Coming Back To My Self

A little less than six months ago, I read a book that spoke straight to my guts. Glennon Doyle Melton’s Love Warrior was such a revelation to me. As I read about her story, I could relate to my own. It was a story that a lot would qualify as normal on the outside: a young woman with eating disorders, alcohol, drugs, sex, quite the ‘normal’ woman these days.

But Glennon did something that very few have done before. She told her story from the inside. She described what that normal girl was going through from the inside, from her point of view. And she brought up something that took my breath away: Abandonment. For years I had pinned my abandonment issues on other people, namely my Dad. And for years, in therapy, I spoke about how I had felt abandoned by my father when he started suffering from depression. I had worked on healing that wound, and I had thought that was it, until the day I read Love Warrior.

As I read Glennon’s words, or should I say, as I listened to her voice (it was an audible book), it suddenly hit me. I had the gut wrenching realization that through the years and until not that long ago, I myself had abandoned me. I have this image in my head, of my Inner Self, down on her knees, feeling completely lost and confused, sobbing, and the part of me that was standing there watching her got uncomfortable, feeling helpless, not knowing what to do with all those feelings, and she did what she could to make it stop: she turned her back and walked away. She left. She abandoned her Self.

That realization felt like being stabbed in the heart. All those years…I had been looking for the missing piece, not knowing where or what it was. Until pieces started falling into place. A few months later during a healing exercise with one of my mentors, as we were exploring the depths of my Inner Self, we uncovered an unhealed wound. Feelings of hurt, anger, resentment, betrayal and abandonment started resurfacing as the voice of my heart kept repeating “You left me!”, over and over again; I was sobbing, inviting these feelings in, surprised by how real they were, and yet confused as to why I would have such feelings towards myself.

It took a few weeks, or even months for me to understand. It took me to come back to my Self to understand that I had left. That for years, the one I had been looking for was right there. I remember this conversation I once had with my therapist. One of those big AHA moments when I realized that I didn’t know how to be in a relationship with my Self, and that the only way for me to be in touch was through other people’s eyes. As if I had to plug into others so that I could catch a glimpse of who I was…through their eyes. Ironically, I needed them to be with my Self.

As all the pieces of the puzzle started coming together, this feeling started growing inside of me: a yearning to step back, unplug from all those reflections of me so that I could finally be with my Self. Me and My Self, finally getting together, for real, with no one in the middle. And this is what I did. I have come back. Back to my Self.