Life is an Illusion if I am not Growing

My old friend perfectionism came back over the weekend. I beat myself up when I don't live up to my expectations... And I think others like the world and my instagram followers look down on me too. Like I have no right to live because I am not producing. Who I expect myself to be I don't know. How can I expect something of myself when I don't know how to be it? When I don't know myself I cannot expect myself to be happy and on top of my game. I only know what I know now, and arrogance makes me think I know more. I am not living presently that way. 

I have a lot of pain to work through. I jumped way ahead of myself when I read Zara Phillips' book called Mother Me. In usual fashion, I pounced on the book the day I got it, reading half the night and the next day it was finished. It made me feel so inadequate in how I deal with my pain, because she is so on top of her's in it. The way she knows herself and filled in so many memories from the past about how she was feeling at stages in life really made me envious and feel my own lack of consciousness. I feel so hazy about the past ten years or so of my life, like it was so unclear. How was I really feeling in it, or was I just not truly living. I hate how my mind justifies everything with logic so I escape the actual emotion I felt.

Such as, she describes her tumultuous period where she was a people pleaser and unable to love herself in her late teens and early 20s, and how she drank and was addicted... I don't have that as clearly. I know I was addicted and a people pleaser even early in my marriage, but the events and how I got help for myself and actually changed is hazy. I wish I could express it. Also, she remembers much about her childhood and paints herself so clearly, and I have only a handful of memories. I guess pain doesn't yet let me access all of it. My earlieat memory is of being 3 or so and sucking my thumb and feeling angry and sad. Who I truly was for the first 14 years of my life is so fragmented. I know I was always juat watching and not really feeling real. And then the anger hits every so often, at how my mother minimized me and tried to force me into clothes and actions I did not want. I envy how Zara was able to have compassion for her mothers. I have close to none. They stole my identity too young and so I am protecting myself by not feeling love for them, as Zara mentioned she had done with her mothers. Dreams sometimes remind me of my true self, such as today when I had one of searching for something in a store and feeling all eyes on me... Feeling embarrassed of us for being so weird, with my adoptive family falling apart and trying to save them... That reflects me well. I guess my body is not prepared to have consciousness of my full situation, and I live in half-truth states. It shows that when we sleep our body does indeed process emotions of our lives and integrates it, which is why sleep is so important. I know I make sure to get my sleep these days and let myself sleep in when I did not get enough over the night. But I digress again.

I was thinking how I love my life the way it is because the pain I experience makes me have a purpose in it. When I have a goal I feel driven, and that goal is to find myself. I feel so lucky for where I am at now. In knowing my truth. I know people don't always care, and the harsh truth is most times they actually don't. So I need to keep my head afloat and hold on to my self. Otherwise I get swept away in the tide. G-d has shown me again and again that nobody is there for me unless I am there for myself. Even this blog and my instagram prove it. I can preach but nobody is interested and most find it disparaging- as I see from the numbers going down. No matter, I am living for myself and need to keep going and writing my inspirations. I need validation, but unfortunately my truth is so complex and interwoven that majority of people don't care for it. I see sometimes how special I am and feel elated, but most times I feel terribly unseen. It is all reflected from feeling invisible inside. My good deeds go to exile when I forget them. I feel I have done incredibly wicked things in my past and present lives that cause my truth to be so hard to believe in. It's all a mess. And it makes sense based on the background I come from, dna-wise. Jewish secular narcissistic unfeeling people, Irish cheating scandalous and broken family dynamics, Wales narcissism. I don't know if it is even made for my lifetime to sort it all out. I am so screwed up. And that is okay, I am coming to see, because I can only do with what I have. G-d understands that the way we are raised is practically impossible to come near perfection. My idea of satisfaction in life comes from loving and being there for myself and my immediate family at this point. I keep wanting to save the world and spread all about G-d and truth, but it needs to be on the inside first. Otherwise I am just exploiting myself and everyone.

I keep brushing with my true purpose and losing it again. Unconditional love and feeling reflected, even in my imperfections. I tried going to the mall today to do what I enjoy- shop. But I lost all enjoyment in buying things I don't need and feeling totally out of place with all these people. I ended up depressed and sitting on a bench while I let my daughter escape and feel empowered by running loose. I felt awful for stifling her in the carrier for an hour. She woke up and looked all morning awfully distant and pensive. Thoughts explode in my mind.

I wandered around the mall as I talked to Zara Phillips on messenger. I explained my situation to her and was delighted in her response. She validated me and I felt human. I told her my feelings about her book and how it made me wake up to my unresolved issues around my mothers and adoptive family anger. I feel good that I am truthful and recognize fake-ness and try to run from it. I recognize that I can be egotistical but know it is from never being seen. I feel my old friend abandonment because of how none of the past relationships with women I tried to build held up. Maybe I am too needy for them. Zara says adoption is a hard situation to navigate and I know I need more support. Therapy would be good. 

About my relationship with the husband. I realized we are so enmeshed because both need to feel accepted. It causes us to lose ourselves and fulfilling our true wills. Any time he is around I am only thinking about his needs and them get automatically resentful. Feel childish. And I see that he has nowhere to place my true feelings of pain, because he does not allow his own to shine. Both rushing to feed the other that it is like 2 halves together. I know that I am meant to be fulfilled in marriage but I am not. I blame him but it is me too. I need space. I am sad that we are both not happy. He thinks I am every thing but the truth is I am unconfident and only treading water by the information I live off- adoption grief info and learning tools to accept myself. All day every day. The minute I ignore my feelings I feel drowned. The thing is, I need this negative harshness to be expressed, and we are both so used to finding "the positive" in every situation in order not to get other people pissed off. But it is not real, because pain is there still. It is the truth.