Category: Mental Health

The Year of Petty

Those who don’t have a deep knowledge of NASCAR won’t understand, but this has been the year of Petty for me. You see, the “king” of NASCAR is Richard Petty, and the number of his car? 43, my current age.

As with time, it has came and it is about to go. I have done many petty things during this year. Things I’ll never repeat electronically. Things I regret immensely. But through those things, I’ve learned many lessons.

I’ve learned to not let my emotions control my physical actions. I’ve learned that the feelings that I may be feeling at any moment in time will pass. That those feelings are telling me something, something I need to tune into and learn from. I’ve learned that my mood is much better with positivity instead of my normal pessimistic negative inclinations.

I’ve had a lot of darkness enter my life this year. The loss of a person I thought I would die with, the loss of my best friend and then the loss of my stepbrother. Dealing with a parent that seemed to only care about her own interests and not of her children’s, the list goes on and on. That darkness consumed me for a while, feeding the side of me that doesn’t care.

When I don’t care, all bets are off. Breaking laws? Whatever. Jail or prison? I could use a change of scenery. Use your imagination to think of the path that can lead me down. It’s very dark, very twisted and a place where light doesn’t exist.

That care however? That’s what makes me, me in many ways. That care is why I would buy a friend a futon because her ex took her couch. That care is why I always listen to others, even if their complaints are about me. That care is why my compassion for others is never ending. That care is why I ran a business not based on how much I could make, but focused on how many people I could help. That care is why helping people is a core value of mine, regardless of my own personal benefit.

Through a lot of soul searching, journaling, therapy and other things I have been able to see how much that care brings a genuine smile on my face.

Bye bye petty! I had fun with you while you were around, but from here on out I don’t have room for you and what you do to me in my life.

New Patterns New Life

I’ve learned many lessons this year, and due to me being a stubborn fool I always learn them the hard way.

The combination of the loss of my relationship and associated grief caused me go to what is normally my safe space, using all of my energy to find anyone to replace that feeling. This summer I got that out of my system and was able to take a hard look at myself and see just how toxic that was. Not just to me, but to those I encountered as well.

Therapy has been extremely helpful at looking within myself, finding out the causes of these behaviors in my life and more importantly how to change them for the better. I don’t see myself ending therapy for quite some time. Most of the time I enter therapy to “fix” a problem, but my mindset has changed, and my life has changed. I’m not out to fix a problem, but rather to pivot how I react to adversary, how I react to those situations that isn’t 100% agreeable with my wants. Like many, I am a creature of habit and look to examples of my childhood as the answer to such situations.

Unfortunately in many cases I was never presented with the right examples as a child. I was given every example of what not to do, what not to be. Some of those examples seemed to have snuck in there though, to the detriment of so much and many in my life.

With almost all of my personal relationships, whether they be friendships or romantic entanglements, I’ve never been the kind of person who enjoyed or respected boundaries. I’m 100% in or not in at all. I may not release my deepest and darkest secrets to a person, but they will know all of me, heart and soul.

I’m finding those boundaries to be in some ways as exciting as they are fulfilling. It shows that I respect the other person, and in turn it shows the same respect for me. It gives me time to reflect on interactions, and think of what I did right, what I could do better, and in some cases what I did wrong. This also provides the energy and time to still focus on myself instead of reverting to the toxic behavior of throwing my entire self into another, which has been only a detriment to me in the past.

We all live in our own timeline, and for most of my life I have compared it to others. Sometimes that comparison has fueled toxic behaviors. I now finally feel free to be me and merely exist as I wish, as I want. This is something that usually fills me with anxiety and loneliness, but now it provides me with a feeling of peace and self security that I’m not sure I’ve felt before.

Through writing this, I have discovered some more things about myself that do need to be improved and/or changed to further actualize these changes, but we are all works in progress. If we stop learning, if we stop advancing, don’t we stop experiencing what it is to be human?

Centering Emotions

A large theme in therapy has been on centering myself. Allowing myself to feel my emotions, and acknowledge what they are telling me without letting them control or guide me in directions that are traditionally negative.

Sadness is still my prevalent emotion. It brings a flood of warmness beginning in my chest, which rises up my body and exits through tears that flow like a stream. The tears in turn cause my mind to take me to the regrets, the mistakes and the missed opportunities of the past. The “what ifs” runneth over.

The weekend didn’t do me any favors in this department. Trying to repair the bridges I burned. Trying to pivot and just be a friend with my ex fiancee, for her to discard me because of the insecurities of another put me in that place. A pivot that I was embracing with open arms.

This too shall pass though. Just like any struggle in life, it will pass. Instead of holding these things with all of my might I am trying to feel them and let them pass through me as if they were a bolt of lightning. It’s been helpful, but nobody enjoys feeling such things over and over and over again. It’s a groundhog’s day of emotional torture.

It is taxing on the soul, and lately it’s been taxing on my body. I’ve been waking feeling as if I had been hit by a truck. Eating has been difficult, and most other tasks have been as well, including work.

I must look to what the future holds, and stop holding onto the past. I must stop thinking about lost loves and past lives, as they are and will forever be in the past. I’ll never be able to go back there, even if I wanted to. This does me no good emotionally. This does me no good in advancing myself and become a better version of me.