Worth

 

Hello and thank you for reading my Little Personal Essay Thing:

Let me set the stage in a cryptic way. I am 44. I am in therapy again. I really thought I was done with whatever it is this is where no matter how hard I try or want something, how much of myself I give to something, or to someone, no matter how hard I try to believe, it falls apart in spectacular ways that seem to me, a bit much. Outside of normal. Extra. 

I want what I have always wanted: love, family, belonging, safety, peace, joy, acceptance, belonging - oh, I’ve said that twice. I think that is probably because wow, wow do I ever want that. I know Brene Brown says something about belonging, vs. fitting in, vs. whatever it is that I have going on now, and I know that when it comes to me, and maybe a lot of us  - just maybe - there’s this logical part that gets it. I get what happened. I get why it happened. I get what went wrong. I get what I could be doing to be better. But I am not sure how to connect this logical thinking part with the part in my body that is just basically always hurting, crying, wanting, missing, aching, hoping, feeling, wishing. 

I hear a lot about my value, and my worth, and how I do not have these things for myself. I look around my life and think well, I value me. I value how I can  write, I value how much I love to read, I value my body and am happy with how I look, I like who I am as a person who is relatively simple and who always wants to be good - not in a praise me way, not in a scared to be bad way, but in a I have a heart that wants to give and a spirit that wants to share and be happy. 

So, why am I here? Why do I feel so sad. So unhappy. So depressed. So flat out tired of well, I will say it - myself. Tired of myself. I did not get what I wanted, or maybe, just maybe please, there is a detour, there is just a time out, there is just this hope that maybe this is part of the journey and I will get what I wanted - what I want. But this meantime, in-between time, is flat out hands down painful. 

My therapist said I am restless and bored because I am not finding whatever it is to fill myself, to make myself happy, that I put all of my happiness into this thing that I love and want, wanted, want, so badly, that I do not know how to be okay with just being me. I guess? I have been mostly on my own, alone, and “being my own best friend” my entire life. I have always had friends and people who love me, I mean, I am friendly, I am interesting, I want to be around people, but - my heart I suppose, she tries and tries and gets to attached to someone else’s heart and that is that. I do not want or need anything else but having that feeling. 

And then that feeling is usually, either piece by piece or all at once, taken from me. My heart is ripped out. I feel literally shut out, isolated, alone, in the dark, absolutely terrified. And I am learning the world for all of this - the words, are anxious attachment, are abandonment, and fear of abandonment, and are self-abandonment. Ouch. Mean. Ugh. Yuck. 

I get it. I started it. Well, I did not start it but I anticipated it. It is one of those childhood things. Again, so logical, so smart, I could be a therapist by now - I totally grasp that because I was abandoned in a myriad of ways my entire childhood, I am both afraid of it now, and I preempt it and ensure that it happens in a self-fulfilling prophecy way because I self-abandon in advance and do so gladly. That is also, from what I gather, called codependency. Neat! 

I want so much, I love so much, I try so much. And again, and again, and again, I am here. What level of confession, what level of soul baring, what level of Oprah self help book extravaganza do I have to obtain to be free of this thing that ruins things? What part of make myself happy isn’t sticking   - or the whole be a whole person all on my own, I feel like I am these things - again, right?? I mean in so many ways I have no choice to be, but - again, I really do like who I am. I ….do not like the story of most of my life but I feel like that was not exactly on me. 

Is that part of it? Is there a therapist on the plane? In the meantime, I have promised myself to write. I remember that making me feel like I was doing something, like I was belonging to something, like I mattered to people. Healing is probably the biggest part of life, so, here I go again. Thank you for listening. I’ll be back. 

Sincerely,

Jenny Justice