We all have our story. Pages and pages of stuff we travel with. Baggage we hold on to. Each of us with our own piteous little pieces of our past. Your father walked out when you were little or your boyfriend cheated on you once upon a time. You never got that promotion you always thought you deserved or your school marks didn’t reflect how hard you worked. You were not chosen for the A team so gave up sport. That guy never asked you out and then dated your best friend. He left you. She left you. Little traumas. Notches in the bark of our souls that make us who we are. We are filled to the brim with them. Overflowing with them. You can’t get to adulthood without bags of the stuff. We carry it around and blame our messy lives on it.
I am guilty. A father who was indifferent to me at best and drunk a lot of the time. A shabby english comprehensive that, were it not for the daily register, would not have noticed I was there. My father’s job that made us move every few years resulting in no roots anywhere, no sense of belonging, no real home. These are just aspects of my childhood. I would not dare to tread publicly into my teen years let alone all the diatribe that followed. I would not dare to go on pulling out the relentless garbage of my life and laying it out and telling you ‘see….that’s why’. That’s why I can’t. That’s why I’m too scared. I couldn’t possibly because….
Here I am in my very adult years trying to lay down that heavy load of history. The mountainous pile of the former me that I have dragged around year after year. The relentless hurt that the last few years delivered in breathtaking quantities. I am trying, in tiny daily steps, to release any co-dependency on my past. To believe that ‘I can’ despite a life of believing that ‘I can’t’.
It’s not easy. We are comfortable in our co-dependency. It’s a beautiful excuse. It’s a beautiful excuse to stay in our sweet co-dependent state. It’s a reason to not. A reason to not write that book or start that business or take up that sport. It’s a reason to not be easy in that relationship. It’s a reason to not open our hearts to all the incredible possibilities.
As safe and comfortable as this co-dependency is you are not all that has been. It’s done. It happened but now is now. It’s not who you are in this moment. Place all those bags of stuff gently down and move on. Let your heart gently open to all the promise and wonder of what life can offer.
You are not what happened to you.
There is so much to come.
nikivanvelden 