Becoming a Better Me….
[image error]They say the first step to fixing any problem is to admit that you have one. Well, being black, let along a black woman, sometimes it’s hard to admit when you have a problem out of fear of being judged, ridiculed, or simply ignored. Therapy to black families is like kryptonite to Superman. I grew up thinking that therapy was bad and just another way for people to get into your business so when my marriage hit a rough patch, we did what most black families do and tried to fix it ourselves not realizing that we lacked the tools and skills needed to do so. By the time we realized just how deep of a mess we were in, it was basically too late, but we tried to revive what was left by finally going outside of the family for counseling and for the most part, it helped in some ways. We tried spiritual counseling and for a while it work as well as grew us closer to the Lord, but spiritual counseling can only take you so far and eventually you need to seek professional counseling and that’s where my marriage came to an impasse. I wanted counseling and he didn’t. Our marriage was deadlocked. I thought professional counseling was our last resort at saving our marriage and he didn’t. I’m not blaming him for our marriage failing, because we both played a role in that. What I’m saying is that a history of being programmed that therapy is wrong, led us to not getting the help that we needed, when we needed despite the fact that most of the people speaking against therapy wasn’t in a healthy relationship themselves to tell us anything. Nevertheless, we didn’t do the professional counseling and resentment, and a lack of skills to truly forgive and work through our issues created a bigger hole in my marriage until we eventually separated. And as much as I wanted to blame my husband for it, I was just as much to blame as him because in the whole ordeal, I allowed it to make me cold, bitter, and to walk in unforgiveness. I thought I was over the hurt and pain or things that I endured and I wasn’t. I just buried it. I ignored it. I pushed it down so far that I tricked myself in to believing that it was gone when it wasn’t.
Sometimes you are too close to a situation to see things and like the song says, too close to the mirror to see what you see… I was too close to my marriage to see it for what it really was….destroying us both and our children. We thought that because we love each other and we have children together that we were supposed to stay together, but that’s not always the case. It was not helping our children to see us together but watching us argue all the time. It was not doing our children any good to see us together, but never showing any signs that we love each other. No, we were just perpetuation a never-ending cycle like we watched going up, that it is okay to live in dysfunction.
I refused to do that. Someone had to make a decision and so we did. We aren’t perfect. Never claimed to be, but we are trying and making strives to do better and be better and if that mean getting help then doing that. I can’t speak for my husband, but I can speak for me and I know that I can truly benefit from counseling.
I’m a strong person. Always have been, but when you are a strong person, your strength is also your weakness, because you learn to not show weakness. You learn to hold the pain and hurt inside. You learn to silence yourself to make others feel good, because you are afraid of appearing weak. I know I did that. I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety most of my life. Not many people know that. Why? Because I’ve never told them. I dealt with it in private and it wasn’t until I moved away from home, that I got a proper diagnosis of what it was and even then my fear of therapy kept me from getting the help I needed. It was one of my college professors in Georgia that also happened to be a psychiatrist that helped me understood what I had been dealing with. But even then and still to this day, I refuse medical treatment because the medication makes you worse than the actual personality disorders, but I learned ways to control my disorders or so I thought I did. What disorders? Like I stated earlier, I suffer with depression and anxiety disorder, but I’ve also dealt with panic disorder (panic attacks) and night terrors.
A whole big ball of crazy, right? That’s what I used to think. That’s why I didn’t want help or therapy but I’m not crazy. I just pushed down so much shit in my life that the depression, anxiety, panic disorders, and night terrors was my body’s way of trying to expel all of the negativity out and force me to deal with things.
Anyway, the problem I had to admit to myself was that I was broken. Emotionally, I was so broken, that I didn’t think I would ever be able to put the pieces back together again. If I didn’t just say that, many of you would have never known. There’s a story behind every smile whether it is complete happiness or a complete lie. I smiled for the world, but I was dying underneath, but because I was a strong person I was expected to just be okay. My smile kept me from admitting my problem. It kept me from admitting I was weak. It kept me from being a victim, or at least that’s how i saw it. My entire life could be falling apart and no one would ever know. I could have cried myself to sleep the night before and get up the next morning as if nothing is wrong. My smile was so convincing that I almost fooled myself that there was nothing wrong with me, but when you are wake up screaming in the middle of the night, or can’t go to sleep cause you up pacing the floor, or when you’re balled up in fetal position cause you having a panic attack then you realize that you are not okay! And I wasn’t okay and I had to get myself together for myself and my kids before I could ever think or hope to make any relationship in my life work.
Breaking up is not easy to do contrary to what people think. It is actually the hardest thing to do in a relationship, BUT SOMETIMES IT IS NECESSARY. SO, I DON’T KNOW WHERE THIS ROAD IS TAKING ME, BUT I’VE MADE THE FIRST STEP TO DOING WHAT’S BEST FOR ME.
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