What I have learnt today
That we all change and we evolved.
I woke up feeling terrible and I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t stop blaming myself for ending things with him and I felt bad for not being the nicest and the kindest person I was when I was with him. And then I realised, I was too focused on trying to make it work, too focused on the goal that I lost myself.
My therapist and I took a journey back to my childhood — and think about how I was, and how this made me who I am today, and what happened.
We talked about my childhood and relationships with my caregivers and how that has evolved into my anxious-anxiety attachment. We talked about how I can use this knowledge to know that a lot the times it is in my head that in my fantasy I want my partner to come fix me, but they can’t and no one will / should. Then we talked about friendships.
In Primary School, I was bullied. I was bullied because I was one of the first girls who had puberty, who had breasts. And I clearly remember one of my closest friend, turned her back on me because the guy she had a crush on was interested in me. And all of a sudden, I had no friends — she was popular and somehow somewhat she made every one disliked me. I remember it was this one day, I went to school and suddenly no one talked to me. Everyone, coordinately, ignored me. It felt terrible, and my world crashed. And I will never forget it was how, Aurelia came into my life and became my ONLY friend.
Then came Secondary School — I had friends, but my anxiety problem was never solved. I felt jealous when my good friends had other friends, that I was gonna lose them too. So I have always put in extra effort to be nice to make sure that they wouldn’t abandon me too. But I knew that was when I started to feel insecure about everything and everyone around me.
In JC — I was popular. I was loud, and somewhat cute and pretty and people noticed me. I was confident. And I knew I had friends I could rely on. But yes I was still the jealous person and I had insecurities with my friends. I am not proud to say but I have lost friendships which really mean to me because of my jealously and insecurities.
Then came Uni — after that drama in JC, I knew how much friendships mean to me, but I have also learnt that my close friends will never go. But that doesn’t mean I was insecure. And then I became focused on other things — on getting good internships, grades and I never bothered about guys because I never found them interesting or attractive. I mean fine I had a few crush here and there, but I never thought the idea of a relationship was interesting.
then I met my ex — we had an amazing 4 years together, but the last year of the relationship, if anything was very toxic. I made a mistake, he became controlling and aggressive, and I was withdrawn and submissive. Then I started a series of dating, with the wrong guys the fuck boys and I started to doubt my self-worth each time after I had physical intimacy.
I am not worthy not because I am not, that is because I allowed myself to — I have been dating the wrong boys and I let them controlled me. I need to find back the same confidence I have in me in JC / Uni to know that I am more worthy than this, that I have the courage to do this. And I knew I was already getting there before I met him, but maybe there were triggers I didn’t address, or maybe he triggered certain things in me — but know that it is not 100% your fault and that you know that you have tried your best, you know that you have put in effort, you have tried to reconnect and you should not be the one fixing his problems either. Janelle, take this as a chance to revisit all your relationships, give gratitude to who you are, who you used to be and let your new power and knowledge rebuild a stronger you.
You are stronger than this and I know you are worthy. Look how far we have come. You are no longer anxious of losing your friends because you know you have a small group of quality, amazing friends who love you for who you are and also because you are amazing friends to them. You no longer hate your body because you know that your body is amazing and you are thankful to be healthy and alive in this pandemic.
Keep growing, I am proud of you.
