Life's Ups And Downs

[chelseajmunoz]

Recently I've been given feedback by friends of mine that the blog entry I wrote this past Sunday was received positively. It made me happy to know that people felt that way because I was incredibly proud of that particular blog entry myself. I was proud of that particular blog entry because it took a lot of work for me to say the things I wrote in it in a way that was 100 percent honest with myself and my blog readers. As I said in that particular blog entry Sunday I'd never been vulnerable in that way before. I was also nervous about how that particular blog entry would be received by others. Still I wrote that particular blog entry because I knew that I'd said in previous blog entries that I wanted to continue getting to know myself and to be honest with the world about how that process looks for me throughout my life. One of the things I'm doing right now is selling all of my furniture so that I can make a fresh start for myself. Between being stressed out about whether all of my things will actually sell, getting back into working out at the gym four times a week and feeling like I want to constantly be moving all the time, things have been a mixed bag of feelings for me lately. I've also wanted to get out of this apartment so bad that I've resorted to playing Raffi music often when I'm in this apartment. Raffi is a musician who plays guitar and sings little kid songs (sometimes little kids sing with him and sometimes he sings by himself). So lately I've been coping with being in San Antonio in an environment where some traumatic experiences have happened, by listening to Raffi songs on my Echo Dot (a voice-activated device that allows people to make phone calls, play games, look up information, play music and other things that I can't think of at the moment. So I've been listening to Raffi music lately because that's the only thing I've found to help me cope with being in this environment after having been in an environment where I felt totally safe. A few hours after I'd written my last blog entry Sunday I had some family over. These people are people that I've chosen to call family because of who they are and how deeply they love one another and how deeply they love me. They hung out at my apartment for a few hours and I asked one of them if I could hang out with some of them later in the week. I was open with them about how now that I know what it's like to be around someone frequently I can't stand being by myself in this particular apartment. They were understanding of how I felt and welcomed my company later in the week with open arms. So after I'd gotten back from working out at the gym yesterday afternoon one of them called me to see if I wanted to hang out at her house for a bit. I of course said I'd love to which was huge for me because it isn't always easy for me to assert myself in that way. I'm glad I was able to do so in that particular situation though because I really enjoyed hanging out at her house yesterday evening. It was great to get away from my apartment and to not even have to think about anything but happy things for a time. Like, just having a small break like that really helped me feel like I coped better with life because I got out of this apartment for a time. Then yesterday evening I had group therapy which was another great thing that happened for me this week. As I think I've mentioned before, tonight's group therapy session was our last meeting. Although I was sad about the fact that particular group was going to be a thing of the past I felt like I gained more than I could've ever imagined from going to that group. One of the people in the group repeatedly tried to show me that a person experiencing anger is a healthy part of people's lives. Whereas the way I perceived anger was that a person feeling anger was unhealthy and something to be avoided at all costs. Still every time I'd come back to my apartment after having a group therapy session I'd think about what my friend had said about anger. Like, her words would stay in my mind every day and I began to think about why I interpreted anger as a bad emotion. What I came up with was that not only does society believe that anger is an unhealthy emotion for a person to have but as a woman I'm conditioned by society to "be nice," to "never speak my mind" and i'm made to feel like I'm responsible for managing other people's emotions and feelings. Well I'm happy to be on a journey of self-discovery and self-evaluation where I'm assessing the messages that society tries to brainwash me with. I use the term "brainwash" because I don't think it's right for anyone to tell a woman that she doesn't have the same rights that men have. I use the term "brainwash" because I think it's healthy for women to push back on the idea that women are responsible for managing other people's emotions and feelings. Because the reality is that the only person whose feelings and emotions I'm responsible for having anything to do with are my own. It is not my responsibility to articulate myself in a watered-down way just because there are people in the world who have a thick skin and can't handle their own shit. It is not my responsibility to concern myself with how others will take what I have to say. I'm responsible for myself. I owe it to myself to put out into the world the things that are meaningful to me. I owe it to myself to be kind and compassionate to myself, just as I'm kind and compassionate to other people. I don't owe anyone else anything. No one ever owes anyone anything, not kindness, not support or anything else one could think of. Sure it's nice when people are kind to each other but people being kind can sometimes bite him or her in the ass because other people take advantage of people's kindness if they see fit to do so. Learning that truth, that i don't owe anyone anything, no matter who they are, has really been liberating for me. So anyway going back to how I've evolved into seeing how anger is part of the process of moving on from traumatic experiences: during tonight's group therapy session I told my friend that it makes sense to me now that at some point I'll experience anger at my mom and her family members for wronging me in unforgivable ways both as a child and as a young adult. I'm already thinking in different ways than I used to, about how my mom and her family members treated me. Like, just because she gave birth to me, does not make her my mom. I use the term "mom" loosely, mostly because "mom" is a term that's universally known throughout the world when a person talks about the woman who gave birth to him or her. It takes action though to actually call someone a mom or dad and mean it as an expression of how that person has been there for his or her children. My dad was physically in my life some of the time but not in the way he should've been. My mom was also there physically much of the time but she was also the main person who tore me down emotionally, physically and in every other way she could find to make me feel like I wished I'd never even been born. I tried and tried and tried to do something right by her, to do anything right by her...but that never became a reality for me. It's just now (as a 30-year-old whose chosen to put herself in therapy because of the trauma I've endured) that I'm on the journey of accepting that the woman who gave birth to me will never be someone I can depend on in any way, shape or form. The woman who gave birth to me will never love me or want to be a part of my life for any reason. The woman who gave birth to me is simply that: the woman who gave birth to me. I wouldn't want to rely on or depend on her for anything, nor would I allow her to be in my life for any reason. She does not deserve to know my goings on and I don't care to know hers. She occasionally emails me asking how I'm doing and when I give her general information about my life I don't hear from her again until she decides to repeat the cycle. I wish she'd leave me alone completely though because I want to move away from her in every possible way. Or at least if she isn't going to stop emailing me I want to get to a place within myself where I'm able to just register an email from her for exactly what it is and not be upset and distressed that she's contacted me yet again. Maybe when I'm no longer in San Antonio I'll feel free from the prison that is occasional contact from my mom. I deserve to be free of anyone who doesn't support me, grow me, uplift me or kick me in the ass when need be, whether those people are blood relatives or others. I deserve to fully move on from the past traumas that I've endured because moving on from them is the only way that i'll be able to truly live a life that I want to live. We were talking about this very thing in tonight's group therapy session actually: we talked about the fact that through reading The Body Keeps The Score I've gained a newfound hope that it may be possible for me to fully move past the years of trauma that i've endured. Moving past the trauma won't happen as quick as I'd like it to happen. However that's okay by me because the trauma I've endured did not just happen one time. So it makes sense to me that it's going to take years of therapy to work through the numerous traumatic experiences I've had. I think this therapy might just be the hardest thing I've done and will do in my life...but in other ways I can already tell that the results of said therapy may also be the most rewarding thing I'll ever do in my life.