Healing is a Choice

More of my life has been spent inside myself than not.

I could try to diagnose myself with a million things. Maybe some of those things are valid. Some from the trauma and some not.

In my memories on Snapchat a year ago I was watching family videos with some of my cousins. I don’t know if it is my favorite thing. In most of the videos, I am barely moving or acknowledging what’s going around me. In most of these videos SO MUCH is going on. So many playing kids living their life and there is me just sitting or standing not talking. Barely moving. In ways a zombie.

I can still be like this fifteen years later. Especially when it comes to me being around my cousins. I don’t know if it’s because I revert to who I was. Or because there is so much going on. Or both. Or something else completely.

That is why a lot of the time I tend to see them on days I am doing better mentally because there is a bigger chance of me being a human being and talking. I have also been told that I choose which people I tell certain things because I know how they will react to certain things.

I have had a lot of people “give up” on me throughout the years because I wasn’t able to interact and continue a relationship in a way that most people can. I can come off as cold or that I don’t like them. Relationships are hard enough, let alone with someone who isn’t the easiest to have one with.

A lot of the things that make it hard I am not fully aware of. I remember in seventh grade my class went on a day trip to let us all get to know each other as we came from several elementary schools. One girl went down the line of several girls saying “I like you” and got to me and said, “You’re okay.” Even before my mom died she was always trying to make sure I had friends. So it wasn’t an easy thing for me even without the trauma.

I am a watcher. I tend to watch people and see what they are doing. Trying to figure out the right thing to do. I don’t know how to react to situations in the way people are supposed to do. To be safe I stay out of the way and limit myself. Because my cousins have been around me most of my life and seen an even more restricted me they are used to it. Where some of the new people in my life have only witnessed the less restricted me. They ask me to do little things I normally would not do with my cousins and instead disappear into another room or inside of me.

I am a game person but mainly with my aunt. She was the one I played the most with and was the most comfortable with. Usually, when I am with others when they decide to play a game I will choose to watch instead of play. I think because I like the idea of playing the game but am afraid. I realized recently that I think it’s because I feel vulnerable when I play games and so that makes them a personal thing for me to do with others. Probably because it was some of my most precious times with my aunt. I am trying to say yes I will play instead of just watching as it does limit my ability to create relationships.

Healing is a choice. Not an easy choice but a choice.

Even if you are choosing to heal there are times when it feels impossible. And maybe in the way you are trying to heal it can be. People and relationships play a huge part in healing. Mindset also plays a huge part.

We are all trying to discover ourselves on top of most if not all of us trying to heal from some sort of pain or trauma. For me, it is learning how and what to let go of. I am trying to admit to myself the truth. I can easily lie to myself. I can let myself settle for a feeling because I think what I feel is right or I am telling myself it is right.

It doesn’t help that there are so many voices telling you different things.

I often feel like I am behind. I know a part of that is from comparison. Society tells you if you don’t do certain things by a certain time you haven’t succeeded. I find myself feeling this with things that I have never really been interested in. I waste energy and time feeling unnecessary things when I could be using that on more important things.

Accountability is a big part of healing. Whether you are accountable with yourself or others or both. Like much of healing, accountability can be hard but it is necessary.

“So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.”
Haniel Long