This has bothered me for a long time but I’ve never really known myself. I know most of the human population could say that about themselves but I mean in the context of thriving and doing things that make me happy. It was watching the headline act at Glastonbury festival on Saturday night, Coldplay, that instigated the thought. I’ve grown up with Coldplay from my 20s into my now late 40’s. Watching the thousands of people in the packed out audience with their fancy costumes, glitter make up and glow-in-the-dark armbands having what looked like the time of their lives, loving every minute, got me thinking about myself and my life. I don’t feel as though I’ve ever lived my life consciously and doing the things that genuinely make me happy, like buying some tickets to a music festival. I feel like I’ve just floated in survival mode hoping I’d one day get ‘there’ or arrive, wherever getting there or arriving is. I remember a time when I was about 19 or 20 years old and where I was working at the time (some hideous sales company that exploited young people), another girl about my age who also worked there had booked tickets to V Festival that weekend and needed to take a few days off. Going to a music festival had never entered my thought process. I wondered what all the fuss was about. But I’d never really thought of anything at that point so far on how to indulge in life, not in any hedonistic way, just in the manner of cultural experiences and what I was drawn to. Looking back, I’ve had dull, joyless, blankness about me, from the inside-out, keeping myself in a cocoon where I never explored me and my life; perhaps that’s what part of disassociation is? When you’re not really in your body, how can you experience it and know what you really want?
All I ever thought about was making a living, getting even with people whom I thought I had something to prove to (rotton family, bullies at school, the racists who abused me). I had a dark energy that had taken over me, driving me, an “I’ll show you” attitude that didn’t take me into account, just wanting to get back at a so far unfair life. It was a rageful, angry, dark, often resentful and jealous energy that took me onto the wrong paths, easily done as I didn’t really know what I wanted. And although I thought I was motivated by money and material things, I don’t think I ever was. I think I was just motivated about survival and getting through life, not getting FROM life. That’s probably why I’ve had problems all my life setting goals, because I’ve never truly known what I want. Although I thought I wanted ‘stuff’, big house, flash car (and fill-the-blank anything else that goes with it) I could never work hard for it. It wasn’t enough of a driver for me and just empty dreams and wishes without a deadline. The luxury lifestyle is what I thought I wanted, but there was part of me that didn’t reach for it. Even when I was in career that was paying me really well, I didn’t splash out and squirreled a lot of it away instead living an average life. That is survival.
And here’s something else I’ve always done: throughout my life I have seemed to adopt other people’s ways of being: accents, mannerisms, ways of speaking and being, words, phrases, idiosyncrasies – trying it on like a suit thinking that it might suit me being like that? It sounds odd but it’s true. I’ve done it all my life. Not so much now, although I still find myself do it now and again. To be honest, I still don’t know who the real me is without the tracks of trauma: the anger, the rage, the thinking that the world has got it in for me, the survival mode, the floating through life, the inner, joyless dullness, the not knowing where I’m headed, the inability to thrive and make conscious decisions, the not knowing what I really, truly want for this body and life to experience….
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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