Breaking Free of the Circle

I need to boldly move forward into the future and remove the negative weight of memories and experiences and events that have happened to me.

If we both love one another enough, we will find a way to make everything we have work. It will require sacrifices from both of us. And we need to recognize, acknowledge, and thank the other for those sacrifices.

One cannot create positive change from a negative mindset. However, a part of me feels like by letting go of things is a way of me lying to myself about what has happened and giving more of myself after having been robbed of security and respect. However, in order to move forward, I have to stop victimizing myself and take back control by injecting positivity into my life.

I'm trying to take control over my emotions and feelings to move forward in a positive manner. I"m trying to heal myself to then heal us. It's hard to move forward when I have a couple of mis-steps which cause stress or confusion for my partner, which in turn causes resentment and anger on their part. Which in turn causes resentment in me towards them for having the balls to feel resentful of me after harmful acts they have performed against and to me.

Which means - if one of us doesn't break the cycle, the circle continues. And just like with tires on a wheel, over time, the cycle will wear down the tread (the emotions). So I have to be that person. I am a strong woman who is capable of many things; just have to swallow some pride and feelings of unfairness on this one. But I can do it.

Turning the corner

In my 20's, travel was my way of looking forward to the next adventure and creating a sense of enlightenment that I needed at that stage of my life.

My 30's are showing me that I need to turn the efforts I took to embrace the world in my 20's into embracing myself in my 30's.

I am exploring myself. I need to explore myself. Life is too short to have lived for others and an ideal of what I think I want instead of what I truly want.

Wandering Mind

My entire life I have lived in my mind's concept of others' projections of who I should be. A bookworm, living in another person's imagination while growing up. A blossoming butterfly in college, living other people's perceptions of me. A newly hatched butterfly in early adulthood, tentatively trying on different personas.

In my newly minted 30's, I am exploring my grit, purpose, motivations and reconnecting with my passions. Testing my confidence. Pushing comfort levels of what others perceive me to be, and what I want others to think of me. I won't be so pompous as to claim I care not what others think of me. Because that would be a flat out lie.

I am no longer blaming others' best attempts to do what they thought best for me. I am taking accountability for allowing myself to feel a victim instead of a conqueror. Recognizing I lost that beautifully complex, overly emotional, explorative, vibrant little girl I once was to the visions others painted for me to inhabit.

I'm intense. I'm overly aware of emotions - both my own and others. Doesn't mean I can put a definition to or understand the emotions many times. But I feel. Intensely.

I find it strange myself, but as a young teenager, I identified I was an old soul in a young body. My great-grandmother, Grinny, was my example of what it means to give your all for someone or something you love. She is the old soul I have been aspiring to be the majority of my life.

I've been underestimated and underrepresented a good portion of my life. As a result, I've developed the drive to, "play bigger than I look [Carly Lloyd]". I'm quite frankly tired of having to prove myself because I have proven to myself that I am more capable than I ever imagined even in my wildest dreams.

Because I am so intense, I feel my emotions are a burden to others. I also feel that letting others, even those closest to me, see my many emotions would be too much. It would make me too vulnerable. I have overwhelmed others when I expose a lot. Upon reflecting, I don't believe I knew how to be deliberate in the way in which I shared my vulnerabilities and emotions. The best way to describe it would be that I would have emotional diarrhea all over them. Who wouldn't be traumatized and overwhelmed by that?!

Now that I have recognized my fault in how I shared myself with those closest to me, I can now enhance our relationships by controlling how I share my true self with them. I am taking the personal accountability I should for that.