Without Permission I plan to take you on my journey of self-care and self-actualization. I plan to provide you with the struggle from the middle experience, my experience. I plan to be transparent as I am more private than public with the things I choose to let people know. I plan to have you feeling as emotional as I should have been growing up. I plan to have you acknowledging your own discomfort and disgust, capabilities and creativity. Without Permission, I’m challenging you to identify those feelings and share them with me. Without Permission, I’m allowing myself to be unapologetically me.
I struggle with my identity and since starting counseling in December ‘17, I’ve been a one hell of a ride to get to Reaching & Achieving Individuality (ha, see what I did there). I never thought of sharing my story because for the longest I never thought I had a story. The story of “struggle”, the story of being homeless as child or being molested at a young age; I didn’t fit into neither one of those stories, so I thought. My story begins here, at the age of 24. It begins with me identifying my character traits, my decision making, etc. I call this part of the story “Reflecting”.
September 2018, three weeks after my 24th birthday is when I discovered I actually had a story to tell. I have been through so much that I’ve never even deemed as struggle or equated to being a part of “my story”. Well, that’s because I lived in a fantasy world. I lived in a world that despite the wrong, nobody knew and I suppressed my thoughts and feelings. I never confronted issues, I never told the bad things that happened. I very rarely remember stories from my childhood because of how much I suppressed myself.
Now, I won’t get into the nitty gritty just yet, but I will let you in on a secret. Nobody in my family knows any of these things I’ve gone through because I chose not to tell because I chose not to be alone. I chose other people over myself growing up in multiple aspects. I chose to protect other people over protecting myself. Although I chose those things I still ended up being the one thing I thought I’d never be, ALONE.
In this stage of Reflecting, I have been able to identify why I have had failed situationships, why I’m struggling with what makes me happy, and more. In this stage, I fell into depression and the only thing keeping me going was my siblings and FAB 5. Depression, something that so many joke about, something that contrary to my actions I struggle with. Where did my depression come from? How did I know I was depressed? What did it look like? The onset of depression was me realizing that I’m alone. The one thing I never wanted is what I have been/is experiencing. I’m alone because I chose to suppress who I am, what I felt. But was that really it? My depression is because I’m alone, but not because I suppressed who I was. I suppressed who I was because I wanted to be what others wanted me to be. This is when I lost myself, I lost my true identity. I lost myself at the age of 11 because I chose to protect my abuser in fear of being alone so I suppressed the molestation I experienced hoping that nothing would change. Well, I changed and I wouldn’t say for the best. Don’t get caught up in the incident because The incident doesn’t define me, the choice I made of not telling does. The “Why” of me not telling is the important takeaway from here. I chose to be alone by not telling which is the total opposite of what I wanted to happen in the first place.
Just like that I’ve opened the gates to my life and to my freedom by releasing something that has stayed inside for the last 13 years. Not a soul knew I was molested until 2018 and even then that ONLY soul was my therapist. Now, it wasn’t a family member, so RELAX. But, yes I have a story, and no I don’t want sympathy. I want to be unapologetically me, Without Permission.