How many times have you heard someone take responsibility for the big fuck ups in their lives versus receiving a list of endless justifications about why a mistake was made?
Not taking responsibility for my own life and my choices has been my expertise for years and the best part is that I haven't realized it until about a couple of years ago.
I can go back as far as being a little child and remember myself asking people about what they thought would be the best thing to do: choose chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Wear pink or yellow? Go to this school or that school? As a child I have always felt I couldn't trust my own judgment over any issue and every time I had to make a decision I would feel extremely overwhelmed and confused. I would always, desperately need someone to help me decide what was the right thing to do. Indecisive, fickle and alas! regretful were the best words to describe me. As a child (and later on as a teenager) I thought it was normal to be so insecure, and I honestly believed that my parents were meant to be the decision maker until I would find my own voice and the strength to blaze my own path in the world. The problem is that as I kept growing up that voice never found its own place. Sometimes it would be too loud and arrogant and other times so feeble that nobody (including me) could hear it.
As I started to date people and engage in long term relationships, two types of men seemed to be the ones I would attract the most in my life: 1) the type who was willing to take the blame for everything that I did wrong and 2) the type who would completely overtake my will and make all choices in my place (with my blessings).
The first type was obviously more "pleasant" to be with since he would make me feel constantly good about myself, specially when I took some pretty bad decisions. He would feed my emotional addictions of "responsibility's avoidance" by taking the blame for every issue that arose, while also making sure I would not face the consequences of whatever I did wrong. On the other side, I would feed his own addictions by making him feel loved and special when he took care of my issues, by feeding his sense of self worth through the feeling of being a "good guy", and last but not the least by taking care of some of his responsibilities (like laundry, lunch, cleaning his space, etc.). That's how the circle of codependence would keep spinning around.
The second type was tricky. He would again feed some of my emotional addictions, but a different set of. He would make me feel guided and taken care of, bringing me back to that child-parent situation to which I was so accustomed to and felt so secure in and in return he would get a sense of power and control over me which made him feel good about himself. And that's how the codependence circle would spin again.
After my marriage came to an end, I started to dig a little deeper into my emotional background and I carried out a post mortem analysis (still in progress today by the way) which highlighted this huge lack of will to take responsibility for my own actions. I realized I preferred to follow someone else's decision and blame them for it rather than follow my own gut feeling and take a chance at being wrong.
After gaining awareness over this issue things have been quite easy to fix. The first step has been to turn my finger around, stop blaming others or situations for whatever was happening in my life and tell myself that "Everything is my fault".
Obviously this has been a process made of many steps. I didn't take a leap from one attitude to the other in the snap of a finger. It's been a progressive evolution which has brought immense, tangible change to my life. I went from being "victim of situations" to "master of my own life" and the regrets that followed every choice I made in the past also disappeared at the drop of a hat, leaving a sense of ownership and pride.
Today I feel like another important piece of my puzzle got back in place. Mind you, there are still a lot of other pieces that need to be repositioned but the picture of myself that I see today is so much better than the giant mess I saw before and I cannot wait to work on the next piece of me.
If one day you will decide to start your own process of reconstruction (or if you are already in it), I feel you might benefit from this one lesson that I have learned along the way: do not judge yourself or feel ashamed of the person you were"pre-awareness".
The road to Perfection (and I here refer to "Perfection in Love") is rocky and steep at its onset and there are many falls that one needs to overcome before getting to the top, but life is a school and God our teacher. Compassion, encouragement, remedial (not vindictive) correction and unconditional love are some of the tools He uses to guide us through the endeavor so it's important to remember that we are loved even we when we are the worst version of ourselves.
And if you allow me to quote the words of a famous Italian singer on the subject "Nothing is born from a diamond - flowers are born from manure".
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