I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment in time when I thought, believed, and convinced myself that I did not deserve nice things. That I did not deserve softness, or anything good in my life.
I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment when I decided I wasn’t going to decorate my space — because what was the point? I was going to be moving anyway. Living situations were temporary. There’s no point in decorating a space for yourself just to have to pack it all up and move.
But I can probably pinpoint, at least get close to, when that thought became a belief. When it rooted itself into my mind and into my heart-that I didn’t deserve, and wasn’t worthy of, having nice things. That I wasn’t worthy of being soft. Of doing things for myself.
I believed I had to be a robot. I just went along with whatever, just to have the temporary attention of someone who truly did not have my best interests at heart. I was there to serve a purpose for them, and that was it.
I could spend so much time trying to figure out exactly when these thoughts ingrained themselves into the recesses of my brain. But when I think about that, I wonder… What good would that do? Reminisce and get stuck in the past? Get stuck staring in the rearview mirror at my decisions, my beliefs, things that happened that I can no longer do anything about?
When I could instead be looking forward.
Not in the sense that I have to control how everything goes; because you can only control so much. There are things that will happen that I can’t control, and I have to be okay with that. But there’s nothing stopping me from having hope about the future. There’s nothing stopping me from wondering what if, and letting my imagination and creativity run wild with the possibilities of what my life could look like. How I want to feel. What I believe about myself. I can change all of that. Without staring in the rearview mirror.
Yes, I can look back. I can look at my past choices, my history. But when I do, I want to do it as a way of saying: that’s where I’ve been. This is what my past has taught me. This is how it helped me become the woman I am today. Because yes, there are limiting beliefs that have burned themselves into my brain; but there are also good things that came out of the events of my past. One of those things being the woman that I am today.
I am-and yes, this word is horrifically overused-I am resilient. I am stubborn in a way that I don’t like to give up. That could be a perfectionism thing, but I think it’s also just how I am. I don’t like to give up on things.
Has that been detrimental in the past? Yes. There is a time and a place to say, okay, this situation is not good for me and I need to let it go. But overall, I am strong-willed. I am a creative woman. I am a dreamer. I am someone who can be hopelessly optimistic at times, and also, honestly, kind of pessimistic. But that’s more my humor and just knowing how work goes. I’m not really surprised when things happen. It’s just a “it is what it is” kind of thing.
I am someone that people can depend on to get things done. Sometimes it takes me a little longer, but I try my best.
There are so many good qualities about myself that I’ve let the limiting beliefs from my past overshadow, pushing them to the back, dark corners of my mind. The belief that I am not worthy, not deserving, that I can’t have the desires of my heart and the dreams in my mind. Those got buried so deep, nobody could see them.
But now, at my big age of 38, coming up on the last few years of my time in the military, I find myself being more…introspective. And I am desiring to put those limiting beliefs back into the dark corners and lock them away, to never see the light of day again and replace them with the woman I want to become. The woman I know I already am.
She’s in there somewhere.
She’s confident in herself. She listens to her intuition and trusts her gut. She exercises boundaries and standards and is not afraid or ashamed to say, “No, that’s not gonna work for me,” or “No, I’m not available for that.” She is open to receiving. Not just material things, but good experiences, good feelings, all of the goodness. She doesn’t give up and finds a way to go after what she wants, even if it takes a few years. My college degree being one of those things.
That is the woman I am. And that is the woman I want to bring out into the world, even though it’s scary. Even though a part of me will wonder: What are other people going to think?
I want to be the woman who does not let the opinions of others affect her. Because they’re not paying my bills. They’re not living my life. So why should their opinions have any say in how I live it?
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I’m not 100% certain where I was going with this…this spoken word, stream of consciousness. I just know I had those first few lines in my head and I wanted to get them out. And it spun into all of these thoughts.
I’m about to be that person who goes to get boba tea from a place that closes in 10 minutes; because I told myself that if I assembled my daughter’s desk and did the dishes, I was going to treat myself. So that’s exactly where I’m going.
Good night!
Not Broken...Becoming 