0xc0Bed358c1cB69ADF5684533E0935bE08107765bI regret not putting my oxygen mask on first...
For most of my life, I never gave myself the opportunity to develop a real sense of self. I was too busy trying eagerly and desperately to please others. I wore that eagerness like a personality, but really, it was a mask...
A mask that even hid me from myself.
I thought I was doing the right thing by being selfless, helpful, needed,...but in truth, I was getting further and further from who I was meant to be. I ignored what I valued most. I never took the time to ask myself what I truly needed. Instead, I poured my energy into solving everyone else’s problems… while quietly burying my own.
I had my own pain...both physical and metaphysical...but I sidelined the physical and pushed the metaphysical beneath the surface. Not just hidden behind the mask anymore…
Hidden within, under my skin.
Over the years, that buried part of me didn’t stay quiet. It tried to resurface. Not through healing, but through outbursts. Like gasoline floating on water, it was always there, just waiting for the spark. Certain situations were like striking a match. I didn’t always know why I was angry or reactive...but I see now that the root cause of so many of my regrets was that I was suffocating. My true self was fighting to breathe...
And in that fight, others got burned.
Now that I’ve finally started putting the oxygen mask on...choosing to care for myself first...
I can breathe. Though the damage isn't undone. There’s still gasoline in my blood. And even though I can care for others now, something in me resists caring for myself. It doesn’t feel right. Part of me believes I should still suffer. That I deserve the hurt...for the years of neglect... the years I betrayed myself and passed that pain on to others.
Sometimes, I still feel the urge to light a match and throw it on the gasoline...lash out and burn it all down...blaming the world. In the midst of this mess, I know my truth... I’m not angry at the world.
I’m angry at me. Because I was the one who let myself down... that regret lingers in the spaces between who I could have been and who I became.