Dear 29-year-old Liz,
Hey, girl. It’s been quite some time we invited you over for a chat.
No, you didn’t do anything wrong, and your decisions were not made in vain no matter who tells you that they were. You didn’t do what you did just to say you did it, but because it was the thing that you needed to do, even if it feels like your world is crashing down on you.
Hi, this is 32-year-old Liz telling you that not all your decisions you make are bad. They may feel like they are bad because of what you are going through, but let me hold your hand while I tell you this: your feelings are not dangerous.
Lemme explain.
Right now, your chest feels heavy because you hate confrontation. You come from a long line of older versions that used to push everything you felt underneath the rug to forget about it, not realizing that after a while the pile under the rug is now noticeable and taking up space. You know what to do, you just don’t know how to do it, and because of that you feel like you are about to prove yourself right when you take the chance to defend your feelings.
Let me give you some context: You just turned 29, and for the most part everything is going well for you. You’re in the works to getting that full-time position you’ve been dreaming for, you feel confident in your fiery red hair that you have, and you finally feel like you have some normalcy in your life after recovering from surgery for the last two years. Sure, you’re starting to have negative feelings about things that you feel are not right, but for the sake of “keeping the peace”, you do what you do best and brush it off.
But, you are now finding yourself feeling resentful.
There will be one night that will be your last straw. You will finally speak up for yourself and defend your feelings because they are strong, they are heavy, and they deserve to be felt. But, things don’t go your way because you’ve allowed people to believe that your feelings did not matter. You’ve allowed people to continuously cross your boundaries without repercussions. So, expressing your feelings turn into this whole shit-show where you feel like you are jeopardizing the friendships; the ones you’ve create during the years you spent rediscovering yourself and giving yourself an identity.
On top of trying to defend your feelings, a day later you will also learn yet an even more valuable lesson: life isn’t a fairytale; in fact every area in your life can come crashing down without any warning whatsoever. You will think that you are able to confine in people that you trust during this time, but even then life questions that aspect your life, and now your business is being told without your permission and you are now completely exposed. Every feeling feels dangerous, every emotion feels urgent, and you found yourself in a space that you haven’t been at since you were 24 years old. You feel completely hopeless and out of control.
You’re going to cry in your boss’ office and tell her that you need to have an emergency therapy session with your therapist because you are inevitably in survival mode. You’ll heave in the break room, telling your therapist everything that happened in the time span of 72 hours. You’ll feel better having spoken to her about it, but now you know the hard part hasn’t even come yet.
29, you are going to be told things about yourself that are absolutely not true. You are not a bad person for feeling your feelings, you’re not selfish for having to place boundaries you never placed before, and you most definitely do not have the same mental health issues people try to label you having. Sure, you’re going to believe them in that very moment because these are the people that should know you best, but you will learn later in life that very tactic was used to control your feelings and to manipulate them to favor their case because that’s what their mental health issues do.
Are you confused yet? Girl, this will take years to unpack.
29, I sometimes think about you because, well yeah, that was a traumatizing time for us. It caught you off guard, you trusted the wrong people, and you thought you had everything under control. But sometimes, I think about you because there was one thing you did right in this scenario—
You defended yourself. You spoke up for yourself. You made a decision that was hard to make at the time and didn’t know whether or not it was the right one to make. Yet, you made the decision for yourself.
29, I admire that about you.
You see, 32-year-old Liz has been living with OCD for over a year. We’ve been struggling to accept that in reality, life is uncertain. Life isn’t how it is portrayed in the stories we write. We are learning to accept that it’s okay to not have the answers to everything, and not everything will go as planned no matter how much we try to prepare for them. We can’t prepare how people will react to the things we tell them. We can’t prepare for the direction things go when something disrupts the usual flow of things. We can’t possibly have control of every aspect of the situation, no matter how much we rehearse the scenarios in our head.
You didn’t know at the time that the rest of the year would be your best year yet. You will begin to fall in love with the things that were negatively associated with your trauma. You will go to events and concerts without the guilt of leaving people behind. You will start to fall in love with life again; not because things get easier (they get even harder after this pivotal point of you life), but because we are no longer apologizing for having feelings. You no longer allow external people to tell you what type of person you are, and you no longer hide your feelings even if OCD tells us that they are dangerous to feel.
29; you are human, and you made a very human decision in order to move forward with your life. Your willingness to honor yourself while also accepting the outcome in doing so makes you resilient, strong, and courageous. Yes, even 32 looks up to you whenever we are in fear of making a decision because of the uncertain outcome.
You did it, you got through it, and you have shown me that I am allowed to have feelings. I am allowed to express those feelings without them feeling like I have to earn the right to feel them. You don’t need anyone’s approval to feel your feelings either.
