The world around you changes when you do.
It’s a stunning morning. We have the bay to ourselves and the sun glistens upon the water like sparkling diamonds. A school of fish surrounds us, hunting below and around our boat. Bubbles rise beneath the water’s surface, stirring up the smaller fish above as they leap out of the water in an amazing display of frenzied acrobatics.
I feel so alive, so free. And so grateful to be sharing this moment with the man I love. The man who came into my life only after I’d forgiven myself - once I’d learnt to love and to respect myself again. We watch the fish for a moment longer and I laugh. Because I never thought life could be this good.
New people turned up the moment I stopped settling.
It’s one of many things that changed when my life began to heal. It wasn’t always circumstantial, and it wasn’t always as monumental as a new friend, career or achievement. It was the little things first.
It was what I chose to stop putting up with. The awareness I developed to not begin all my sentences with an apology. The choice to remove myself from people and places that weren’t helping me, not to downplay my desires, and to let others help me when I needed it instead of trying to appear stronger than I was. The shifts were small, but they were felt enormously. I rediscovered my self-respect.
I’d had that in the distant past, but somewhere along the way it got lost. And I’d settled instead into being someone who would only do menial work, when I had qualifications and experience to do so much more.
I sold myself short for a long time because I didn’t think I deserved more. The commitment to seek help with why I was doing this, and to subsequently face the discomfort of acknowledging how my own behaviour had let me down, was a catalyst to making the changes I needed. When I stopped chameleoning my way through each new setting, people-pleasing and mimicking those around me, I began to learn who I really was.
The inner work is what mattered most, and it’s probably why I took so long to begin it. It hasn’t been easy, and it certainly hasn’t been linear. I fell back down and had to start again more times than I can remember. But I never gave up hope that I could change. Even in the darkest moments, there was a faint glimmer of light in the distance that whispered ever so softly: ‘keep going.’
I found strength from beginning to own my story. Before I did that, I lived in constant fear of ‘people finding out the truth.’ And I stayed around those I thought wouldn’t mind if they did.
But the funny thing I discovered is that the more I’ve been honest and open about the parts of my story I once hid, the less shame I’ve actually felt. And like a self-perpetuating mechanism, the less shame I felt, the more deserving of happiness I came to know myself to be. Better people and things began showing up in my life.
I made a new group of friends and my work colleagues offered me new opportunities for inclusion. Suddenly I wasn’t just turning up. I was being offered further training and engagement in tasks that allowed me to step beyond the summary of my job description.
As my sense of self-worth rose, so too did my expectations. The people who meet me now are the kind who feel they deserve those same things too, people who treat others with kindness, grace and respect. They were the ones I’d been waiting for all along.
That is why, I think, he turned up at all.
And now, as I step onto the pier with my soulmate, my best friend, the one who holds my hand in everything we do, I’m so grateful that he did.
I write from lived experience, not as a clinician or expert. What I share is what I’ve noticed and what has helped me, not advice for everyone. [Why I write this way]
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