red panda standing up and making itself look as dangerous as possible in the face of threats. It's true, I see everyone who hasn't yet proven their benevolence towards me as a threat. It's ok though, the vast majority of people don't even see it. They see black and they're scared. Boo! 

Regardless, these coping mechanisms consume almost all of my energy and I was fed up with being so tired and stressed and fatigued just trying to get through the week. That's when I made the conscious choice to avoid contact with people whenever possible. The most I can handle is casual conversations every now and again where I don't have to commit to anything nor be emotionally available. It is my goal, of course, to slowly start to shed these masks and just be who I am. I'm just not sure I'm ready to be vulnerable. I'm not even scared of rejection as much as I'm just scared to be open. I guess being the child of a narcissist does that to you over time. 

And speaking of, I've had the great pleasure to process some feelings I've had towards my parents. I don't know why it never occurred to me to work through these before but my best guess is that it just always felt pointless. I knew they would never accept them nor try to understand my perspective (because they straight up refuse to listen) and so I had nowhere to put all this hurt and confusion. And also I felt incredibly guilty for having feelings and opinions that basically just condemned them both, not just as parents but as people, for the choices they made time and time again. After all, they insisted that they were doing their absolute best and I should forgive them because they were dumb and didn't know better even though their absolute best was still utter trash. But I came to the conclusion for myself that I deserve better. I deserve to be treated better and I absolutely should be treated better by my own damn parents. Nevermind my hopelessly narcissistic emotionally abusive mother - what really left me dumbfounded was that my father took her side every single time even though he knew she was wrong and how absolutely awful she treated me. Even though he doesn't even like her! He still proved time and time again that he will support her over me. I deserve parents who treat me like I matter. And thus far, both of them have exclusively treated me like a doormat. Like I should just take all the bullshit my mother wants to throw at me because I'm wiser and more spiritual than her and should just understand. Should I, though? No. I've thought about it a great deal and now I have arrived at the conclusion that I have absolutely no incentive to try to "understand". Especially if that word is used synonymous with letting myself be abused. And that it is not in my best interest to associate with people who enable abuse. All in all, I realized that I had been right. All along. I had been right when I decided that deep within, my parents were dead to me. It's not like they were ever anything more than strangers, really. I was right in feeling completely abandoned and like I had to protect myself from them from a young age. In not having any desire to have contact with either of them. And I do not wish to make myself a slave to guilt and obligation, or, as my father would probably call it, "being the bigger person". 

Though I had not completely given up on them until recently, when it came out that my mother will be who she be and already told everyone that I'm married. I deliberately did not announce it to my family because I did not wish to be bothered about it. This is how keeping to myself is saving my ass now. Because nothing is safe with either of them. If I tell my father, he will tell my mother and she will kindly inform absolutely everyone she can get a hold of. So I've made my peace with letting them hold on to whatever projection of me they have and I'm moving on. 

I do not owe them pretending to be who they want to see me as. 

For the longest time this has been my modus operandi. To figure out who and what someone thinks I am and then assume that character everytime I interact with them. To completely abandon myself in favor of what someone else expects. This highly destructive coping mechanism is still keeping me prisoner in my own life. I can't even begin to explain it... Without realizing, I've not only been accepting but playing into everyone's "story" of me. I let it define who I am and that's the saddest thing. Because no one was able to see me for me, it's like I didn't exist but for these roles people assigned me. There's nothing I want more in this world than to change that. To be who I want to be. Even in the face of exceptionally irrelevant people shouting "no, you're not that, because you're this to me!" or "you can't be that because you were that to me 10 years ago!" ... The fact of the matter is, they don't know me. No matter how much they want to think they do. And my single biggest mistake was to grant their dumbass projections meaning. In part because I was used to it as my mother so kindly denied me a sense of self, in part because I was so desperate to be something that I was willing to take anything anyone would give me. And here's where we come full circle. The absolutely fantastic thing about just not letting anyone in is that I have nothing left but for myself. I don't have any opinions competing with my own inner truth and no one argues what I know about me. No one can make me doubt myself. I have peace. I have the freedom to take my own experience for what it is without having to prove anything to anyone. 

I'm not getting caught up in drama I don't want to be involved in. I'm not stuck with responsibilities I didn't sign up for. There are distinct perks to not being ride or die. I can live for myself. 

It's this room to breathe that has been at the core of all my desires and a hidden motivation in shutting myself off from everyone. The thing I didn't know I needed because I never had it. The thing I needed to get to know myself, undisturbed by people's opinions and projections. 

Being undisturbed has become the most valuable thing to me. And you'll be happy to hear that I've learned to fight back against people and things who disturb me. Though I'm not sure, sometimes, if my refusal to be disturbed by the existence of these insufferable people inhabiting the apartments around me is my knee-jerk tendency towards revenge or taking back my power by taking control of my immediate surroundings. The way I get through every day is by never taking my ear plugs out after I wake up and playing music or YouTube at a volume that I can still hear well with ear plugs. It doesn't completely block the noise, unfortunately, as I am able to hear a TV as we speak. But I'm tired of having nervous breakdowns almost every day just because other people can't manage to exist peacefully. So much so that I've had to learn to say no to reality.

Most days I lived like a victim to my surroundings. It genuinely felt like I was being jerked around by things outside of my control and the thing that was slowly killing me was that I could do nothing about it. The landlord refuses to do anything, the neighbors don't give a shit about my requests to quiet down a little at night. I felt so powerless it made me suicidal all over again. Imagine being a highly sensitive person and living sandwiched between an old deaf guy whose near-deafness does not stop him from blasting his TV all night long, an obese chain smoker who can't grasp the idea that you can walk around in your apartment without stomping holes in the concrete, making walls shake every time he rolls out of bed to go to the bathroom or smoke, which happens to be approximately every 5 minutes around the clock and a family who has proven to be utterly incapable when it comes to raising children or putting them to bed at a reasonable time and yet will not stop breeding. The cherry on top is the ancient buzzer system in your apartment building that can jerk your dead great-grandpa out of his eternal sleep, the noise being heard and the vibrations felt very clearly all throughout the house no matter which apartment is being buzzed. It's like a mini heart attack every time. Some days I would cope with alcohol, most days with caffeine and I fled my own home in a desperate attempt to keep it together more times than I can count. Some days I can take it in stride and some days hearing any unexpected loud noise (e.g. buzzer) would send me screaming and curling up in fetal position, desperately trying to soothe my sensitive nervous system. 

So you see, I had nowhere to go. Nowhere but inward. 

I found out that if I'm stubborn enough I can consciously drown out reality by walling myself off from the outside and focusing all my attention on my internal world. This is a new skill but it's given me a new sense of control, even though it feels like this barrier against the outside world is held up exclusively by solid middle fingers. It makes me wonder if this is how normal people live? To be awake and conscious but making the inner world more real than the outer world. Not to withdraw, but to simply refuse to acknowledge anything outside of you. I don't know if this is a bad sign or not as it sure is sad that I have to rely on such coping mechanisms just to live in my own home but it feels like I'm standing my ground and if it saves me a few nervous breakdowns down the line, I'll be happy. 

In fact, I've spent quite a bit of time with this question. What makes me happy? Aside from cats and shopping for rocks. No, I'm specifically looking for happiness contained in something I can do. I don't even know because for the vast majority of my life it has been irrelevant. The only thing people cared about was what I was 'supposed to' be and do. What I wanted was never a question and what I liked never a concern. Now, I find myself blanking everytime I try to decide what I want to spend my day doing because I simply do not want any of the options I have and I can't think of anything that makes me happy. Even playing games doesn't seem to cut it because somehow I instantly default to going through the motions and trying to fix broken things rather than enjoying myself. When Jack asks me if I'm having fun playing a game I want to cry cause I'm not. It's like I don't even know how to relax. It's like I constantly feel this pressure on me like I can't afford to take a break because there's something I'm not living up to and it's killing me. Inside I feel like I'm not productive or successful enough to take time off to enjoy myself but living in this perpetual misery is not helping my productivity. That being said, I've started to pay attention. To myself. And I've started to care what I want and like. Because for so long I've had nothing to the point where I've felt like there was absolutely no point in existing for me because I wasn't getting anything out of it. I've touched on this before, how I've been existing purely for others and that was fine for a while but at one point I had this epiphany that I want to live for myself, do what I want and be completely free. Behind the scenes, I've been pursuing that freedom and yet could not seem to grasp it. Because, sure, while I have the freedom to do what I want when I want... I realized that I simply did not want anything in my daily life. I've found it incredibly unfulfilling and devoid of pleasure - not because I wasn't blessed in infinite ways, I definitely am. But because my own lack of concern for my own happiness had left me stranded in a life I did not care for. Ain't that the truth for most of us?

I have the best loving husband I could ever ask for and more genuine and unconditional support from all of you than I ever dreamed. Why am I unhappy? 

Because I am the product of my own choices. And up until now I have been making the wrong ones. I never learned to act out of love, joy and fun. I only ever acted out of fear, worry and a sheer lack of self-worth. Constantly feeling like I have to prove myself somehow is not a life worth pursuing. Constantly feeling like I have to fight to make people like me because my default expectation is rejection is costing me my sanity. And now I see that acting purely out of fear and obligation, even in an attempt to prevent a perceived negative consequence, creates nothing but a life filled with fear and obligation. And you know what the insidious thing is? Making personal happiness the goal and at the same time not being able to find anything worth doing triggers fear of negative consequences like nothing else. 

For the first time in a while I feel centered. Putting these thoughts into words and worlds into black shapes on a white screen is grounding this whirlwind of abstract, simultaneous ideas into something you can look at and understand. And maybe the phenomenon of being understood in and of itself will create order in this chaos I've been living with inside. 

Acting on love rather than fear, I'm sure, is a process. So I am clinging to literally every little thing I find that's giving me any kind of positive emotion. I call out for it, I invite it and I nurture it as much as possible. Because when you're this desperate to want to live, no random impulse to do anything is too small. You can't afford to ignore anything. Because everytime you ignore a desire to do or have something, that's an internal affirmation that your desire and your happiness doesn't matter. Everytime you act on fear, that's an affirmation of importance. That is you choosing to validate the thing you fear, the thing you think you "have to" do, over your heart. If you want to have a life worth living, you must validate your heart. It's not true freedom until you free yourself from your self-imposed restraints. 

So you see, quarantine has been good to me.

Not a day goes by that I am not committing to my heart. It's the small things that change everything - the things you have access to, that you can do for yourself to show that you care. I'm sure many people take it for granted to seek out things that bring them happiness and wouldn't think twice about taking care of themselves. But some of us have to validate ourselves every chance we get just to feel like we exist. I survived my childhood and adolescence by denying myself any positive emotion and pretending I don't exist. No one could knock me down if I was already down. And I promise you, they would not miss a chance to ruin the things I loved for me. No one could be mad at me for existing if I didn't do anything, didn't eat and didn't require anything. And no one could take offense to my happiness if I was depressed. This is what I thought I was worth. It's what I was taught I was worth. The absolute bare minimum of resources that I could be sure would not inconvenience anyone to provide. The absolute bare minimum to survive because I did not earn anything more than that for a lack of straight A's and a spotless room. I did not earn my right to exist.

This has stuck with me for as long as I can remember. I consider every small attempt at validating myself a success. Every time I choose to play music that I like, even if its purpose is to not have to hear my neighbor's kid jumping and kicking things every evening or my upstairs neighbor burping obnoxiously loud like the absolute pig he is. Every rock I buy and every stick I find and every incense I burn and every cup of coffee I try not to burn. You really have to watch that moka pot. Regardless, every single thing you do for yourself counts. Never underestimate the impact a simple act of love can have. For some of us, self-care is about proving that we care, every day. 

Even if I'm not filming a video, I still have to do skin-care. Even if I'm not healing anyone else, I still have to sleep with crystals to recharge overnight. Even if no one sees me, I still have to exercise to feel my best and eat to have energy. I owe it to myself to make things as nice as possible for me. To make my surroundings beautiful and to use the resources that I have - on myself. I know, right?! The lion, the witch and the audacity of this bitch. For the longest time it used to feel like any "selfish" act was wasted energy and resources. And while it's hard to shake the feeling that I should be giving so much more to balance out what I'm taking, I know the answer is not pouring from an empty cup to absolve myself of guilt by making sure others always have more than me. And self-deprivation ain't it, either. I want so bad to stop telling myself that I don't deserve these rocks or this incense or these cocktails or to just not care about being productive for a few days. I'm not there yet, but I do make an effort to prove I care. 

I've become painfully self-aware, even if I yet lack the skill to stay on top of my needs.  

I've become painfully aware of my one downfall - perfectionism. 

There's something rather strange I've noticed as I've been paying attention to my emotions. It's that no matter what I do - be it videos or makeup or cooking or singing or anything at all... Everything I create follows the same pattern. I do my absolute best -> it's not as perfect as I wanted, doesn't work out the way I expected or doesn't live up to my standards -> I am upset, disappointed and disillusioned -> I cry because I hate myself for not being good enough -> I tell myself I'm worthless -> I want to delete everything. At no point in this chain reaction do I make a conscious choice to say, think or feel any of these things. No, I'm triggered. For the longest time it has been a subconscious process, made conscious purely by a wide open eye and willingness to take myself as I am. And no matter how great someone else says I'm doing, I still always arrive at this point of thinking I'm worthless and can't do anything right. RIP every video that never saw the light of day because I didn't look flawless from every angle. At this point, I will admit, it's an issue. It took me a while to see the extent of it but I am now able to recognize how disproportional my hatred for my own work is compared to the actual impact of the mistakes and imperfection I obsess over. Even if there are no overt mistakes. Sometimes I just look at my work and I can see my style and I reject it with everything that I am. I don't want it to be my style, I don't want that to be me. I want someone else's style. Something different. Something I can love. Something that will make me happy. I see no value in who I am and what I have to give and seeing myself - not my face, my soul - in my creation triggers me so bad. Now I wonder, is my self-rejection at fault or is it my self that's so painful and embarrassing that I can't help but reject it? 

And I think it's entirely unfair that I have to work with who I am, with all my issues and quirks and accommodate my needs which I'm not sure are reasonable just because a lot of the time it's more than I can handle. I am very upset that I can't just decide I am someone who doesn't have these problems and go on living a life free from the burden of being me - and don't even think I haven't tried. My parents have denied any needs and issues I had and I went and assumed the person they wanted me to be for many years, leaving myself questioning why I'm constantly running into walls, why I can't make any progress, why I can't live up to what they expect when they made it sound like it's the easiest thing in the world. And my father with this dumbass spiritual bypassing still insists that I don't have to have any trauma and I could just positive-think my way out of how I was born. My self is all over the place now I've spent so much time denying it. It always catches up with me. It always comes out one way or another and not a week goes by that I don't discover some unknown part of me or am rendered dysfunctional by flashbacks of things I have never lived. It irks me so much most of the time I just want to pretend this isn't happening and this isn't my life and I'm normal and I feel like I opened pandora's box when I chose self-awareness and should have stuck with denial and selective identification. Because I'm keeping myself safe as much as possible, staying out of trouble and staying away from triggers and yet it keeps going on and on and it feels like there will be no ending to this until the day I die. There's so much shame attached to everything that I am, for not being mainstream or neurotypical or fully functional. For just not living up to what's expected of me. 

I know this thinking is flawed and that dealing with the reality of me is the right thing to do. And yet it feels like I am holding myself back by being the way I am. Like I have so much potential and I just can't make that much of it... Just like my mother said. She always insisted I have so much potential and I agree... Though I do not agree with what she wanted me to do with it, it feels like I could be so much more if I could just be... normal. I know her mistake was not acknowledging my potential but begrudging the fact that I did not realize it for all the struggles she did not want to see I had. That's why it makes me so mad when someone wants to tell me what they think I should be doing. The audacity! Someone who never walked in my shoes has no right to criticize my choices. But when you look like me, at face value, like a rebel without a cause, everyone likes to assume they're an authority on how you should live your life. The fact of the matter is, my potential is absolutely worthless if I am unwilling to admit to my troubles. First I have to face what's in my way, then I can think about self-actualization. 

I'm just a little salty that I'm stuck with my issues and can't ignore them and live happily ever after like my parents did. I really thought I could. I really did try. 

In the future, I will have mastered all of this. I will have found a path that makes me happy. I saw it. Self-awareness has subsequently made me very in tune with energy and intuition. I be seeing shit, I be feeling shit, I be knowing shit. So I know I'm moving in the right direction. I know the life I so desire depends upon my willingness to act on love. Because while I feel like I should be able to decide who I am and live up to that, my ideals are very different from who I am inside. Or, that's my fear. I could very well just be so afraid of finding nothing but a host of shortcomings that I give myself meltdowns just thinking about living intuitively. I don't know, I never tried. Now I'm starting to think, maybe my intrinsic self-rejection is rooted in the belief that who I am is not who I want to be. That who I really am is what other people have always said about me and who I want to be is nothing but a mirage. I don't know, I've never tried. But I sure have spent a long ass time believing everyone else over myself. Maybe that has been my mistake all along. 

Maybe it's time I give myself a chance. 

Thank you