Persistent roadblocks...what's yours?

[woodsgnome]

"Eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself at the age of twenty will, over time, prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you'll look back in twenty years and howl."
--Cheryl Strayed

This is packed with resonance for me. I refer to my list as the 'Graveyard of Lost Illusions'. In my case, the biggest hurdle with what we decided about ourselves at age 20 turns out to be its dogged persistence, even decades after. While I haven't laid out precisely what all the ten things are (they're painful enough), I think I know the two that persist.

One trait I seem to have swallowed whole is a deep feeling of being unloved, unwanted, and unworthy. Just as I was beginning to rise above the shame and guilt of my first 20 years, I seemed to encounter more setbacks. Beyond mere lack of self-esteem, it feels like having survived being pushed off a cliff, without a firm foothold from which to begin the climb back out. Now what?

Now it seems like a lifetime is stuck in this 'can't get out' frustration. Some call this recovery, although if you can name it you probably aren't at the depths; where all descriptions fail and you hope you have enough strength just to keep on some trail--any trail--that might not be as dangerous as was the first, with its memories haunting you still. Even if you've come to realize it wasn't your fault, logic never seems to overcome the emotional overload.

Another trait I seem to have held onto is avoidance, especially anything involving relationships. In essence, I remain scared--frightened to reach out, tentative to ask for anything from anyone, unsure of why they would choose to help me, sure they don't like me to begin with (even when what they say runs counter to that; even--gulp--if they say they love me).

I feel like I'm in a bubble, or an iceberg, all the time; or with a paper sack over my head, to better hide my shame at needing others. Because others always let me down; and I can't shake that feeling. On an intellectual level, I sense it's probably untrue, but I just can't seem to fully trust, either. Without, anyway, feeling exhausted just by the thought of trying to trust. The biggest struggle is finding the gumption to ever try again.

Anyone else? What were your illusions and what, perhaps, still dogs your every step to the point where, like Strayed says: "you'll look back in twenty years and howl."?
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[radical]

Like you, the belief that if I reached out to people I would be hurt, humiliated and rejected.  I'm not sure it was even a thought.  It was so much a part of me that it probably would have felt like thinking about water being wet, it underlay every decision.  I was trying hard to cover and manage my social anxiety. I was already among people who were dangerous to my well-being, they honed-in on my vulnerability and inability to recognise danger and harm.  I felt lucky to have friends and a partner.  Not reaching out to people you want to know is dangerous in itself, being passive, shut-down and frozen in fear can be misunderstood by many good people.  I didn't know how to respond when they reached out to me, *, it's only looking back that I fully understand that good people were reaching out to me.

I didn't understand that seeking to feel familiarity meant seeking to repeat my family dynamics which were toxic.  I mistakenly believed I could feel 'at home' and be in a healthy place.  I needed to get right out of my comfort zone.  I guess the wrong belief was that being 'comfortable' with people would lead to a better outcome.  What was familiar was being treated as a doormat and welcomed for what I was prepared to do and to overlook.

I believed I was broken, different, tainted, that I had to hide myself and be what others wanted me to be.  That there was a high price for belonging anywhere, that entry and acceptance was more about accepting myself and that it was my desperate attempts to be accepted by others that was marking me out as being different.

Also, like you, I never felt I could ask for anything, that doing so was incredibly dangerous.

Now I write these things I realise how much I need to reach out, to expect rather than seek to earn acceptance, to get out of my comfort zone and feel really uncomfortable with people, to ask for help, support.  Following the path has led to so much more baggage to overcome with other people, a whole life of being different.  I managed to confirm and more deeply ingrain those faulty assumptions.

I feel sad and hopeless today, it feels like my past is too much to overcome and that understanding is always going to be beyond most people.  I'm still devastated that my big reaching out for what I wanted and believed in, that getting out of my comfort zone, accepting being afraid - it led to being bullied, mobbed rejected.  My fears were confirmed

[Wife#2]

Interesting post. Through the holidays, I seem to have found some of these roadblocks. They're hitting me pretty hard lately. I can't get past much of what I felt in my early 20's.

Who was I supposed to be, based on that 20's notion of self? I was supposed to be super smart, capable, worthy of love, a protégé of sorts. I was ok with my rose-colored glasses. I still had hopes of being college educated, to take up that profession of lawyer everyone told me was likely. I was supposed to have a short life (always felt like death wasn't too far away, just lurking nearby). Failing to die young, I was supposed to have lots of kids with some wonderful man who understood me.

What happened? I flunked out of college, suffered bad relationship after bad relationship, picking men who were both emotionally unavailable and emotionally cruel. I floundered and fell behind my contemporaries. My rose-colored glasses only served to keep sending me chasing bad relationships, always sure the NEXT one would be the one who treated me well. And I kept on living. Alone. With Mom. Alone. With Mom. Finally alone. I was still one of the smartest in the room, but I had learned humility. Eventually wondering how anyone could confuse me with a mature adult. Because, while I was still intellectually smart, I was what I call life-dumb.

I married in a hurry, lived to regret it, had a child late in life, stayed in the marriage. Now, nearly 50, I look back and howl at: Those **ed Rose-colored glasses and being smart (though not nearly as smart as I think I am). Both get me in trouble. I have a bad habit now of spending so much time looking in he rear-view mirror that I sometimes miss the signs up ahead of me - and emotionally crash AGAIN.

[MyselfOnline]

Beyond mere lack of self-esteem, it feels like having survived being pushed off a cliff, without a firm foothold from which to begin the climb back out. Now what?

That's resonant. It kicked in shortly after leaving school. My mother was depressed and I didn't know where to turn. Haven't since.

Lack of worth and sense of alienation follows me into the workplace. I dread it there. The strain of performance, not belonging. Never changed.

Rather than fearing romance, I've craved it pathologically. Stayed for 11 years in a damaging relationship because I my saw parents break up, because I have been dumped and remember how it feels, so to let that happen was unthinkable. I've tolerated so much in the name of 'love.'

Perhaps that is three things. I feel like the tracks ran out and left me peddling air; I am an alien at work; I can't bare to 'let her go'.