My Serenity Prayer

I’ve been doing a lot of internal work lately. Truly internal. It’s hard. I’m not going to lie. But…what I’ve come to realize…FINALLY…is that MY feelings are MY problem. Not that people don’t care. They do. But my feelings aren’t something anyone else has any control over…only I do. And I have to feel them and process them enough to decide what to do with them…change them if they’re wrong, accept them if they’re not…but they’re still mine.

See…the thing is this. None of us want to feel like people think they need to fix us. But…there isn’t a way to share the scary, sad, dark feelings…and expect people to not want to fix them. Either because they feel attacked (as is sometimes the case with these things)…or because they don’t want us to hurt…or a mixture of both because they feel attacked because they can’t fix it. But…some feelings can’t be fixed. Nor do any of us need to be fixed. We want to be understood…not fixed…very different.

Especially when there is trauma involved. Those feelings…those triggers…it’s not fair to expect them to go away….it’s also not fair for us to expect people who care about us to not want them to go away.

But people also feel shut out when you don’t talk to them about your feelings. It’s this catch 22.

The reality is…AND THIS ISN’T A BAD THING…people want to feel loved and trusted enough that you’ll talk to them…but they also REALLY want you to be ok so that everything you talk to them about is sunshine and roses. Not because they don’t care about the sadness, but because they desperately want you to not feel it.

So…you hole up more…you start trying to handle things internally….and you hurt people more by trying not to hurt them.

And it’s so scary and confusing because…the reality is this…it’s not that people don’t want you to talk about feelings…it’s that it’s too much for them. It’s not fair to them. And, instead of hurting alone, you start to hurt them with you. Whether you keep it in or let it out…because you can’t just choose not to feel. You can’t just turn every feeling off. There’s no humanity switch (although I’ve wished there was ever since I was addicted to Vampire Diaries. Lol)

So…the feelings will come…and maybe they’re too much…but imagine how very much they are to me, too.

I’m trying. I’m trying to heal. I’m trying to be the strong person everyone wants me to be.

I just have to learn..

God, grant me the serenity to accept the feelings I cannot change, the courage to change the feelings I can, and the wisdom to make those decisions internally.