Choosing Yourself.
Three stories in one day, one missing skill – from staying where it hurts down to the dinner plated beautifully for everyone but her.
Three stories in one day, all with the same missing skill: choosing yourself. The examples run from the heavy to the almost invisible – staying where it hurts out of fear of being alone; keeping up a friendship the body sounds sirens against, out of kindergarten loyalty; and the one that lands hardest because it's so small: dinner set out beautifully for everyone at the table, and thrown together any old way for yourself.
Her channel's name promises tenderness toward yourself, and this post is that name written out in full. The body's siren, the un-refusable favors, the self-care postponed to "somehow later": each is the same choice made against yourself, repeated until it looks like character. Amulet of Love walks the road back from exactly there – self-acceptance not as a reward to earn, but as the companion you take along. And her closing has the right amount of edge: if the people around you don't understand, change the people around you – don't bend for everyone.
Life is one, she reminds us, and it flies. Would you wish a life spent on everyone but yourself on your children? On yourself?
Why don't we know how to choose ourselves?
Today the day lined up so that I heard 3 different stories, and they were all about "choosing yourself" – or rather, about not knowing how.
When we were teenagers we loved drama, we lived on it, our world felt like a drama. Most likely it's the hormones swinging in puberty, and we get pulled into all those RIDES. Which is logical, on the whole.
But why, in adult life, when we've grown up, when there's no mum-or-dad figure telling us how to live, at the very moment we're our own masters – why don't we choose ourselves?
Living with someone we don't love? He hits, drinks, cheats, humiliates – and we don't leave. Fear of being alone? Is being alone really SO BAD that all of that has to be endured?
We keep in touch with people we don't want to talk to. For example: a friend of mine would get anxious whenever her childhood friend texted her. Her body was already sounding the siren, hinting that this person wasn't right for her. But they keep in touch – because they've known each other since kindergarten, or because she doesn't have many friends, or doesn't know how to say no. There are many versions of why not – and sadly, it's rare that we choose ourselves.
And how many times have you driven to a meeting or helped a friend when you really didn't want to? But you can't refuse: they'll think you're a bad person, a traitor to the friendship, an egoist and all the other name-calling.
Talking this over with a friend today, we remembered some moments that seem small but are actually very telling. You cook dinner: for your husband you set it out beautifully, for your daughter too – and for yourself, whatever, thrown together any old way. You clean the house all day, do this and that – and washing and tending yourself, well, somehow later.
And how many moments like that are there in a life, where we choose everything and everyone except ourselves? It made me so sad. Life is one, and as you've probably noticed, it flies very fast – and we spend the time on people we don't like, on things we don't want to do, on everything around us except ourselves. Would you wish a life like that on your children? On yourself?
Let's try choosing ourselves. And if the people around us don't understand – then it's time to change the people around us, not to bend for everyone )
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan