Pieces

The hardest part about finding yourself again after losing yourself? Besides reopening old wounds that you sometimes didn’t even know you had? Realizing how many relationships have been damaged and how many friendships you’ve lost along the way. And being able to pin point moments where (you believe, anyway) things went wrong. And all you can think is, “Damn. That wasn’t me. But it WAS me.” Physically anyway. It was my body. My words. My actions. Or lack thereof. That was there. That said those things. That DID those things. Or didn’t do them. It wasn’t the real me, though. It was the me that had been hurt by one too many people that made me believe that I was the problem. That I needed to change.

I’ve heard the saying, “Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.” And to some extent, I agree. We can’t constantly dwell on the could’ve/should’ve/would’ves of our past because it will kill us. It will kill our joy. It will kill our spirits. BUT I’m sure were all also well versed on the phrase “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And let me tell you, I have no interest in repeating this.

As I look back (with the desire to learn from my mistakes) I am constantly asking myself “Where did I go wrong.” I’m always searching the corners of my brain for where I went wrong and when find somewhere I went wrong, I search for WHY I did what I did. Said what I said. Became who I was. When you spend time consciously trying to change your behavior, I’m finding that things kind of creep into your mind about WHY you’re having to change it. Your eyes become opened to things that have been buried for so long you forgot about them and when you keep an open mind, you are able to get a little bit more of an objective view about things.

And what I’m coming to find is actually not that much of a revelation at all: I was shaped and changed by things that happened to me. I know. Not really that unheard of, right? Everyone knows that we are shaped by circumstances. BUT here’s the thing that I’ve realized more than that. My reactions to those things were not what they should have been.

I’ve been hurt in various ways by different people. I’m sure we all have. Some of these things were buried. I forgot about them. I moved on. Until recently when I started digging to get to the bottom of things. Some of them, I never once forgot and probably never will. And while both types of hurt changed pieces of me, I think it’s the ones that are still fresh in my mind – ALWAYS fresh in my mind that are the real culprits. Not the people. The situations. I’m not here to try to push blame onto other people in a sorry attempt to justify everything. That is helpful to absolutely no one. I take full blame. Full responsibility. Because it was MY reactions to those circumstances that created the problem.

Allow me to explain. I’ve been hurt by various people in various ways. And while I take things pretty personally (a lot of the time) I tend to give people chance after chance after chance to prove to me that they didn’t intend to hurt me. Most of them time, they do. But the times they don’t? I basically let them continuously hurt me until there’s no way that I COULDN’T be a different person as a result of it. It would change me. It would make me believe that maybe it was me. Maybe there was something I needed to change either to:

1. Give them one.more.chance to problem me wrong and like me OR

2. To keep them from hurting me again.

I think the general tendency was to go with option 1 first – to change something about myself and if that didn’t work, I’d go with option 2.

Sometimes, option 1 DID work. So I’d end up with a mish mash of “don’t do this, don’t say that, don’t be this person around that person.” that was inevitably more difficult to keep track of the more it happened (talk about major identity crisis) and the honest to goodness plan of action by the time I got to option 2 was just to shut down altogether. Guard up. Closed off.

And while option 1 clearly has a whole host of issues, I don’t think my response to option 2 was really that out of line. But HERE’S where it all went wrong.

These mishmash of personalities and closed doors didn’t end at the people that hurt me. They should have. But they didn’t. They carried over into my friendship. My REAL friends. The ones who liked me just find that way I was. And the ones whose approval SHOULD HAVE been enough. They were find with me the way.I.was. But what I eventually gave them was a guarded, closed off person who tried so hard to be what everyone else wanted that she didn’t even know who she was anymore and had somehow developed some bitterness along the way. It’s no wonder they moved on. The person they wanted, that they grew to like, was gone.

It’s a hard realization to make. Really. To realize that you gave up something REALLY good for, what? Nothing? No-not really nothing. For something you didn’t even want and would spend years trying to get rid of later on down the road. Like the old tube TVs that sit in the basement because you can’t give them away. Not even to the garbage man. You can’t even light them on fire.

It’s a tough hole to try to dig yourself out of. Do you go running back to the people you miss, screaming “Wait! Give me another chance! Look, I’m different now!”? And hope that they give you the opportunity to prove yourself and then hope even harder that if they DO give you that opportunity that you don’t screw it up even worse than the first time? Because if you’re being honest, you’re still hurdling some things and you’ve never been known for your hurdling abilities.

OR, do you cut your losses and hope that you find new friends along the way that can fill the holes left and just vow to never let yourself dig that hole again?

It’s tough. It’s tough facing your missteps. The mistakes that you see so clearly now and know that while it was you. It wasn’t REALLY you. Somehow, some way, you have to pick up what remains and either try to piece it back together, knowing it will never be quite the same. Or, decide to discard the pieces altogether and try to create something new. Something you can only hope will be better and just pray that you can keep it from ever shattering again.