Rewriting Your Life, Step One
day 2
Day 2 of my 30 Day Writer’s Block Challenge
Current Day:*
I sit in the quiet, sunlit room where the windows showcase each season. I stare at the giant old tree from across the street, its branches full of bright green buds that will open one by one and then all at once. Year after year, starting new, reinventing itself each spring.
And I struggle to write what I want my life to look like. There was always a block. Where I didn’t let myself imagine. And when asked, I froze. But now I know what I want to write… I just can’t bring myself to physically write it yet.
It has taken me decades to realize exactly where my thoughts are getting caught up. Where I am holding myself back because of a mindset that took hold a long time ago.
In a nutshell, it feels wrong to want more for my life because either it’s selfish and I don’t deserve it, or it’s never gonna happen anyway so “don’t even think about it”.
At the moment I feel it would be counter-productive to go into detail about the above sentence. To give specific instances and examples may just reinforce the messed-up mindset that I am trying to clean up. So maybe those stories will be typed another day.
It’s like pulling the mask off of the bad-guy in Scooby-Do.
…
Mindsets taught through maltreatment as a child, and from the way I let my ex treat me. Only now can I recognize the years of gaslighting for what they were. I see their insidious words and patterns. The way they told me exactly who I was and what I was worth.
(I thought it was normal?)
But I am most blown-away at how I subconsciously accepted that behavior again…(likely out of familiarity and not knowing anything different) from the man I married. Now, a year out of a 24 year marriage, and I have realized many things.
Not gonna lie… this is hard to write. Even harder to read out-loud as I proofread…. But I am ashamed of myself because I had no idea that every moment of my life was affected by their mindsets.
I can’t wrap my head around the mind f*ck… because I never thought I was *that woman*. I thought I was aware, strong — and I am in some ways — but not so much in others.
Some things can only been seen from afar. It’s not exactly hindsight… I think that time passes and the brain-fog clears some. Now that I have positive examples in my life as well as time away from the source, I can finally see the gaslighting for what it was.
But now I can rewrite my life.
;
*The above entry is in response to my previously unpublished journal entry below.
June 2020 You sit next to me quietly. I watch you look out the window, thinking. How do you know all that you do? When you turn to me, you ask me to imagine what I want my life to look like. What my perfect day is. Where am I living? What am I doing?
And I try to think of an answer that is both genuine and pleasing but the more I think, the more I realize that there probably isn’t one quite like that. There is an assortment of words that I want to pour from within me, but there is a lump in my throat and my tongue is tied. So, I just focus on breathing while you wait more patiently than anyone before.
And I think about my answers and I think about why I have no answers. And I think about what I am “hiding from myself” — as you aptly put it. Because you are right, I am scared to put my dreams down on paper. If I see them there, in black and white they become concrete and absolutely REAL… then what? Then I will see just how much of a Tall Order they are — and how can I ever trust myself to fulfill them all of my own?
“Had I not created my whole world. I would certainly have died in other people’s.” — Anais Nin
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