“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”

― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

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I have learned in recent years that there is a difference between having a subconscious awareness of our shortcomings, versus having the balls to face ourselves in the mirror and coming to terms with them.

Most of the things that happen to us when we are young are out of our control. Until a certain point, many decisions are made for us, including who we interact with and the places we spend our time. We’re stuck with the families and caregivers we’re given, and with their judgements that determine what we do and don’t do.

It’s not until our teen years that we gain a granule of autonomy over our lives and start making our own choices. It’s at this time that we start to “fuck around and find out” while our parents and caregivers take a back seat and cross their fingers that they showed us the “right” way of doing things.

Growing up, I didn’t have model citizens for caregivers, or anything remotely close. I was put into a lot of unsafe situations where my basic social-emotional needs weren’t met. Consequently, my young adulthood was wrought with bad decisions that I was fully responsible for. I was precocious, abrasive, socially awkward, and incapable of forming quality relationships, romantically or otherwise. I burned almost every bridge I paved and avoided responsibility for anything I fucked up. When something was difficult, I ran away, which made it impossible for me to create sustainable lifestyle habits and connections. Despite this, I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

That is, until I fucked around a little too much. It didn’t take long for me to look around and say “Oh…” when I saw how far off the path I was. It was at this point I hit rock bottom for the first time, because I knew something had to change. I was anxious all the time and I felt like I hated myself, but I sought attention and external validation from others constantly.

I started listening to that little inner truth we all have—call it your gut, your heart, or whatever part of your consciousness that sings the loudest. For me, it is this little whisper that lives rent free in my head and has a knack for telling me exactly what I don’t want to hear: the truth.

What I was really doing was avoiding the reality of my situation, and creating this perpetual inner turmoil that wouldn’t let me get past all the bullshit I wasn’t responsible for as a child. I was failing to see, though, that I still had a responsibility to myself. I hid from the burden of responsibility like a shield, shouting, “This isn’t my fault! None of this is my fault! How am I supposed to know better!?” What I was failing to admit to myself was that I had the choice to overcome the decisions that were made for me as a child and own my responsibility to myself as a young adult.

I started to revisit the events of my childhood that set the framework for the young woman I had become. I didn’t write them down or talk about them—I merely considered them silently, alone with myself. This was a painful process that invoked the overwhelming feeling of shame. At first, I was embarrassed to look at myself in the mirror, so I chose to avoid the memories of the things that happened to me and immediately dove into anything that made me feel good. Then, when I felt ready, I would circle back and try again. That is, until I pushed myself too far, and retreated back into whatever quick dopamine rush I could get in that moment.

This process repeated itself over and over again until I got tired of it. I felt heavy and depleted from feeling like a war was going inside my head all the time. I was white-knuckling my way through life and not actually living. My physicality became affected, too, as I started to experience chronic inflammation which led to an autoimmune disorder. I want to feel peace in my own body, and with the experiences of my young life. I wanted to stop hiding what I knew from myself, and live in a complete and honest way where I didn’t have to find a way to fool myself into getting through the day.

I finally hit a pivotal junction where I began to integrate exercise, dance and reading into my regular life as a way to try and get to know myself better. It took a long time, but I slowly began to forgive myself for the things I was ashamed of. For the first time in my life, I was being given grace—not by anyone else, but by myself.

I still haven’t completely “let go” of the things I’m ashamed of, and there are still days where I beat myself up for not having “known better” when I was younger. Progress is not linear, and my journey is no exception. It’s my personal experience, though, that has taught me the power of taking ownership over our choices, mindsets, beliefs, and abilities. We may not have had a choice when it came to what happened to us as children, but we always have the opportunity to start right now.

Peace, by piece by piece.

You deserve to call a ceasefire on the war inside yourself. All you’ve got to do is look inside.