Chapter 13: May the Griffin be my guide and may the cycle finally change

Frustration has filled my heart and mind again. I have been exhausting myself looking at my external world and comparing myself to others. Questioning myself. Questioning if I am authentic or if I have narcissistic behaviours or if I am disliked or if there is purpose in my social exclusion or if I am simply just broken and people see through my façade and choose not to associate with me.

 

I am tired of my brain and how it makes my body and mind feel. My reality has become so clouded. I constantly feel like I am fighting to believe the truth of my reality than what my brain has decided what reality is.

 

Since my last post, I decided to have a look at some of those drafted posts from previous versions of my blogs. In one post, I read my thoughts and feelings about sitting against the wall of my bedroom contemplating my social standing amongst my friends and how I deserved to mentally beat myself up over something trivial like not spending time around people. That was ten years ago, and yet I find myself feeling a similar way.

 

The only difference now is that when my brain tells me something negative, I critique it and psychoanalyse it until I find myself reaching an uncomfortable dissonance.

 

I long to heal my inner child and process the traumas I experienced, but I also realise that I can’t do it alone. I need an environment and support structure that welcomes me in all my flaws and weirdness. I need an external source to help me fight the lies my brain tells me when I don’t have enough fight in me. I need myself to get to a place where not being part of the group or not being empathised with, or understood, is truly okay within my soul and not me telling myself that it’s just a compromise or sacrifice that I have no choice but to accept. (This usually feels like I am depriving myself of something I need).

 

How do I find a way to not relive the feelings I felt 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago?

Why I am so frustrated with myself? What am I in such a hurry for?

I once read that if you keep repeating cycles, it means that you have yet to learn the lessons you needed to learn from it.

I once took solace in the fact that I retained so much of past self. It was something steady and unchanging. It made sense. I found peace in that sense. However, now it is getting old.

 

I thought the solution was learning to love myself and fixing what was broken inside me.

But I keep finding myself looking for external validation. I kept looking outside myself, because inside was a chaos I didn’t know how to navigate. I kept trying to find love and give love because I thought that was my strength, but it was just another distraction from looking inward.

Over the years, I realised what I was doing, and I have tried to monitor my behaviours. Sometimes it would get exhausting and I would fall back into familiar patterns. And when I realised that I was doing that, I would go back to intensely moderating my behaviours and patterns.

 

And I guess, I have now realised that the familiar pattern regarding my feelings about my social standings, relationships and love… these are things I should no longer just leave to the universe to happen to me. Because letting things happen to me has constantly made me feel like my worth was measured by external means. This must change.

 

Change has been on my mind for a while now. First, change happened to me or around me. Things I had no control over, things I didn’t want to happen, things I wasn’t ready for.

Then my podcast feed was filled with topics associated with change. And now, every week I excitedly look forward episodes of “A Slight Change of Plans” podcast.

 

Change is not a bad thing. Sometimes it happens to you and sometimes you make it happen. When it happens to you, instead of fighting it go with it or redirect it.

I have been trying to practice redirecting impact of the changes I’ve experienced, but it’s getting harder, because I feel so tired.

 

I feel like I need a change to happen.

 

I once had a dream a few years ago. I cannot remember the contents of the dream clearly, but I know that my dream was invaded by Griffins. Small Griffins came into my dream and flew around. One even sat on my shoulder. At the time of this dream I was thinking of and researching spirit guides.

I can't help but wonder if that Griffin was a spirit guide. Recently, those little Griffins have been on my mind. And things around me have been reminding me about reconnecting myself to my faith.

 

I want to change, but I don’t exactly know where to start or what exactly needs to change. I just know that this journey of trying to love myself has resulted in me feeling uncomfortable within myself and questioning every little thing my brain tells my body or every interaction that I experience.

I am tired of my toxic internal dialogue. I finally stopped calling myself a bitch, now I have to address the titles of toxic, narcissistic and broken. I am tired of myself.

 

I wish my brain would be happy playing Minecraft and being creative. I wish that was enough. I wish I could stop giving mental real-estate to thoughts about the impact of my behaviours and interactions with others. I wish my brain would stop replaying interactions and situations that were fine in the present but the more I think about them the more I think the worst of myself. I wish I didn’t have to constantly correct my reality and interrupt every thought I have regarding myself. For even the good thoughts are laced with poison.

 

Change must happen. It has to happen.

 

 

 

PS I understand that my mental health issues play a role in all this and sometimes my behaviours or behavioural patterns are just trauma responses. I just needed to phrase everything the way I did because I do feel like I can’t blame everything on my anxiety disorder and that sometimes my responses to things are the way they are due to my personality and my perception of reality.