You don’t recognize yourself

 

Have you ever taken a step back and realized you didn’t recognize yourself or your behaviors? Maybe you’d go so far as to say you felt like a stranger to yourself when you think about who you are now versus the way you were in the past.

The truth is most days you will look into the mirror and see a stranger staring back at you and you don’t recognize the person you used to be. 

When facing abuse, and the people that hurt you deeply they have taken more than you’ve let them of yourself and you’ve gotten so caught up in life, trying so hard to make others happy that you’ve let yourself slip through the door. We eventually adjust our self-identity to accommodate an abusive partner.

Say your partner insists, “When you go out with your friends, you’re telling me you don’t love me. You’d rather see them instead.”

Of course, you love them, so you stop going out with your friends. Next, you give up your hobbies, skip after-work happy hour with co-workers, and eventually cancel your weekly visit with your sister. You spend time doing what your partner wants to do, so they know you really do care.

So, when you get  lost in this, it’s hard to understand why you feel the way you feel. You might search for an explanation for these feelings and want to understand why it is that you don’t recognize what you look like in the mirror anymore.

These changes often lead to a loss of your sense of self, which can leave you feeling lost and empty. You might have a hard time enjoying life and lose sight of your sense of purpose because you put them first before you.

Also, trusting yourself also can play an important factor with yourself. Not trusting yourself can make it difficult to make decisions, trust your instincts, meet your needs, and make the most of opportunities.

You will find that the person you’ve come to know after the abuse is not you anymore.  But the important thing to understand is that you’ve noticed this. You’ve seen it in the way you look at yourself, the way you criticize every imperfection and curve. You’ve heard it in the way your tone has changed when your laugh is no longer present. You’ve felt it in the way your heart has clenched every time happiness has slipped through your fingers.

And I know because I felt it too that if you could go back and rewind time and go back to the person you were before. Before the heartaches, before the doubt, before the insecurities started. You would find some way to leave the person that made you feel this way and made you feel worthless and unloved. To go back and be the person you once was before it all happened.

And I don’t blame you because I wished I took the warning signs seriously.

So, all I can say is it’s not easy but Keep walking until the winds that torment your mind cease. Keep growing until the mess that has consumed your soul blossoms into the unkempt garden that it was destined to become.

Just keep going, because I promise you that one day you will wake up and all you will feel for yourself will be intense love. I promise you that the road to happiness was always supposed to be riddled with uncertainty. These lessons were growth, and you will find the new you the stronger you again.

Tuesday D'Eon

Concrete Angel