The last few months I’ve been really looking inwards and asking myself some of the harder questions in life. Not just on a superficial level, but on a level I know I need to ask myself, why do I do this? Why am I okay with this? What needs to change? What is this teaching me?
I have a thousand and one questions as I look at my reflection in the mirror, the reflection in my mind, and watching as it slowly changes. Outwardly, I look physically the same as I did before when I was masked in a darkness that covered the insides of my mind. Slowly, I’ve been chipping away at that mask and in many ways it hasn’t been that slow at all. I’ve been ripping away at the darkness for the last two months at lightning speed and it is beginning to show in my outward reflection. There is more light in my eyes, the pain that used to be etched onto my face in certain situations is all but gone.
I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and challenging my beliefs about myself. Call it crazy talk if you will, but I think digging deep is what most of us don’t do. Most people scratch the surface, put a band-aid on it, and call it a day. I’m not that type of person. When I dig, I’m digging to the core of the problem. I get a little side tracked where I think it has been hashed out, but then I realize how silly of me I forgot to pull the root out. See I’ve killed a lot of those weeds growing in my soul and mind, but in the process a few of their roots were left behind. Finding them and digging them out is my main goal now.
With each root I dig up I learn something new about myself. I learn who I really am and what I believe I am capable of. Each root is like a different emotion gaining wings and leaving so that it becomes lighter and emptier. During this process I’ve found one root that no matter how much I dig, I just can’t dig it all up at once. The roots are long and deep and it is so stuck in the ground of my mind that it will take a lot of work to burn it out. But it is burning and dying slowly. The self-worth root is the one with the deepest roots and there are two kinds of these. The one that blooms into a beautiful tree and grows with time and the other that is just a weed that needs to be plucked as it is poisonous to the self. I have the poisonous one stuck in me.
My self-worth is improving by the week, but there are moments where I don’t value myself and it comes through to show. It shows my weak point that I still have not succeeded here, that I still think like I used to that I am somehow unworthy of good things. Even though I try so hard and believe that I am worthy of good things, on bad days that root is there. It says something that acknowledges that I am worth nothing and deserve nothing good, and part of me obliges. Coming to terms with this is hard when you want to move forward in life.
The work I have put in to valuing myself has been hard and doesn’t get acknowledged by many people. I acknowledge it myself, and I can see the difference. I can feel it when I wake up and face the day, the kind of peace and tranquility that sits in my mind all day compared to before is unfathomable. I’m in the middle of my journey and I’m headed for a bumpy road as I dig out this deep self-hating root. I have to face my demons as I dig each root out of the ground piece by piece. I have to realize that the comparison root has got to go as it fuels the growth of the self-worth root. A better word might be that helps to decay the roots of the good self-worth root. But alas it is what it is!
Digging up these roots and seeing the change in myself little by little has been rewarding. It has brought peace to me though my demons are lurking under the surface, there is a kind of happiness and contentment that I haven’t had in a while. Do I yearn for what I want in life?Absolutely! And the comparison root needs to die so that I can be content with where I am in life without looking at the lives of others. I’m not there yet. I still have to dig deeper and love myself some more, but I’m on my way.
It will be uprooted soon and burned away.