This year was quite a year. November is here and rolling past quickly. I can’t help think about where my path was leading this time last year. The goals I had set and where I saw myself seem like someone else’s vision. So much happened this year and even though there have been some incredible experiences and wonderful growth I still feel the lows right below the surface. As I struggle daily for the motivation to get through my to do list, to practice movement, and to heal my emotional scars I feel those lows creep in reminding me of failures I experienced. They bubble up in shower when I think about what’s missing, they paralyze me from completing the smallest tasks, they prevent me from enjoying all the things that bring me joy. I remind myself of all that I have and all the incredible friends and family that have supported me this year but learning to love yourself again is a very hard journey. I know I am not alone, and I know that if you continue to read you have felt the same way at some point or maybe you are struggling with it right now.
At the beginning of the year, I thought I knew where my life was heading. I quickly realized this wasn’t my life at all. I was not living MY life girl. That life, that job, belonged to someone else, and in the following weeks after I left that day feeling relieved but grieving, I heard it did belong to someone else, or maybe 2 someone else’s. I still think about that experience and how I let a leader diminish who I was and what I am capable of. I don’t blame anyone, but I take a lot of the accountability because it is my life and was my decision to walk that path. I don’t give enough gratitude to the universe for pushing me off that path and onto a new one. She, the universe, clearly heard me when I desperately begged for an answer just a week in on the old path. She said – live your life girl – and this ain’t it! Recovering from a misstep professionally takes way more time than you think. I now have a safe haven where I feel I can speak up, influence growth, and solve problems with the skillsets I have been building on over the years. There are hard days but at the end of those days I still feel a sense of purpose and it is truly my life I am living.
Feeling like you are living someone else’s life negatively or positively is not an unknown concept. Feeling like an imposter is something only you can control but it may be helped along by someone’s words, actions or inactions. Not feeling good enough in aspects of my life can cause my creativity to implode. Hell, my creativity exploded, dried up and disappeared completely right after my last conversation with a man I thought I loved, weeks after we broke up. He told me I was “a shit writer” that I “would never be a great novelist” and that my “audience was made up of only desperate women”. I will pause to let you read that again … I let him make me think I wasn’t good enough to do the one thing that brings me joy over all other things. Just like earlier in the year I let someone make me doubt my strengths. I let him seep in and plant this seed that froze what I think I am meant to do. If my readers or followers are desperate women, GREAT! I’m desperate! I am desperate to understand why we don’t think we deserve more. I am desperate to hear your stories. I am desperate to make you feel that you are not alone. I am desperate to remind you that you control your life, and you deserve to desperately live that life girl. I am desperate to support you when that job is killing your spirit. I am desperate to speak for someone who can’t speak up about an abusive, gaslighting, narcissistic alcoholic. This man accused me of using our relationship for content for my last post, but I didn’t, I shared an experience so I could heal and so could know what we had was real. To be honest, I did use this last conversation as content for this post. I just seems fair to let him know when he is content. After he shared his feedback on my blog, I expressed I didn’t want to be a novelist. He thought that was dumb and called me a “dumb bitch” and when that didn’t land on me the way he thought, he rephrased it and called me a dumb C U Next Tuesday. I thanked him and realized, again, this was not my person, this was not my life. My heart is still a little broken when I think of the good times when he wasn’t drunkenly insulting me. I share this story because as we dated, he slowly brought me back to a place that I have tried for so long to get out of. I could feel myself falling back into the unworthiness and hate for myself. I didn’t value who I was or who I wanted to be, and I only focused on the distraction of the good times. I wasn’t living my life girl. I didn’t even recognize myself. It isn’t his fault I reverted to old behaviors. I can’t put blame on him for my weaknesses, he has too many of his own to take the blame for mine.
After months of healing from my bad job decision, and my bad boyfriend decision and maybe a few bad red wine breakdowns I still question if I am good enough. I distracted myself over the summer with travel, my best friends baby news, going brunette, saying no, saying yes to a boy toy, and rearranging my living room 4 times. After all that I started feeling myself coming back slowly. I started having a little fun and a lot of laughs as Fall approached. The universe, she’s so shady, put a few tests in my way but reminded me of the reasons I have this blog. Just as I started feeling my creativity come back, I met a new friend – thank you universe. It was like we were fated to meet that night at the right time, she was going through something similar, and we bonded over a bottle or two making up new catch phrases like “I’m not your girl” and planning our next big move. My rocks, who keep me pretty, continue to remind me of why I am JMFP and never questioned my dark mood while I embraced my bitch phase and held my hand while I shed tears – well she was polishing my nails, so she had to hold my hand either way. My friends have stuck by me when I just couldn’t – couldn’t respond to text or make plans or leave the house. That is true love when someone sees you struggling and gives you the time and space to heal on your own terms but is never too far away when you need them.
This year showed me the love of my family will never change and that every day there is a reason to celebrate. I watched my niece end one chapter to start another and shared giggles with her after her first welcome margarita! I watched my nephew smile as he outperformed his personal records from last year and I finally got comfortable with his deep voice. I watched my youngest nephew live his life even if it meant breaking a few rules, he keeps us on our toes, and I love is fearless nature and creative mind. As my family celebrated little big wins of their own, I never doubted their love and support for who I am.
Through all the lows and a few highs this year. I finally feel like I can get back to living my life girl. I love sharing my struggles in this blog because I know you might have them too. I know that I should share more wins to continue the balance. There is a story to be told and I want to share those with you whether you are desperate like me or not. Every new friend I meet, boy I kiss, old friend rekindled there is a story. I’m not an expert and I don’t have the answers, but I do know no matter what I am going through I will live my life girl, even when I’m not on the right path. I will live my life sad, happy, desperate, drunk, bitchy, but never dumb, if that’s what it takes until I can heal and remember the love, I have for myself. So live your life girl just the way you want, and if you’re living a life that isn’t yours, you better call the universe and ask her to nudge you over to the right path.
live your life girl 