Remember Who You Are
I went to a healing workshop in Bushwick when I first moved to Brooklyn where the facilitator said “Healing isn’t about creating something new, it’s about uncovering what has always been there.” I’ve thought about it every day since.
The prospect of healing can be so daunting when you’ve been through trauma and abuse. That’s why most people don’t do it. Wading through the shame and regret of moments when you didn’t know and couldn’t do better. Embarrassment about times when you weren’t your best. Grief at the time lost. Not to mention the PTSD, the fears and anxieties, the not knowing who you are.
My safest caretaker when I was a child was overbearing, emotionally volatile, and deeply invested in a fantasy of who I would become. I learned to fawn, to submit, to be perfect, in order to receive her love and approval. Every ounce of autonomy or individuality I managed came hard-fought and with many consequences. The lack of safety didn’t always feel worth it—the emotional blackmail, the guilt. Every failure or fumble felt like a tragedy, like I could lose everything if I showed that I wasn’t perfect. I molded myself into who she wanted me to be, and I didn’t know how to be anything else.
This pattern stuck as I moved into adult relationships. At work, in my friendships, and in my romantic relationships, I was accommodating and overgiving. I left my real self, including my needs, boundaries, and feelings at the door. I gave until I crumbled. I never had to really let anyone in. I protected my vulnerability by aggressively taking care of everyone. I grew resentful. I got my feelings hurt. Whenever I needed someone, I found myself handling it all alone.
Every toxic relationship I’ve experienced (and there have unfortunately been many) was a carbon copy of the one I had with my grandmother. When they inevitably ended (thank god), I would be left not only heartbroken but as a shell of myself. I didn’t know how to function without an overbearing partner telling me who I was or chasing someone by making me who they wanted. I didn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have someone to take care of. The grief came with the realization that I had lost myself was soul-crushing. This is why, when I look back on my 36 years, I often feel like the happiest times in my life were times when I was single and with very few friends. They were the times I would do things alone, and spend my time on what I wanted to do. I would begin to uncover the me that has always been underneath the trauma. Because of the aching loneliness that would set in whenever I was alone too long, these glorious phases of self-discovery didn’t last. Luckily, the things I uncovered about myself tended to stick. Sometimes they were covered up again, but never as bad as they used to be. Nothing was beyond healing. I’ve come to learn that very little is.
Over the last few years, I ended another one of these cycles—one that has spanned my entire life. One of the most difficult I’ve ever experienced. One that snuck through the cracks of all my healing work. When I walked away, my confidence, my boundaries, my inner peace, my safety, my focused vision of what I wanted, all of it was gone. I was like a-not-caterpillar, a not-yet-a-butterfly pile of goo. I was in the purgatory stage, the void of this-thing-I-so-heavily-identified-with-was-gone-but-who-am-without-it. The sadness felt like it was going to swallow me whole. I had to deal with all the usual feelings of ending a toxic situation, plus I had to deal with the intense grief at realizing how much of myself I had lost. All that I had worked to uncover over the years felt lost to me. But then I remembered that all I had to do was remember who I was.
I had already laid the groundwork, I knew how to heal. So I got to it. I talked it out with trusted loved ones. I made sense of it in my head. I felt my feelings all the way through. I wrote myself love notes. I took every compliment and word of affirmation given to me by someone outside myself to heart. I wrote them down. I read them again and again. I flowed away from anyone who didn’t seem to have a kind word. I learned to be drawn to reciprocal love. I restructured my life. I remembered the things I loved to do, the things that made me feel good. A newfound (though modest) financial stability helped me acquire the resources I needed to tend to my physical health, to have the tools I need to make my art—which is a tremendous part of who I am—and something I went way too long without. I started learning to love life again.
To be honest, after four years of starting this cycle of a lifelong wound, I’m still not all the way back. And that makes me really sad. But I know it’s a process, and after I reach equilibrium, I will no doubt face these wounds again, as I climb the healing spiral, knowing myself ever better, hopefully loving myself more and more.
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