Metamorphosis

METAMORPHOSIS

After much deliberation, I have finally decided that I no longer want her in my life! I resolve not to listen to her anymore – not to let her downright nasty, insulting and hurtful words permeate my being and reduce me feeling inferior, time and time again. If I am to be a renewed and refreshed version of myself, then I have no choice in the matter. This is the year when I distance myself from her tiresome and apathetic negative attitude and all the limiting beliefs, she has imposed upon me. She led me to truly believe that I’m not good enough and that I can’t ever be happy or successful because I’m unworthy and undeserving. My inner growth stunted by rustiness of her toxic chains that have held me down for way too much of my existence on this earthly plain. Well, I’m happy to report that this is the year when I finally say goodbye, au reviour and bloody good riddens – I am ready to let her go and not before time!

You may wonder, why I deliberated so much if she has had such a toxic effect on me? Well, it’s not an easy task letting her go as she has been with me pretty much my whole life. It’s like kicking a habit that you know doesn’t benefit your highest good - not a simple feat by any means and one that takes copious amounts of inner strength and faith to complete. Even harder to do when she’s always in my space thirsty like a blood-sucking vampire syphoning my energy at every opportunity in order to keep my vibration at a consistent low.

We met during my childhood when I was experiencing the trauma of my parents’ messy divorce, which had such a detrimental effect on my sense of self and belonging. It was a key time in my life and there she was and there she has remained for 40 long and torturous years. Looking back now and reflecting, (cue hindsight) I can see that she wasn’t very good for my self-esteem and confidence, but she was all I had. I trusted her and listened to everything she told me because I thought she had my best interests at heart. How wrong I was! It’s only now, as I face another year with her, that I realise how manipulative she was and had always been.

When I wanted to do something that my heart desired, she would talk me out of it , like when I wanted to audition for the school musical…

But there will be better singers applying for the roles…

You’ll only embarrass yourself,

You can’t even sing!

and her all-time, tried and tested favourite…

You’re not good enough

And when I brought it up again because the fire in my belly had been ignited, she would be relentless in stopping me from stepping out of my comfort zone, repeating over and over until I agreed that I wouldn’t audition (just to keep the peace.)

Perhaps she was right, I had considered, maybe she was just keeping me safe by not letting me make a fool of myself.

Anyway, that was just a snippet of how she changed my path of purpose and eradicated my passions. Over time, she seemed to do this whenever I showed interest in doing something she didn’t think I could do, which was pretty much anything that might have the capacity to make me happy. As time went by, I learned to agree with her and seldom pushed myself in a bid to stay in my warm, comfortable (and downright dark and miserable) cocoon, preventing the magic of metamorphosis from evolving my soul.

It’s exhausting thinking back to all the ways she controlled and put me down, to the point that I didn’t even want to socialise because she would constantly watch people and list all the ways in which they were more clever / beautiful / popular / fun than me. Subsequently, I spent lots of time just me and her which is obviously what she wanted, especially as, when we were alone, she would remind me about all the things in life I had failed at and force me to reflect on it over and over, with added commentary just for effect:

Why are you even here?

No one even likes you

Your hair looks a mess

You’ve put on so much weight

and so on. My head, battered like freshly fried fish on a Friday evening, and the more she brought me down the further I sank like I was being devoured by quicksand with no other direction to go but downwards. I felt like I couldn’t escape her – even if I wanted to – believe me, I had tried many times, but something would always trigger her, especially when I made a mistake. Always poised and ready to attack, like a viper protecting its young.

She attended the same courses as me and followed the same life journey, continuing to bring me down. There was no escaping her clutches - I felt trapped. When things went wrong, she called me an idiot. When I cried, she told me to get a grip! She stopped me going out socially, telling me (just before I was about to leave the house) that I looked fat and ugly. Or she would make a disgusted face at all the outfits I tried on to the point that pent up tears stung my eyes. And if we did go out, she would spike my anxiety by planting seeds of toxicity in my head…

What if you walk in the pub and fall over? Everyone will laugh at you!

Everyone will probably stare at you because you look so fat in that dress.

Are you seriously going out like that?!

I know that people reading this will be confused, wondering why I stayed with her for so long, but she’s the only person who knew me inside out and without her, I felt I would lose my identity. The co-dependency was real to the point that, if she wasn’t there, I would get anxious that something was wrong. Besides, there was a part of me that, albeit crazy, believed she was doing this to protect me because she had grinded me down that much. I didn’t have energy left to challenge her opinions anymore, so accepted them and piece by piece I lost myself, slipping under the radar into a tie dye mixture of depression and anxiety, drowning over and over. Then discovering the drugs that provided an escape – for a while anyway. I could take my mind to another dimension and one that didn’t include her. It was sweet bliss but tinged with a bitterness as it made the return to reality so much worse to the point I had to stop.

Slowly and surely though, I came to realise the detrimental effect she was having on my mental health and even harder to swallow was the fact that I had allowed her to behave this way towards me for so long. I was her enabler and only I had the power to break this vicious cycle of toxic tar that had been poured and set eagerly over my entire existence.

Not to mention the impact it was having on my all areas of my life including sleep – self-confessed and double-time champion insomniac at your service! Sleep eluded me and many nights we spent together going over the wrong turns I’d taken in life and how I’d wasted opportunities to be better and become something of value. Many nights lying on the sofa listening to the birds tweeting to announce the dawn of a new day. Eyes red raw and puffy with under eye bags as black as panda eyes, holding onto my coffee as I headed into work, she reminded me how I looked like utter shit and how it was no wonder that I had been single so long.

Her abuse was relentless – it never stopped. The cracks started to show, and I could feel myself falling deeper into a huge, grey, heavy cloud of depression as I struggled to fight against it as my hope and faith slowly faded. I tried to block out what she was saying but she dominated my brain space. I was so extremely exhausted - my tank on red, as it had been for some time now. I knew I couldn’t go like this for much longer.

A conversation with my work friend Ginny changed everything. I opened up to her about how I was feeling one Sunday when she had kindly popped round as she was worried about me. I wasn’t one to share my feelings, but something about her put me at ease and I knew I needed help. As a fellow spiritual soul, she spoke wisely with whispered words that slipped delicately off her tongue, her tone so soft and reassuring.

“You need to heal – you have allowed her to take control of your mind, and this has gone on for years and only YOU can put a stop to it.”

“No wonder you’re so exhausted!”

“When was the last time you rested or even slept through the night?”

… radio silence

“ermmmmmmm”, I pondered, unable to recall.

“Right’, she said, ‘let’s make a plan to help you start to heal” ….and so it began.

Ginny, an angel sent to save my shattered soul. I surrendered to her ideas because I knew that they came from a place of love. She was one of those people who make everyone feel like a someone. Her kind and caring nature radiated from every pore of her being touching all that were blessed enough to meet her. Short and petite, with soft porcelain skin, her wavy, bright auburn hair reminded me of fiery flames dancing hypnotically in unison.

But, of course, she didn’t like her and tried to convince me that Ginny didn’t like me really and was probably laughing about me behind my back. I put it down to her being jealous of my relationship with Ginny and tried to drown out her negativity the best I could.

Ginny introduced me to the world of mindset magic, journaling, and meditation. She helped me create a daily routine that I had to do even if I was feeling crappy (which was most of the time thanks to ‘you know who’). Of course, I was sceptical at first but something about the warmth of her energy drew me in like the inviting heat from the fiery flames of an open log fire on a bitterly cold, winters evening. So, I dug deep into the depths of my soul to extract what remaining scraps of hope, strength, and willingness I had left and pushed myself to follow what she had helped me create. If it was to give me half of the positivity, she exuded then that would be enough!

The meditation was tricky at first because she would start talking and distracting me with whatever she could think of to gain control and prevent me from going within, to achieve some resemblance of inner peace. Thankfully, I found some guided meditations which helped as the soothing music drowned her out and, after lots of practise, it became easier. In fact, the more I meditated the less negative she was, and she didn’t put me down as often. Don’t get me wrong – she was still there, but for the first time in forever, I had sporadic moments of pure relaxation which had been completely alien to me. I realised that I had spent my entire life running on an empty tank and now, as I pushed further and further, I felt that tank filling back up and it felt incredible!

I found the journaling utterly therapeutic because, instead of all these toxic thoughts zigzagging erratically through my brain, repeatedly crashing into each other like dodgems on a loop, I was able to transfer them onto paper like releasing the pressure of an over-inflated tyre. As my pen connected with the paper, I felt the rapturous release and exhaled extatically as each word was unloaded and my mind slowly cleared. It helped me make sense of what I was feeling, and the reflection put things into positive perspective, despite her telling me otherwise.

Months of practising positivity had begun to change my mindset and I felt it shift deep within my solar plexus. I began to shed the thick, stubborn onion layers of what I had carried for so long, weighing me down and keeping my spirit subdued. I found I was able to listen to what she said but to counteract it by flip-reversing it into a positive. For example,

Her: You shouldn’t wear that skirt – it’s far too short and shows your thick thighs.

Me: I love this skirt and feel confident in it and don’t care anymore what people think.

Her: But what if you fail?

Me: I won’t know unless I try

And so, the battle continued but I was growing stronger, and it was a fantastic feeling.

She didn’t like it, of course, and fought against me. She didn’t like that the little old me, the caterpillar, encased in the cocoon was preparing to finally emerge and been seen in all her glorious, gorgeous glory. She felt threatened, and although my new-found strength helped me silence her, she persisted hoping to knock me off my pedestal of positivity. She still exhausted me, and I knew this was all part of my journey as Ginny had said I needed to distance myself from negativity. It’s just that, as she had been a part of my life for so long, I couldn’t just drop her like a hot potato and every now and then I slipped and caught myself doubting if I could even. I was, however, slowly but surely, phasing her out.

The last straw, however, occurred as we sat together on New Year’s Eve. I’d always despised this time of year, mainly because she always got me to reflect on the year and not the positives. She would always ground me down and make me question why I was even here and what my purpose was. This New Year’s Eve was no different and my defences were down due to an argument I’d had with my Mum the few days before which gave depression the green light to pop up its ugly head. She had decided we would drink to drown out how I was feeling which of course that only added fuel to the fire. Her negative energy enveloped me and merged with the effects of the red wine I’d consumed. It was as if I was falling deeper and deeper into depraved depths of darkness with no life jacket.

I can’t even remember or tell you what happened next but her relentless ridicule and reminiscing dissolved my spirit and I found myself at rock bottom. Sitting on my bathroom floor with the razor in my hand, my mind as scrambled as whisked eggs, as I was poised to do what she told me…

Go on…or are you too weak to even do this?

Make sure you do it properly.

Distracted, I felt a softness rub against my leg. Blurry eyed, I realised my cat, Amber, had come to see what was going on. She continued to purr rhythmically and rub her head lovingly on my arms. Like a jolt of lightening, it penetrated my system as I awoke to the reality of my present and, as I stroked her long, velvety fur, I felt my breathing slow down feeling a lightness consume my being and melt away the hopelessness I had felt literally 3 minutes previous.

What was I doing?! I hadn’t come this far to just come this far. It was her or me who had to go and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me wasn’t going to be me!

Not sure how long I sat on that bathroom floor stroking Amber, but eventually I headed to bed and grabbed my journal in an attempt to configure my drunken brain and write down my blessings and as I wrote each thankful statement, I realised that I had so many more positives than she had led me to believe. And as I wrote each line, she remained quiet for the first time in forever.

That’s when I wrote my last journal entry of that year with ten minutes left until the dongs…

This is the last day that I will allow myself to be controlled by her.

I let go of her – the one who has held me back. The one who has stopped me from evolving to be all that I can.

I will no longer listen to the negativity because I AM worthy, and I AM good enough!!

This is the year I put myself first. I will no longer listen to her. I break free from the shackles that she kept me in for so long, because I deserve to be happy.

• This year I will be kinder to myself. I will continue to meditate to allow my mind to rest.

• I will continue to journal to release my thoughts.

• I will continue my journey towards a positive and healthy mindset.

• I will make myself a priority and rest when I need and treat myself with all the things that make me feel uplifted and refreshed:

-Spend more time relaxing and recharging.

-Take myself out to dinner.

-Buy myself flowers.

-Spend more time in nature.

-Accept and love myself for who I am.

It’s never too late to create a brand-new beginning – especially if you need to get out of your own way! x

And so, as my feet hit the floor on that brand new, sweet-smelling, freshly cut first morning of the new year, I turned on some uplifting tunes and danced like no one was watching. This was the first day of the new me and this was going to be the most epic year ever. I had shed the final and most stubborn layer of the onion that had kept me prisoner for so long. I was taking back control!

For the first time ever, I heard only the hypnotic beats of the music as my mind, free and renewed, had released the toxic grip she’d had on me. And the music sounded sweeter than I’d ever heard before as the pitch, dynamics and tempo combined magically and raised my vibration, I said my final goodbye.

Farewell my fractured inner child…YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME!