Tag Archives: Vulnerability

Loss

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My grandmother has hours left. I knew it was coming, but at the same time I didn’t. Not the exact time. Certainly not in the exact way it is happening. She is in pain. She is a version of herself as the Alzheimer’s continues to take hold. That part is hard to accept. I wish we were all guaranteed peace and comfort at the end of life. I wish we were owed a mind full of beautiful memories. But life doesn’t make us promises other than perhaps that loss is inescapable. No one makes it out of this life alive. I hope so deeply that when she passes this life and enters the next that she feels weightless and free. I hope my grandfather is there to embrace her. I hope it is a world beyond our wildest dreams.

I know loss is part of life, but somehow knowing it doesn’t make it easier. The pain is there waiting. It is a faithful companion. It is a full body experience. The tears. The pit in my stomach. The knot in my throat. The mind focused on the memories and the absence of those I will get to make with her in the future. I’m gambling with the universe as I’m flying to try and make it in time to say goodbye. I’m struggling to accept the lack of control I have over this situation. I am trying to will her to hold on longer as if I have that power. Because it is easier for me to believe that in some version of reality I do. That if I want to say goodbye to all those I love, I will get to through sheer willpower.

Day to day life allows us the luxury of pushing the inevitable loss into the back of our minds. It allows us the luxury of pretending that we have more time than we do. To put off the pain. The tailspin of emotions I’m currently experiencing. I told myself I didn’t have to feel this pain yet. I thought I had at least another month. No news is good news. I suppose this is self-preservation or else life would be too much to bear. Or maybe it is a gift if we allow ourselves to see it as one. Maybe I’m not so much pretending as I am continuing to live in the finite time I do have. If all we did was use our time to prepare for the end, we simply wouldn’t be living at all. Honestly, I probably would stop getting out of bed.

It is during these times of loss that I reflect on my own life. Where I’ve been. Where I am now. Where I am going. What it is I want. I don’t think I have any idea where I am going and frankly, I’m not sure I want to. We are not very good at predicting the future. Maybe it is beyond our ability as humans. We just have to focus on the day we have. To lay one brick at a time and hope it turns into a path.

I think I know what I want though. I want a life full of raw emotion. All of them. The full range. The ones that make me laugh so hard I’m crying and those that make me cry so hard that I wonder if I’ll laugh again. Perhaps that is a weird thing to hope for, but to me, it will mean I’ve lived a complete life. A free life. A life uninhibited. A heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life as described in the poem that I began this blog with.

As you know, I’ve already mastered how to numb myself. And I want to continue to unlearn that skill. To slow down and embrace whatever is coming up for me. The sadness. The anger. The frustration. The shame. The joy.

So right now, I am embracing sadness. The gut-wrenching kind. And I’m so fucking grateful, because it means I’m alive. And if I’m lucky enough I’ll live 87 beautiful years like my grandma. I’m feisty like her so I think my odds are good.

Thank you for 36 years of memories, Grandma.

***She passed about 10 minutes before I landed, shortly after I finished writing this. Rest in Peace, Grandma. I miss you already.***

Cue ‘Time Will Tell’ by Gregory Alan Isakov

Expectations

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During the holidays, I’m reminded of how far the space is between the life I live in DC and the one where I was raised. It is not always easy to be the one who left. To create a path for yourself that deviates from your family of origin. It can make you feel as though you live two different lives, that there are two different versions of you. On the plane ride over I transform into my childhood self.

There is so much beauty in how I was raised, and I have so much for love for my family. On a weekly basis, I was surrounded by family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and, of course, the grandparents at the center. We were our own village. We celebrated everything and mourned tragedies together. With a large family, we had our fair share of tragedies. I am grateful for this built-in support network, for the togetherness, for this deeply ingrained sense of protection.

But there are costs to a strong, family-centric childhood, especially one with its fair share of groupthink. And togetherness does not necessarily mean connection.

In my family, and I imagine in many others, there was right and there was wrong, and we were expected to conform. The expectations were heavy. Sometimes they were spoken and sometimes they were not. But they were known whether or not there were words attached to them.

Going against the grain, deviating from the norm, was not celebrated. It was met with disdain. I could feel the disappointment. The tension was suffocating. What is wrong with this person? This person must think they are better.

For much of my life, I did whatever I could to meet expectations. I did what I was told to do. I called and checked in on who I was supposed to. I went where I was supposed to go. I did not push back even when I wanted to. I went with the program. I was the giver and the high achiever. Do you need something? I’ll get it. Do you have something to say? I’ll hold it.

I craved acceptance and this was what I believed I had to do to get it. Who am I if I’m not doing something for others? I craved the attention I received when I did things for other people. I needed to feel like I was enough.

I feel I should clarify that I do not think meeting expectations and doing things for others is inherently a problem. However, in my case, it did not always feel I had a choice, not if I wanted to be loved by others. My family valued harmony over individuality. I learned to value harmony and avoided conflict at all costs. Over time, it became difficult to know why I was making the choices I was. Was it for me? Was it because I wanted to do x, y or z? Or was it because of someone else? Because it is what they expected of me?

Expectations are a problem if they leave you with zero space to make your own choices. They are a problem if you wear them as an identity. My self-worth was tied to what I was giving to others and how I was performing according to other people’s expectations. THIS was the problem.

Tying your self-worth to others, even your family, is a trap. Always. Creating a role for yourself where only perfection is acceptable is destructive. Always. And I’ve had to work for years into adulthood to rewire my brain to see it this way.

I am the person who left the family unit to pursue a life different than theirs. For 12 years, I’ve had to convince myself that it is okay to have made that choice. It is not selfish. It does not mean I think I am better than anyone else. It does not make me a bad person. I am loveable even when I do not conform. Even when I do not meet expectations.

Whenever I am home, I am even more aware of the choice I made and of the space between who I was and who I am trying to be. I am told what I will be doing instead of asked what I want to do. I am reminded that I am different. That I’ve gone down a path less traveled. For my family, they think that is DC, but I know the more important path has been the one inward. That is what has changed me.

This last trip home for Thanksgiving was difficult. I did not feel accepted. I did not feel seen for the person I am today. I spent most of the time doing things for others, but not feeling any appreciation for it. I am realizing that the appreciation I want is not a thank you, it is space in these relationships to be myself.

I may never get this from some of the people I want it from. Is it frustrating as hell? YES. But that’s okay. I’m learning to detach, that there is value in just owning what you can control. Your needs, wants, and desires.

I want to take up space with all versions of me. And guess what? All those versions are enough. 😊

Cue ‘Closer to Free’ by Bodeans

Casually Cruel

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Do you ever wonder why certain people come into your life? Is it for a reason? Is there a lesson to be learned? Or is it just coincidence? Is there no deeper meaning at all?

I want there to be a reason. I want to believe in fate. I want my life to have meaning. Why? I suppose because the alternative is scary. To accept that things just happen at random means facing the powerlessness I have over my life. It means accepting that, despite all my best intentions, things may not go the way I want them to. Bad things will happen. Good things will too. Against my will. In spite of my efforts.

I’m not sure what the right answer is to these questions. I imagine, like so much of life, it is somewhere in the middle, in that gray space. Life is unpredictable in a predictable way. We may not be able to control everything that happens, but we do control our reactions to the things that happen. What causes what is complicated. It is nuanced. Every day I am learning to sit with that.

I recently started talking again to someone from my past. He is someone that I used to feel very attached to. Perhaps dependent on is a better way of framing it. His mom had passed away within the last couple of years when we met. When I first met him, though, he was goofy and always joking around. I actually questioned whether he was capable of being serious. He reacted to that assumption I made and called me out on judging him too quickly. I remember feeling bad. I’m not sure if I felt bad for what I did to him or felt bad for being criticized – probably both. I felt I needed to keep talking to him, to figure out who he really was.

So we did. This was 2018. To say this relationship has been tumultuous would be an understatement.

It became an unhealthy dynamic for me very quickly. It was the oh so common trap of wanting someone you can never have. It didn’t take long before we were spending hours on the phone, and I truly enjoyed that time. It was both witty banter and deep conversations about what we had been through. It had become very important to me that I find someone with a sense of humor, but an ability to be serious at the right times. I felt like I found that in him.

Despite all the communicating, he wouldn’t commit. I wanted the constant communication to mean we were in a relationship, but when I told him I wanted to date only him, he replied with the “I’m not in a good enough place to be in a relationship.” It is true. He wasn’t. But we acted like we were without the label and that was confusing for me. And it hurt.

He told me to date, and he went on some dates too. However, he would then use the fact that I had gone on other dates as “evidence” that I didn’t really want to be with him. I would defend myself and he would twist it around so it became my fault. Every. Single. Time.

We continued to talk, but over time, the fighting was more and more frequent. The same push/pull dynamic played out repeatedly. I felt crazed – trying to convince someone I wanted to be with him while he was actually pushing me away. Once I started to move on, he became ready for a relationship, but made a point of letting me know that he had doubts about a relationship with me. I tried to hold on to my truth and not lose myself, but this relationship broke me down. The words broke me down. As Taylor Swift says, he was casually cruel in the name of being honest. I was called many names and accused of having so many terrible traits.

I did finally move on and started dating other people. Enough was enough. In response to this, I was accused of ghosting him. This was not ghosting. I’ve ghosted before (I’m not proud of it), but this was not it. This was me deciding I was worth more than the way I was being treated. This was me getting out of the trap of needing his validation. But I will never convince him of that. He will never see it from my perspective. He is the victim, and I am the one doing harm. That is his narrative.

We did occasionally talk after that. I learned that within a month or so after we stopped talking regularly he got into a relationship. I was still dating around. We attempted a friendship, but the conversation always steered back to who was to blame for what happened between us. A game I was destined to lose every time.

The fact that he got into a relationship after telling me he wasn’t ready for one with me triggered my insecurities in a soul crushing way. I was so tired of this being my story. Why was I always the one men left for greener pastures? I was trying very hard to build up my confidence, to not tie my self-worth to external validation. But, F*ck, it is hard. Really, really hard.

In my more confident moments, I can reflect on these relationships and look at them critically. I can see my role in them. I can see their role too. It can be gray. That is easier to accept. When you are in it, though, when the pain is raw, you need a place to put it. You will do anything to not feel it. That feeling of rejection. Of loss. Of what could have been but never was. In these painful moments, I turn on myself. I blame myself. I am the version of myself he painted me out to be.

From Spring 2020 to August of this year we did not speak. And during that time, I let go of the idea that we would ever be something. I continued to learn more about myself and who I want to surround myself around. Despite my ongoing struggles with OCD and bulimia, I generally feel more at ease, more settled. So why did I respond when he reached out?

Honestly? I think there are three reasons. One – It feels good to be on someone’s mind, especially when you already feel like you are easy to walk away from. I’m human and would like to feel more of that. Two – Dating hadn’t been going particularly well. There is some weird sexual energy out there following the months of isolation due to the pandemic…hang tight, I’ll share more on that in the near future. Finally, three – I think I was genuinely curious to see how he was. Contrary to his belief, I am not actually a monster.

Up until three weeks ago I was really enjoying catching up. I told him I needed to ease back into being in each other’s lives again and he seemed to respect that. Though, it didn’t take long until we were talking daily, including over the phone. The banter was fun. The conversations were real. I had always genuinely appreciated his comfort in sharing his emotions. They did not make me uncomfortable when I wasn’t the target of his negative feelings. When things were on good terms between, they felt really good. I let myself consider the possibility that maybe he was in a better place these days.

And then poof, it switched. I wasn’t there for him in the way he expected. He was having a difficult week and so was I. I was honest about the fact that I was struggling. I told him I had less energy to give for that reason. Still, I was accused of distancing. “You always do this.” “Would have been nice if you asked about my interviews.” For the record, I didn’t even know these interviews were happening.

I knew following this exchange of messages that letting him back in my life was a mistake. There will never be any space for me in this relationship. His needs will always take priority and I will be expected to carry them even when I’m on the ground struggling to get up.

In an effort to have more direct and honest conversations with the people in my life, I told him that I was hurt he hadn’t checked in with me to see how I was doing. I told him I didn’t feel there was room for me to struggle as well.

And suddenly it was 2018 again.

I was selfish.

I was imploding so badly he had a hard time watching it.

I flip and let emotions cloud me.

I am unstable.

I am entitled.

I am like talking to a 4th grader.

I was destructive.

I was using him and taking advantage of his kindness.

I was an asshole.

All these things were said plus more. I will admit my anger led to me saying some regrettable things. There is something so anxiety-provoking about someone who tries to rob you of your truth like he does. Every time the story is twisted and I become demonized.

The last message I sent was an apology for the hurtful things I said when angry and defensive. I do wish I was able to control my emotions more in the moment and disengage, but I am imperfect.

I own this. When provoked, I am capable of saying hurtful things.

But that is all I owed him. Me owning my part. But I refuse to own his too. I refuse to carry his anger, frustration, and pain on my back. I refuse to be a projection of his anxiety. I will not let him or anyone else weigh me down so they can feel lighter. I will not be silenced so they can yell louder.

This is progress and no one can take that away.

Cue ‘All Too Well’ by Taylor Swift

Shame

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I started this blog to push myself to address my deepest fears with the hope that by doing so I would be set free of them. I wholeheartedly believe FDR’s quote “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” To live in fear is to not truly live at all. It is like spending your days digging your own grave. After my last post I told myself it was time to start addressing the parts of myself I am ashamed of. I told myself I needed to expose more of myself and to unpack why I am who I am today. Instead, I just stopped writing for five months. Why?

Because I am scared.

I am scared you will judge me.

I am scared you will think lesser of me.

I am scared by the depths of my pain.

I am scared that exposing my shame makes it real.

And after that, there will be no denying it is part of me.

Shame is like a parasite that won’t be away. It makes a home in you. Every time I soothe myself with food, I’m fueling my shame. I’m making it stronger.

So today I will start with some brutal honesty: I am more ashamed of who I am than proud of who I am. I say this after years of therapy and that shit right there is depressing. Naturally I went to therapy to feel better, to be fixed. And yet here I am. You may be thinking that the problem is my therapist or maybe how you knew therapy was a sham. I don’t think either of those things are true. For awhile I’ve been of the belief that therapy will only be as successful as what you put into it. I’ve realized there are ways we all do therapy more “safely” where we only talk about the topics we are comfortable discussing. It is incredibly easy to deal with only the current week’s events or to quickly brush over major life events that fundamentally changed us. We get to leave each session feeling like we opened up. But did we? Now I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely not the same person I was years ago. I am in many ways more confident than I have ever been. But my pain is still there. It is still gut-wrenching. It is still physical.

This leads to me to a couple other things I’ve realized about therapy and self-growth. This should probably be obvious, but it only sunk in recently. Progress is not linear. There are moments in my therapeutic journey that have been transformative like when I acknowledged my insecurities with another similarly aged woman in my group or with one of the therapists. Both times I challenged my deepest fear that I’m inherently unlikeable. These sessions were both painful and powerful. But they didn’t “fix me”. I still get down about the curve balls life throws at me and sometimes I take a couple steps back and revert to old patterns of thinking. I’m thankful for these transformative, but they didn’t make me superhuman where I no longer feel hurt by future interactions.

This next realization for me has been huge and why I am risking being vulnerable on this blog. Here it is: Therapy will never work if you are of the mindset you are broken. I have always thought there was something wrong with me, with how I feel or how much I feel. I still think this way too often and this is a problem. I go to therapy to figure out how to feel less so that I won’t be “too much” for people to deal with. This right here is a goal I will never achieve. Feelings are normal. ALL OF THEM. These days, my more confident self reminds me that the ideal state is not one where I am absent of any feeling. For me, I hope to be able to manage my feelings. I hope to see them for what they are without them turning into inappropriate actions on myself or other people. So the problem isn’t that I feel sad or angry, but whether I lash out as a result.

I know, I know. I said this post was about my shame. Ultimately my shame has to deal with the fear that I am not enough and that the way I have behaved over the years is not normal or acceptable. It has been especially a problem in romantic relationships. I have a complicated relationship with men and am incredibly embarrassed by the situations I’ve gotten myself involved in.

I’ve literally never felt “skilled” in this department. I was that girl who had a huge crush on her neighbor since 4th grade and when he actually asked me out a few years later I broke up with him four hours later via a friend because I couldn’t deal with my discomfort. This is the same guy I mentioned in a previous blog post where my so called friends pretended he wrote me a love letter. After that happened, I just couldn’t actually let myself believe he really liked me. My fantasies weren’t supposed to come true for me. Period.

My first boyfriend was in 8th grade. We dated because our mutual best friends were also dating. When they broke up, we did too. As teenagers do, he started dating someone else right after and I couldn’t get that off my mind. It was right around the time of my first panic attack and the bullying and it just felt like a reinforcement that I was not likeable. I was just a pit stop on a longer journey of finding someone better. From then on, I was hypersensitive to how quickly men moved on from me and my behavior bordered on desperation. At the very least, it was destructive to my sense of self. I accepted what I thought I deserved which wasn’t a whole hell of a lot.

The very first man I slept with, during college, was a merch guy for a band who cheated on me. Rather than walking away, we continued to talk and I pretended that he cared because I needed to believe he did. To me, being with someone who didn’t respect me was better than being walked away from. I was “a lot to deal with” after all so beggars can’t be choosers.

Needless to say, my early twenties were a bit of a hot mess. I was the other woman to a man who went on to marry his girlfriend at the time. I was with a guy who lied about being with not one, but two other women, one who turned out to be pregnant with his child. I was date raped by a bartender I knew from the previously mentioned relationship I had been in. Left naked on the floor of the bathroom bleeding from the chin.

Two weeks later I moved for graduate school and tried to erase those memories with my new life. The life I’ve been living for the last 12 years. In many ways I’ve built the life I’ve dreamt of. I’m successful. I’m independent. But I’m also still hurting and I think it is because behind those memories which never were erased is my shame. The shame I don’t want to think about. The shame from the years I pass over quickly in therapy because I just don’t want those memories to be reality. I sure as hell do not want them to be my reality.

What would the people in my current life think? How can she be who I know her to be and also that other person? I cannot look at her the same way. And what about the people from my former life? Would they be thinking, “I told you so”? I knew she was pathetic. And what about my family? I raised her better. I told her to be strong and she was the furthest from that.

I’m embarrassed of that person I was and I still am every time I date. I’m embarrassed by my weakness. I’m embarrassed by my attention seeking behavior. I’m embarrassed by wanting love and settling instead for just sex.

When I date I am filled with doubt, anxiety and sadness. Am I worthy of love? Would they be on this date if they knew my past? Did I come across as desperate? Did I sleep with him too soon? Will he walk away like the rest?

So here is a look into my personal hell. This is the shame I am running from every time I order food only to binge and purge it. This is the embarrassment I hope will be flushed down the toilet.

This is my shame and it is part of me whether I like it or not.

Today I accept it.

Cue ‘Arcade’ by Duncan Laurence

Safe

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You may have read my last post and thought, “Okay. Sarah doesn’t like the treasurer.” But that is not true. It is gray and today I am sitting with it.

I feel vulnerable in that relationship. I feel silly, even a bit unhinged, for fearing an adult friendship with someone who lives in the same building as me. But I’ve promised myself that I will not sugarcoat my feelings.

The truth is I feel vulnerable in every relationship to some degree. I am terrified of the connections I so deeply desire. With her (and many others) I can’t get a good sense of how she feels about me. Am I a friend? Or just someone she will inevitably see since we share the same front door? A friendship of convenience and shared financial interest?

My barometer for acceptance in relationships is how much I hear from you, how much time of mine you seem to want, how consistent you are. With her we talk and hang out in spurts. It is frequent and then it eases up. When communication is consistent, I feel calm. I do not worry as much about how she feels about me. I feel accepted. When there is silence, my feelings of doubt remind me they are my most consistent and reliable friend. The doubt is still with me. To “protect” me. To whisper just loud enough that I’ve been here before. “Be careful. People like you…until they don’t.”

Growing up I was bullied in middle and high school. By girls I thought were friends. Best friends. A memory that has stayed with me over the years is when they wrote a love note and pretended it was from the boy I really liked. They put it in my locker and watched me read it and get excited. I then heard them laughing hysterically. At me. At my excitement. Was the thought of my crush liking me ridiculous? Was my excitement funny?

Then there was the time girls left the Oompa Loompa song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on my voicemail. It felt like they could see my insecurities and threw them back at my face. I felt mortified. Ashamed. Exposed. Alone.

This was not the beginning of my mental health issues (that was elementary school), but I think it was when they began to spiral. It was when it went from anxiety to depression. From feeling a bit different to feeling completely alone. Years of secret anguish and plans of escaping from a world that was hurting me.

It was the beginning of keeping you at arm’s length. It was the beginning of self-sabotage. Of getting close and pulling away. Of living in my world of doubt and convincing myself it was reality so I could keep being alone. It was not the place I wanted to be, but it was safe.

During that time and for many years after, I did not feel safe. I didn’t know how to. What if I seek solace in the arms of someone who would just end up hurting me? I did not push everyone away completely, but I learned not to trust. Like I said, I kept you at arm’s length. And I held my breath. I never wanted to be caught off guard again. By anyone or anything.

There is more here to unpack and over time I will. Today, I will just share that I’m grateful I’m lightyears beyond that place. That horrible, lonely place. Today, I can let you in a bit more. This blog is evidence of that. But it is hard and it will probably continue to be hard. I’m learning how to unlearn behaviors and thought processes that, during that time, I thought I needed to survive.

I still struggle with relationships. I can very quickly time travel back to my 12-year-old self. I can assume your silence is a rejection instead of busyness. I can assume it must only be about me, my weaknesses, the parts of myself that are not attractive. The parts that are “too much”. I have to slow down and remember to breathe.

The struggle can be exhausting, but I’m okay with it (most days). Connecting with you and pushing through the vulnerability has taught me so many things. You’ve been hurt too. You may have been bullied. You share many of my fears. You are a work in progress just like me.

This has been a powerful realization. We are the same kind of imperfect. Weathered from life’s experiences. I wasn’t alone then and I’m not alone now. And despite the chaos in this world, I feel okay. I feel safe.

Cue ‘Scars’ by Lukas Graham