The return… My life experience from 2013 until now

I don’t even know how I suddenly remembered this site that I used for a brief period in my life, 4-5-6 years ago, but I’m so glad I found it again!
I was 13-14-15 years old. I stopped using it back then because it changed to Prosebox and somehow it just didn’t feel the same. Often this site and the notes I got were the reason I was able to put things in perspective more quickly. I was already very mature for my age, because of my personal history. Now that I’ve read all of my entries again I feel really embarrased for my writing skills in English back then lol. On the other hand, I’m quite amazed with the amount of mature thoughts I already had back then and the strong urge I already had for growing and becoming the person I was always meant to be. I don’t know whether I’ll share all of my life with you again, but for the sake of time I’d like to inform the people who followed me how I’m doing now. One special person in particular, who always left me these amazingly soothing anonymous notes.

To begin with, every one of you was right about one thing back then: my first boyfriend was the hottest guy in class and I never understood what that meant for me. I was always placing myself at the bottom of every ranking of who is the prettiest, nicest, smartest, funniest… (which I still believe is something I had to go through: normal teenage self-doubt) but now that I’m a 20 year old young woman who has learnt the practice of self-love, I must say that I deserved much more than my first boyfriend ever was. Our relationship was genuine for a while, it was like we had an invisible tiny string attached that always led us back to one another, but he misused my loyalty and neverending love for him because he was too troubled himself to truly commit to someone (and immature, way less self-conscious and emotionally evolved). There were other periods in my life, like when I was 15-16 years old, that we got back together for a while (for all of my teenage years he kept being that special person to me, I can’t explain why because he was always treating me poorly, but I just genuinely loved him). Because he was always a pretty weak person, that kind of person that lets himself talk into things by his even more immature friends, that didn’t work out either. Turns out drugs became more important than the relationship and he didn’t want to seek help or let me help him. I decided, in my last year of high school, that I was going to enjoy what was left of the ride by further exploring myself, educating myself at school (at that time I slowly grew out of the bad puberty phase and really started to enjoy school) and having fun with my girlfriends at party’s (and getting to know other people, including other boys). I wanted to know if I would truly forever love him and if no one else could replace that feeling. Turns out, I did keep on loving him for more than a year, but I also did explore myself, educate myself and befriended people in a way that would not work if we stayed together. He simply was toxic to me: he kept on having periods where he acted as if I wasn’t important to him at all (even though I knew that wasn’t the case), later there were strong periods of passion and love and connection, but when the drugs entered the story it was ruined. I did not want to go down that road with him. He was addicted: using in the morning, in the evening and later also at school, failing all his classes and not caring at all. He liked the negative attention he received from me, my concern and my late night talks trying to talk him out of drugs. Finally I gave up. I already had a friend before him, who was addicted to alcohol and didn’t WANT any help but liked the negative attention. I tried to help him up to the point where he blamed me for certain things, shutting me out and saying mean things just to hurt my feelings. And I would not fall for that again with my first boyfriend. So I enjoyed my last year of high school, living my life, still having personal struggles (because my strong self-consciousness and overthinking would always result in me being worried or insecure) and graduating.

When i re-read my old entries, I talk a lot about creativity and being able to express yourself. I wanted to do that through painting, drawing, fashion and music (but also writing). Turns out I wasn’t very good at painting or drawing so that quickly went off the list. But I did evolve into a, what my family and friends call, ‘fashionista’. I just decided, after a couple years of extreme self-doubt, that I wouldn’t be able to be who I really am if I wouldn’t finally start to wear everything I wanted to. And I ultimately received a lot of compliments, and most of all, I felt more like myself. I never dress for others, only because I feel like I can express myself through my clothes and feel confident if I wear the right combination. Call me superficial, if you know me, you know that’s not the case.

So moving on with my life story: there I was, 18 years old and graduated. Leaving my first boyfriend (and somewhere in between, second but very insignificant boyfriend whom I didn’t truly love) behind. I decided to go study in a city on the other side of the country, because I REALLY wanted to be a speech-language therapist. I always thought I was gonna study Psychology, until I got to the point where I had to choose what I was gonna do for the rest of my life. Yes, I wanted to do a job where I could help people out, but listening to very deep, personal problems every day while I still struggled with myself suddenly didn’t seem like the best idea. I did always have a thing for languages and communication (writing and talking always were my thing), and helping people out by helping them talk, communicate, learn… seemed something that was destined for me. Plus in Belgium, Psychology is already overcrowded with students for the last couple of years. Suddenly everyone, even people who didn’t study Human Sciences in high school or anything related, wanted to become a psychologist. I decided I didn’t want to go down that road and that Speech-Language Therapy would really be a better fit. Living on the other side of the country for most of the year (it’s a 2 hour ride on the train going home so I did go home almost every weekend) was harder than I thought. When I graduated high school, I thought the world was at my feet and I could handle everything. Turns out I got quite homesick, lonely and stressed out. I did make friends who are still my friends, but I needed my family more than I thought and education and school became too important. I became a true perfectionist, not taking care of myself and only trying to study as best as I could for my finals. That’s how I managed to get where I am today, with never having to re-do an exam, always propely moving on to the next year, being in my last year of college now. The insanely hard studying I did resulted in my perfectionist side also taking over on other aspects of my life: relationships, personal growth, work.. I became obsessed with sticking to my ‘personal life plan’ and having insanely high expectations of myself. What me and my perfectionist side didn’t plan on though, were the panic attacks and months of poor health that followed. Up to this day I still have to live with the consequences of the choice to neglect myself and my physical and mental health back then. I still experience poor health, getting colds and viral infections very quickly, permanently swollen cervical glands, mouth ulcers, digestion problems and other ailments.

The good news is I learnt the hard way that I must always put my health first, even if I’m that passionate about my education. And even though I’m still struggling to maintain a healthy lifestyle and good health, I’m working on it and getting there. Since I started college I saw two different psychologists, who both partially helped me see that I don’t have to be the perfect student in order to be successful or to be accepted. I was the one putting too much pressure on myself, and I had to change that. The one person that REALLY helped me become myself, loving and accepting myself and learning to trust in life is my perfectionism coach. She also helps people who experienced burn-out for example. She started with me from scratch to examine my whole life, my relationships with myself and others, my routines… She gives me advice and gave me practical tools to leave the perfectionism behind, but still achieving my goals and taking care of myself. I can never thank her enough for the way she helped me grow and become who I need to be. It’s like the missing puzzle piece that I finally found. I learned to control my overthinking, my worrying, and I became a person who (with normal ups and downs) feels confident about herself, trusts in others around her and in the future, goes through life with humor and lives in the moment. Summing it all up makes it seem so easy, but it took me quite a while to even feel like I was worth just as much as anyone else on this planet. I never saw myself as equal to everyone else: my family, friends, strangers even… I never truly felt as worthy as them. I always tried to not take up too much space because I thought I wasn’t worthy of having a striking presence (I found out I felt that way partially because of my parents’ divorce and my evil step mom who treated me like shit when I was a child, judging every little thing I did).

Now I’m all about self-love, selfcare and listening to my gut feelings and intuition. If I have days where I feel exhausted or sick, I don’t study, I rest. I decided to quit my student job in summer because I never got a chance to rest and heal properly. It took me 3 months in summer to not be exhausted and sick every two days anymore. Now I’m kinda at the other side of the extreme: not doing enough studying. Christmas vacation has been the last two years about studying hard, not family time or resting. Now that I finished an intense but fun internship from November till Christmas, I wanted to have some time for myself and my family before I threw myself at the books again, resulting in me, still not studying enough, right now. I must admit the curriculum this year isn’t hard at all and it’s not a lot, so I don’t think it’s too late for me to pass my exams, but I do have to start now. It’s just quite hard when you just realized the last year how poorly you’ve taken care of yourself, and you just finished an internship which you worked really hard for, and now is Christmas time and you want to be with your family. But now we’re January 2nd, and Christmas/New Year are over and I can focus again. I had the time to rest and catch up with my family and now it’s time to get back to business. I’m already studying a half year longer, so I want to do it right (but maintaining a healthy balance with my private life). I decided to study longer in summer, when I just didn’t recover from my sickness and extreme fatigue. I have to do my last internship and finish my thesis this year September (next school year). So it will be a semester longer of studying. What’s that in a lifetime, if it saves my health and helps me maintain a healthy balance? I see my classmates, trying to juggle it all, and I’m happy to have made this decision. It gives me a lot of peace for the next semester, from February until June (when everyone else is doing their second internship and ending their thesis).

To be continued…see next post