Entitled to be... unhappy?

Oh dear.

I've come to a point where I am facing one of the most inconvenient facts of my intrinsic nature.

I can't accept that I am allowed to have happiness!

I chase happiness away. Quite literally.

"It cannot be!" "It's not meant to be!" "It will never work!" "It's not possible!" "It's all going to work out wrong!" "Not possible! Not possible! Not possible".

I say and do those things a LOT! And I'm only just now hearing myself say them.

I SAY I believe that "Anything is possible". I've said it here in this blog a few times past. I say it but my actions and my own speech belies my statement.

I don't believe "Anything is possible" at all! In fact I believe that "Anything *I* WANT is not possible...everything else is entirely possible for others more worthy than me"

seems to me that I am "happiest" when I know I'm not getting what I want...or what I think I want. I seem to harbour a taste for personal misery and I generally get what I want all to often in that regard.

how screwed is that you reckon? How many other people in this world deny, deny, deny their own desires simply because they were consistently told as children "You are not allowed to have that".

"It is WRONG to want things for yourself".

"It's WRONG to have strong desires ...that's just selfishness"

"It's WRONG to be happy because it hurts others who are not".

"It's WRONG to be your SELF".

"It's WRONG to want to be better off than you are".

"It's WRONG to be greedy and want the best in life".

"It's WRONG TO HAVE ALL THAT!"

Those sentences were never actually spoken to me...but somewhere, somehow in my 46.5 years, I came to adopt them as inevitable truths in my deepest psyche.

As a kid growing up isolated on the farm, being bullied at our tiny primary school, having emotionally distant parents - I retreated inside my head. I was a lonely kid despite having younger siblings but I was lonely even so. I developed the most extraordinary fantasy life inside my head. I dreamed big dreams - big epic romantic dreams of everything that could be possible in my life. I was a star in my own dreams. I was feted and fawned upon by beautiful people. I was a heroine of great skill and prowess. I was the goddess of my dreams. I fought for and won the hearts of beautiful young men who fell at my feet in adoration and lust. I found the buried treasure in the bottoms of lost ships. I was the star and the most beautiful and popular girl in the world.

In my reality, I read voraciously all manner of books - most of them romantic epic tomes of dashing young men and spirited young women who could not be without each other no matter how much they avoided the "truth" of it. I absorbed the fantastic possibility of romance into my character as if it were plasma in my blood, then became a romantic hemophiliac straight away - "bloodletting" seemed so much more dramatic and "fun" to do! It was obvious that my real life world as a child and my fantasy world as a child would never measure together equally and I seem to have developed a habit of believing that solitary, bullied, lonely little girl is never going to have her dreams come true at all...even the realistic ones.

Hence this incredibly soul-destroying confusion and heart-wrenching ache I get now, when I believe I will not ever find - or that I am allowed to find - what it is I'm looking for.

Right now, I am very confused about what it is in life I actually want. Apart from finding work, there is this whole life stretching out before me as a newly single woman and I so do not even know who I really am or if I even like what that person is!

See my language above?

"Cannot" "Will not" "Don't" "Not, Not, Not".

These are my words that I tell myself in everything I think.

"Not possible"

"NOT NOT NOT!"

WHY?

Why do I believe so emphatically in what is NOT possible and make it my truth?

Why must I do this to myself? Why is it that I can't seem to believe in what IS? Right here, right now...finding the positive joy in this moment?

Because my "now" has always seemed so ....bloody disappointing! There is no drama in the now of my being...just life as it is. It's boring; it's mundane. There's no colour or sparkle to it? I'm a unemployed newly separated woman with two teenagers living on a shoe-string budget and relying on the good graces of her family and friends to keep her sustained for the duration! That is my current LIFE!

There's no romance, no love, no living. It's just an empty shell of regrets and heart-break.

Alone.

What kind of "alone"? I am sure my friends would say "You are NOT alone Michelle..you have US". Which would be true of course. And I have my kids and I have my birth family still, my siblings and my parents. And I have my church family I guess... but I still feel alone and I don't know why.

I seem to be always alone...even when surrounded by the most extraordinary love one could hope for and I never see it for what it is because I simply ...am not able to ...or perhaps willing...to see it. My habit of 46 years is to be in total denial of my "now" and see exactly what I don't have instead of what I do.

This must change of course.

Somehow, I have to re-shape a life-times worth of thinking into something more coherent and possible...realistic if you will.

My whole brain just rushed with "HOW? IT'S NOT POSSIBLE" immediately I wrote that line. Am I too scared to be positive? To be genuinely content with the Now of my life?

I have no fucking idea!

All I know is that I am slightly screwed in the head and I am letting life pass me by because I believe I deserve so much less than what I already have.

I don't want to fight anymore with my inner child. That little girl inside of me is a very lost soul in need of a great deal of compassion and love. The grown up Michelle must stop ignoring her and nurture her and help her feel her worth. Its time.

God grant me the SERENITY to love and appreciate the things (and people) given me in the here and now;
To allow the things (and people) I want to come to me freely
To let go of my silly fantasies and illusionary fixations
and give me the grace to have gratitude and joy simply because...it's there already.