The Fear of Trying and Succeeding

I have a tattoo on my wrist that I got a few days before the end of group therapy. It’s silly and probably stupid to anyone that doesn’t know me, didn’t see the hell I walked through during the program. I get it. Even I look at it and think, “if it didn’t carry so much weight, it’s probably a little silly.”

It doesn’t matter what people think of it. Like all of the tattoos I have and maybe for others that have tattoos too (though I’m not speaking for them), I don’t care what people think of my tattoos. In fact, most of the time, tattoos are so normalized (in my reality) that I’m shocked when I find out someone doesn’t have any tattoos. Or I’m taken aback when people stare or glare at me. (Yes, I’ve had someone actually turn around in their seat at a restaurant to glare at me. Priceless.)

 

I should explain quickly how group therapy was organized. There were twelve of us in our phase and we had therapy altogether for three out of the four groups. The last group we were split into two groups and had others from different phases join us. Confusing? I hope not.

The last group was a free for all; it was called Insight and we all just talked about what was going on in our heads, lives, emotions and feelings. Or sometimes we talked about nothing at all; the therapists hated when we did that. But movies are important too, right?

Coming home, Coming Back to Myself.

| April 2018 | June 2019 |

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I’ve come a long way–survived hell and back, and back again–to finally end up here.

I mentioned before but for three years, I was in an abusive and toxic situation/relationships. It was soul-crushing and destructive. I worked hard in group therapy to re-wire my broken mind and I’m still struggling with the ramifications of leaving the situation behind me.

Even before those three years, since the winter of 2015 (when I was first diagnosed with having bipolar disorder), my life started to crack at the seams. Until finally, my life fell apart, myself with it.

I fell so hard and like Alice, I tumbled down, down, down the rabbit hole, free falling for years until group therapy. There, I learned how to climb out of hell, only leaving it behind after I walked through it.

I don’t owe anyone anything.

Say this with me, “I don’t owe you anything”, “I don’t owe them anything”, “I don’t owe X anything”. Rinse and repeat, over and over, until you believe it.

This has become my new mantra lately. I met up with someone from group therapy and she said something that had the earth beneath me quivering.

So here goes: I never had boundaries, I never even knew what they were and the thought of putting myself first freaked me out when I thought about it. I still feel a tad nauseous when I set boundaries and when I speak my truth. It’s terrifying and I get a little sick but afterwards, it’s empowering and freeing. I just wish I remembered the latter, instead of always fixating on the former.

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I’m Vietnamese Canadian. I was raised to never say no, to always put others ahead of myself–even at my own expense, to work hard and work even harder for others. I was raised with an abacus in my head, always sliding the beads over towards others and what I owed them. An invisible tally only I was keeping score, to a game no one even knew about. Always giving myself away for no other reason than guilt; guilt for being born? Guilt for someone being nice to me? Guilt and shame was the air I breathed.

Someone was nice to me? Now I couldn’t say no. Someone I met once asked a favour of me? Now I had to say yes. Someone gave me a birthday present? Now they owned me. I was walking around, heavy with being owned by everyone and it ate at me. It still does.

My dad says it’s being polite but let’s be honest, it’s so far past polite, it has its own stratosphere. I’m going to use strong language in this post, so please forgive me for that. But, it’s being a pushover, a doormat (as my friend, D., calls it); convincing myself I owed everything to absolutely everyone, it gave others an excuse and a chance to take advantage of me. Of course, they did and I can’t really blame them too much for doing so, I allowed myself to be taken advantage of (that doesn’t mean I’m not angry at them). Being a ‘Yes (Wo)man’ never got me anywhere, it only made me miserable, exhausted, and self-loathed.

May 21, OOTD

I’m starting to find my style, or at least, what I think I look good in.

what a wild ride

I first started this blog on August 8th, 2013.

Let that sink in. It’s going to be six years this August. Six damn years.  

So much has changed in the span of six years. My life has changed…for the better. Though sometimes I wonder if my life has gotten worse. Of course, it all depends on the day and whether my perception is coloured by my bad-mood glasses or my rose-coloured ones.

This morning, I’m trying to find the balance between the two extremes, the grey in between the black and white. I mean, I already cried three times this morning, so it’s going to be a little difficult with my thoughts seesawing back and forth but I’m trying. And today, that’s good enough for me. 

What I can say with 100% certainty is that in the past six years, all of us has changed. Just as the seasons’ change, so do we, so do our lives, so does the world around us. It’s not that I’m trying to overstate my positivity, I’m still not at the ‘cheery-I love life’ level (I wonder if I’ll ever make it there) but I’m realistically hopefully. Cynically hopeful? Timidly hopeful? Hope dashed with heavy pessimism? Maybe all of the above.