When I was still in elementary school, I was feeling “ill” a lot. I say “ill” because I wasn’t really ill. I had some kind of pain in my stomach and I felt sick, but there was no explanation for it. After a while my mum even took me to the therapist to find out what’s wrong with her daughter. Unfortunately, her daughter (me) didn’t want to open up at all – mostly due to the fact that she didn’t know what was going on either. When the years passed by, my mum figured it out on her own: Apparently I was just overwhelmed by all those social links and different vibes going on within the groups of kids. Now looking back, I know she was right: I remember trying to analyze everything that was going on. I didn’t understand why some children were so mean to other kids, why the boys were teasing exactly those girls who they liked, why some girls were best friends forever and hated some other girls and most of all – why were some kids as a group bullying other kids as individuals?! While I was shy in big groups, I wasn’t shy at all with my friends at home – because I knew everyone and I knew how the social bonds between us worked. Also regarding teachers and other adults I was always very respectful and really shy. Obviously, big groups and social networks were pure stress for me when I was young. I was just too sensitive regarding all those vibes between people, regarding all these different social levels, everything that was said but even more everything left unsaid!
As the years went by and I became a teenager, things started to change. Actually, I became a little trouble-maker and I wasn’t shy at all anymore. Somehow I started doing the opposite of how I acted in the first 10 years of my life: Instead of being quiet, I was loud and cheeky – In classes towards teachers, as well as in groups. I think somehow I just turned off my sensors and my head. While I was thinking too much about what was going on before, I wasn’t thinking anymore before saying or doing something. I guess I just decided not to be on the outside anymore, feeling what people were feeling and guessing what people were thinking. Instead, I started speaking out loud what was going on. I didn’t only show what I was feeling and what I was thinking, many times I said things everyone was thinking but didn’t dare to do so.
Of course this way to handle social structures and all ‘unsaid’things also had its problems: I was always in the middle of everything and I was loud – I got a lot of attention, which I liked. But until I got 16, I was obviously also really rude sometimes. Because I had put all these walls around me, sometimes it took a while until I realized how rude and loud I was acting sometimes. Sometimes it was cool when I said something no one else would say, but sometimes it was just really insensitive. I had to learn the appropriate way of being honest. In these years, I was either not thinking at all or thinking too much. On the one hand I was doing a lot of bullshit, just to see what happened and how it would make me feel. I still need to feel where my limits are until I believe they exist.
Looking back, I can understand that during my very early childhood my head started working and interpreting what was happening around me, while other kids were just feeling and doing without thinking about it. During my teenager years, my heart and my head were trying to find each other. It didn’t go well and I was having really bad depressions because I didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t know myself at all. My instincts still needed to be ‘trained’. While I was realizing there is a ‘ME’ in my childhood, during those years I was trying to find ‘MYSELF’. I was doing a lot of bullshit and the problem was not the ‘not-thinking’ part. The problem was when I was thinking, I wasn’t honest to myself. I couldn’t confess to myself when I did something wrong – this was a disaster, because I was doing a lot wrong. Thus, I was lying to my all the time. What really helped was moving out, as soon as I got 18 years old. In a new city, with new people around me, I had a fresh start. Instead of being the shy, quiet small girl or the cheeky, loud girl, I tried to be something in the middle. And I guess, somehow, it worked.
The years between my 18th and 22nd birthday are hard to explain and I think I won’t find the right words. But this only shows how much was happening inside of me – I was finding myself and learning to trust my instincts. There was also a lot happening in my life though, I was still trying to find my limits in every way. I had wrong friends, I had bad guys, I got bullied badly, but I also fell in love and I finally found real friends in the end. A lot of what happened was my own fault as I was still thinking after doing. But it must be said that WHEN I was thinking afterwards, I was starting to evaluate what I did and how it made me and others feel. I was honest. It was hard, especially in the beginning. But somehow it felt like ‘cleaning up’ my inside like a room full of rubbish. In the beginning I was scared, because when I was honest I felt like I could drown in all the lies waiting for me. But I realized that I could do it in small steps, starting with those small things like just apologizing instead of finding millions of explanations why I did something. And with every step and every lie which I revealed, it became easier. It took years of course, but while my inside became cleaner and tidy, I got more secure.
First I didn’t look away anymore. I didn’t lie to myself anymore, so I found myself – the pleasant as well as the unpleasant aspects. I realized if this is the material I have to deal with in this life, I can either run from it and tell myself lies about it or I can just look myself in the eye and get it over with. Thank god I chose the second option. I even found out that bad habits can be changed. It’s hard work, but it is doable. Also, I found out if something goes wrong and I admit to myself why it happened, chances are good I won’t do it a second (or at least not a third) time.
Surprise, surprise, all these things helped. The reason why I am secure around friends and strangers now, is that they can’t find much inside me, which I don’t know about. I know what is in ‘my room’ and it is way cleaner now. Of course it is still a mess (everyone knows I am not a tidy person), but I know what is going on in my room 😉 .
It is also the reason why I can’t handle being around dishonest people anymore. I can’t trust people who can’t trust themselves – if they lie to themselves, they will lie to me too. When I started to recognize those people with their mental rooms full of rubbish they pretend not to know about (who lie to themselves), I tried to help them and reveal their lies. NOT A GOOD IDEA! They got really mean and I was their target, they said things to me which I couldn’t forget for days…Actually it is amazing! Everytime I tried to show those people some ‘rubbish’ in their room, they drew the attention to my room: They put rubbish in my room and pretended it was there before. Yeah, okay, I will put this into other words: They told me I was lying to myself about something in such a way, that I started to doubt myself again. Those people were surprisingly good in persuading me there were lies I didn’t know about. It always threw me back again. Now I know it helped. Because everytime after a fight like this, it took me weeks but I was honest to myself and I found out there was no ‘rubbish’ I didn’t know about. This is how I learnt to trust my own instincts more than other people.
So until I got 24 years old, little by little I spent less time with those friends who couldn’t be truly themselves. Maybe it is sad, but it made me way more happy in the end. Nowadays, when a friend tells me to ‘clean up my room’, I am happy about it. These friends show my when I try to lie to myself and in the same way I can show them, when they lie to themselves. This makes life so much easier. And I think this is real friendship. Because I know they want the best for me and they know I want the best for them.
I still have problems not to be too understanding with my friends as I always try to understand their side and feel what they feel. I still have to learn to also keep my own perspective and respect my own feelings. But I am sure I will get their at some point and life is always a balancing act.
All these years were a struggle. But it was worth it. I found myself a little.
Only to realize that I had to lose myself again… to find others.
gypsy messenger 