Let’s just say that my only new year’s resolution didn’t necessarily go as planned.
The day is December 31st, 2022; New Year’s Eve. As someone that carries some trauma associated with the holiday, I never try to make a big deal out of it. I try to keep myself busy; on this particular NYE, I went to the beauty supply store and purchased a packet of bleach to try the whole trendy “bleached, no eyebrow” eyebrow look on my already non-existent eyebrows. As the hours counted down towards midnight, I told myself I wasn’t going to set any resolutions since I really didn’t believe in them. The only thing I wanted out of 2023 was for the year to be relatively peaceful and quiet after a very loud and very busy 2022.
Hi, my name is Liz and I think this year has been anything but peaceful or quiet for me.
2023 continues my journey of embracing the person I am growing into and practicing how to assert myself in areas such as self-worth, self-respect, and in self-confidence. I knew that new things were destined to come my way professionally as I was told early on in the year that my office was in the process of potentially getting me a full time position! Entering 2023, I feel like I was going through possibly one of the highest points in my life–
until I was at my lowest.
As we passed the halfway point into the year (which is crazy considering it feels like the year just started), I reflect back on the last 7 months of 2023 and how it’s molded me into the person I am today and even where I’m going in the future.
In 2023, most (if not all) of my interpersonal relationships were tested. I entered 2023 feeling secure and surrounded by these relationships for them to not be here anymore or not what they were before. These challenges were faced with a lot of questions in mind: am I letting people speak about my feelings and my life without really knowing the entire story? Am I going to let people fuck me up to the point where it hinders my growth as a person? Why am I feeling the way that I feel if I already know what I should do about it? I would never say that the people I once had in my life (past or present) never had my best interest in mind, but the difference was that I never even had my own best interest in mind, so why would the people around me do? I realized that after stepping back from a lot of these relationships to reflect and take a look at it as an outsider looking in: a lot of the relationships you had during the time where you were a people-pleaser and accommodated to everyone’s feelings besides yours will start to look different once you change those qualities about yourself.
Removing those qualities came with a lot of self-doubt and contemplating whether or not I was doing the right thing. There’s a fine line between being assertive and just being a mean person overall and most of the time, you’re never going to get an unanimous answer of what it truly is. You may think you’re being assertive and putting your foot down in situations you never put your foot down for when really, you’re not accounting what everyone else may be feeling and are only thinking for yourself (and vice versa, of course).
A lot of my time alone this year was spent on feeling guilty of practicing assertiveness with the relationships in my life. I spent a lot of time fighting the urge to revert back to old habits, to let people influence my decision making and to let people step all over me without acknowledging my feelings. I was afraid that I would not be seen anymore if I allowed myself to revert, but I felt like I was stuck in this place where I had the angel and devil on my shoulders:
“You are working towards a better you,” the angel began to say. “Practicing these techniques and methods means you are not going to get them right the first couple of times. Be gentle with yourself; you know how much you are truly worth.”
“But you’re constantly doing it wrong,” the devil counteracted. “Like look at yourself, Liz; you’re back to when you had no identity and no friends and like, seriously; if it feels like how it was before it’s most likely because it’s exactly how it was before.”
Not even the amount of therapy I have gotten to this point can help me rewire this part of my brain to finally stand up and say that it is what it is and that the next group of people I allow into my life will be introduced to an already assertive and outspoken Liz.
But that’s a whole different part of the story I am not ready to write yet.
In the meantime, I am learning how to be gentle with myself and give myself the same love and support I would give out to other people. I am at a place where I am learning that these changes do not happen overnight and that patience is truly the key. Half of the work has already happened; I’ve practiced these techniques and enforced them on whatever was dimming my light. The other half of the work is still yet to be determined, and who’s to say the work gets any easier just because of the practice?
When is it going to be about perfecting it?
Perfecting techniques so that when these insecurities and untamed emotions subside, I already know what has to be done. Perfecting the alignment of my heart to my mind and being on the same page with them so that I can come out of these situations the best that I can be. Rome wasn’t built overnight, and I know I have more than the rest of this year to unlearn beliefs and ideologies that are harmful to my mental well-being.
These next 5 or so months, I don’t see myself having this “come of Jesus” moment and discover the true meaning and purpose of life. I don’t even see a lot of peace along the way, and that’s not me being pessimistic or a Debbie Downer; it’s me having lived a lot of life and experienced how not everything that shines is gold. I know that anything in life can happen, and no matter how prepared I am for what’s to come or how it comes, I am still learning and growing into the person I want to become–
–and there’s simply no deadline for when that happens.
I want these next 5 months of 2023 to be a time where I am experiencing all of the things I was once too scared to experience. I want to continue having the difficult conversations I used to avoid completely when I was younger. I want to be my authentic self to others and still remind them I have feelings and emotions just like theirs. I want to push myself to try new things, learn new methods and techniques and perfecting the ones I am already being taught.
Most importantly, I want to enter my 30’s in 2024 alive.
Not just physically alive, but I want to experience my 30’s just how everyone describes them to be; “a time in your life where you do not care what people say or think about you because you have a pretty good understanding of who you are.” If there’s one thing I felt consistently in my 20’s, it’s the feeling of being mentally exhausted. Shit; I’m currently mentally exhausted. I’m exhausted of worrying about what people portray me as, I’m exhausted of trying to prove myself to people who already have an opinion about me. I’m exhausted of allowing external beings influence my internal feelings. I’m exhausted wondering if I am worthy of healthy, true love in the form of romantic partners, platonic friends, and anything that I feel like I don’t deserve. I am exhausted of having other people’s best interest in mind and never having my own. I so desperately try to keep lovers and friends in my life, yet easily let go of the lover and friend within myself.
I am so proud of how far I’ve become as a person. I am proud that I am relearning who I am and what are the things that define me as an unique being in this world (and yes, that includes my red flags and toxic traits). I am proud that I can look back to the Liz I was 10 years ago and truly say that I made it through the shit that I thought was going to take me down.
I just hope that 2033 Liz sees the same in the 2023 me, knowing I’ve overcome everything I’m going through now. There’s no doubt in my mind that she will.
Letters From Liz. 