I am a habitual people-pleaser*. I learned from a young age that one of the ways to feel loved in this world was to be what people wanted you to be, so I learned to adapt. To smile along, go with what others wanted, and learn to like it. To put on an appropriate mask and make nice.
Fast-forward to 2019. By all outward measures, I am living a good live. I have a spouse, a house, an adorable monster cat, a respectable professional job, all that good stuff. And I am sobbing in the dark at night because I have no sense of self. I felt like I had no identity outside the masks that I put on to please others. I felt like I had no me - no self that existed when I was alone. I found an amazing counsellor, did hard work in therapy, and started to reconnect to a sense of self.
And then the pandemic happened. Living in survival mode pushed me back into that same place. All of my energy was going into surviving, I had no time to continue to cultivate that sense of self I had started to build. It crumbled, along with many other things.
But I still had the tools I had forged in counselling. And over the last two years I have very slowly been working on finding those pieces of me that had gotten buried under the expectations of others and the need to survive. I have realized some big truths that I had buried far away from my own sight to protect me. I have embraced some of my idiosyncrasies that I felt I had to ignore. I have sought joy and things that make me happy on a soul-deep level. I have allowed myself to be imperfect and real without holding shame for those imperfections.
Each fragment of myself I find gets stitched into the complicated whole of me. And they don't all fit well together. I love the contradictions within me. I love the places where I don't make sense. I love finding the things about myself that are difficult and make me hard to live with. I love embracing the softness - of my body, and of my heart. I will not feel shame for being sensitive to this world and for struggling to live in a world full of pain. I also love embracing my sharp edges - my stubbornness, my temper that can flare up when I feel safe with someone, my sometimes shady thoughts.
I am nowhere near done finding who I am. I think that this is part of the journey of life - the constant finding (and refining) of who we really are under all the junk the world places on us.
And as I start to figure out who I really am on the inside, I start to take that shape on the outside too. This week I got another step closer, connecting back to my flora namesake through a new tattoo. This beautiful piece is courtesy of Ky Blum, also known as goblinsinkpot, and I am absolutely in love with it. I cannot wait to see it once it is healed. And yes, I already have ideas in mind for what to add to my skin next...
*In reality, I have a deeply embedded 'faun' trauma response but that's not the point of this post, so we will stick with 'people-pleaser'
