I'm screaming, "I'M GOING TO FALL!" With a small jerk of a half inch rope and not putting much faith into the carabiner that I'm hooked in, along with the harness that is attached to my body. I feel it. I'm having a heart attack. The surge of endorphins and adrenaline pumping into my veins, my heart feeling like it is literally going to explode and I'm going to die.
Where do I begin? February of 2018 is where everything started to change.
Some will, some won't, so what? Who's next?
Every landscape carries its own energy.
When one embarks on the journey of self-discovery, one really has no idea what they are really getting themselves into. What starts off as just a gentle curiosity about who and what we truly are turns into a crazy, life-changing journey that will make you see yourself and your life in a completely different way.
As a young person i would have said that LOVE was what one felt toward their Mother, Father, and Siblings, but I came from a pretty dysfunctional family and I wouldn't wish that love on anyone. It took me seven years away from my family before I could tell my partner that I loved them, because every time the word was about to come out of my mouth I thought of my father, whom I'd been told to parrot the words "I love you" to, even though I'd never heard them from him. I had to relearn the world LOVE under a non-familial context. I had to "learn" how to love again. After those seven years of relearning, I looked up definitions of the word: "A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person," YES, if that was love, then I sincerely felt it for my then partner of seven years. How about "a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend."? Well, I loved my mother, and though Jay and I didn't really get along very well at the time, I was fond of my brother, but again that "family love" got stuck in my throat when it came to my dad. I finally came to realize that, at that time in my life, "love takes time", and I was learning that I had to separate the idea of "familial love" and "non familial love". Once I made that distinction I could vocalize that I loved the person that I'd decided to share my life's journey with, my partner, and over time I realized that I could love other people too. That there were different kinds of love. I found out that the more I loved people, the more those old definitions of love fell away
We get blindsided, overwhelmed, and lost.
In today’s society, we sometimes look at others for external validation. Whether that validation is about our outfit of the day, Instagram posts, who we date, or bigger life decisions such as moving cities or quitting our jobs. When I first started therapy, I never noticed how often I was looking for outside validation from someone else that I was on the right “path” in my life. Once I started to really look within and understand my self-sabotaging behaviors, I started questioning my thoughts, and one phrase I repeated to myself often: “How is someone else supposed to know that I’m doing the right thing for me? The only person that can validate that I’m on the right path is myself.” I still catch myself with self-doubting thoughts, but for a really long time, I was at a point in my life where I couldn’t trust myself to make decisions, big or small.
If you switch on the news today, all you are bound to see is negativity. If the news were to be believed, it could be easily perceived that our world is about to end. The unfortunate reality is that it isn’t only the news that breeds negativity, but people and social media as well. All of this negativity leads to a destructive mindset and affects the quality of our life.
