Rewriting your story

 

Over the years after being told by your peers that you’re one thing you generally start to believe it and then it becomes a hard habit to break. I think I’m quite a nice person, maybe too nice sometimes and that’s led to me being the way that I am. Being bullied whilst at school made me feel like a weak person and so I continued to let people walk all over me, to treat me how they liked and although it broke me, I couldn’t be seen to show that for fear of being judged even more. I wanted to be liked, to be popular. Isn’t that how most of us feel at school? I’d like to think that changed as I got older, went off to university, it happened again and again. A different type of bullying, but it was still there. And I’ve continued to let it happen, without realising what an effect it was having on me.

Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Is it the person you thought you’d become or just a shadow of who you’d like to be. For me it’s the latter. And has been for a long time. That doubt in who I am, or could be has taken over to a point that I don’t recognise myself. As I read somewhere recently, your self-image can be a powerful, but only if its seen in the right way. If that impression is frozen, you’re just re-enacting a story that doesn’t serve you. Am I the weakest of them all? I think so. I’ve resigned myself to the fact over so long that it’s hard to see anything else and I believe it to be true. But my self-image is trapped in the past. By those school bullies. By the people I let walk all over me. By the way I let myself be treated, like it didn’t matter so long as they liked me. It’s a hard lesson to learn, and one I’m only now coming to realise.

I was born small (literally as a premature twin), but that doesn’t mean I have to stay that way. I might not be physically tall, but I can start to walk straighter, with my head up and believe that I am worth more than I’ve let myself be. Who am I, what am I like? The answers have nearly always been negative. I’m too fat, I don’t like the way I look, who is ever going to love me? I don’t want to stay that way. I don’t want that self-image to forever be trapped in the past. So I need to start working on a new one, one that I actually like, and stop worrying about everyone else. I’ve said it to myself before and I need to say it again- if they can’t love you for who you are, then they’re not worth your time or energy.

I can be anything that I want, its my story and I need to start rewriting it. Open my heart to myself and the rest will follow.