Why is moving on so hard?

Wasn't I able to feel real joy before him? It's driving me crazy is that I now find it so hard to feel joy or to be proud of myself. He took away my confidence, my joy, my inner happiness. I feel like he broke my spirit. Like most people now, I posted videos on TikTok. Someone that use to know me follows me. Just from my video he made a comment that I sound broken recently. While I haven't seen him in many years, and I don't think highly of his opinion, it made me wonder if it's true. What even brings me joy anymore. I know that with every put down, every hit, it went out of me. It also doesn't help where I live. Living with my family is really stopping my journey to get better. Picking on people is very funny to them. For me, it's very hard. It's also is very hard for my daughter, which only brings me more stress. I feel like any time that I think I am doing well something happens to knock me down again.

The feeling like no one is proud of me. That nothing that I do matters to anyone. Isn't that what we all want? To feel like you have someone that is proud of you, that supports you, that is there for you. My daughter is only 7, so she doesn't really count yet. I realize that I need to be proud of myself, that my confidence needs to come from within. It use to, before, before he beat it out of me. Now it's so hard to get it back. Hard to see through the stress to see how great I am, to see what makes me really happy. I want to build a life, and be a person, that my daughter will grow up and be super proud of me. Proud to say that I am her mom, to feel lucky. I need to focus on myself, and forget everyone else.

Especially when I left, I read a lot about trauma. So I know that there can be a lot of unexpected responses to trauma. The thing is that I thought that I had moved past it, that I was doing better. Maybe I tricked myself, or maybe it was a delayed response. Though now somehow I feel overwhelmed thinking about trying to get through it.

I need to be proud of myself, proud of what I have made it through so far. Proud of where I am regardless of my challenges. Though truly if I want to be proud of myself I need to make my life into something that makes me happy.

So what type of life do I want to have? What do I really want? That is the question that I need to answer. I feel like as long as I am striving towards building that life, then I will be able to find joy again. The way I want my life to look like:

• I want to be always trying new things
• I want to cook and bake regularly
• I want to be physically fit, and feel great within my body
• I want to be open to relationships with other people, like making new friends at the gym
• I want to be surrounded with pink and girly things
• I want to be the type of girl that is extremely organized with seasonal decorations for every season
• I want to travel often

I am hoping that this list sets me with a direction to build the life that I want. Now I just need to make it happen, someway somehow. The main thing for me now is that I need to stay focused on these goals.

-T