On Asking, “Why Me?”
Today started out well – I woke up on time, the weather outside is exactly how I like it, I am not feeling ill, and I felt content. I worked out, pushed myself and beat my previous record on the treadmill. I smiled and greeted many people, who smiled and greeted me back. I headed to work, marveling at the beautiful layers of clouds I could see in the distance, and thankful that I live in such a wonderous place.
I started my day optimistic and excited and pleasant, with a spring in my step.
Now, though, for some reason, I am brooding and irritated and angry and hopeless.
I’m caught in a trap of my mind, where I think about all the things I’ve ever done wrong, and all the reasons that I have to consider myself an awful person. I think about all the reasons that I feel hate and disgust at myself, and realize that this is my default set of emotions that always arise when I start to feel happy and content and excited. I think about how I’ve felt these feelings for as long as I can remember.
Then, I ask: “Why me?”
I know, in my heart of hearts, that these feelings are not my own. I know that these feelings are just the way I devised to protect myself when I was young.
When that continuous monologue in my mind starts berating and degrading and insulting me, I hear it and know it is false.
But, why can’t I get rid of it?
I know that these things I tell myself are not true: there is ample evidence that they are not true.
But, why is it so pervasive?
Why aren’t good thoughts and motivating thoughts and confidence-boosting thoughts my default set of thoughts?
Why do I feel these negative things about myself, to the point of sometimes just thinking that it would be easier if I didn’t exist anymore?
I have been on a journey for the past two years. I’ve been looking for myself – my TRUE self. Not this self that I cobbled together to survive; the self who cannot trust, cannot care too deeply, cannot let herself love with abandon… but that self I want to be, who I’m supposed to be.
Who do I want to be?
I want to be happy.
I want to feel love without feeling fear and pain and sadness.
I want peace.
I want hope.
I want to be Me.
So, “Why Me?”
Because, I’m the only one who can be Me.
I am this way because I need to learn how to be Me.
So, I will.