There must be something comfortable about hell, if there wasn’t, we wouldn’t continue to live in it. Over the years I have learned that hell is self-inflicted, it’s a choice.
How is that even valid, you may ask? Because this universe we live in is abundant and beautiful.
The possibilities are endless for health, happiness, love, and purpose, but we continue to struggle with sadness, anxiety, and a myriad of different types of pain – physical, emotional, mental, and so on.
Choosing Hell Over Happy
I am really no different from anyone with respect to choosing hell over happy. I’ve been doing it for most of my life. The difference is that I am beginning to connect the dots, to see the roadblocks and how to bring them down.
I look back over the years and I am very proud of my accomplishments and the person that I’ve become. I mean, let’s face it, we all have a foundation from which we grew up. And, for those of you that go even deeper than that, we have past life shit to contend with, as well.
For me, I realize that my personal foundation set me up to accept and tolerate abuse. Now don’t get me wrong, I am ridiculously strong in many ways, but when it comes to relationships, in particular, I tend to turn a blind eye to lies, manipulation, double standards, and stuff like that.
How it All Started for Me
So let me tell you a little bit about how I experienced my childhood.
And by the way, I try to be very careful in the way I explain things because really, everyone in the world is describing their experience from their perspective. It’s imperative that we remember and honor that for each other.
I also would like to preface this by saying that my parents were very sweet, hard-working people. I know they loved me very much and did the best they could with the cards they too were dealt in their own childhoods. I have no hard feelings for them or my siblings and appreciate all they did for me.
We are all actors on the stage of life and choose to be in each other’s movies with the best of intentions, whether we can see that at the time or not.
Let’s just say that I am going to explain my story as if everyone in my life was there to assist in my growth. Backstage, behind the curtain, everyone is rooting for me. I’m not a victim to any of the things I’ve experienced.
I’ve complained enough, it’s time to heal.
So for me, as a child, there were ZERO boundaries within my family. I was my mom, my dad, and my siblings. Their feelings were my feelings, their pain was my pain. I had no idea where I began or ended. I certainly was not taught how to set boundaries and I know for sure that no one would have honored them if I did.
I lived in a world of double standards. It was so incredibly obvious, but that didn’t matter. What could I do about it anyway? One of the ways that the double standard reared its ugly head was that I had to adhere to rules, but my brother didn’t.
There was a sort of protective shield that my dad offered to my brother, but not to me. He had a net, but I didn’t. That net backfired for him though. The lack of net made me tough and taught me responsibility.
I worked hard as a teen and 20-something. I didn’t expect anyone to take care of me. For my brother, it was the opposite. My dad always picked up the pieces, which led him to expect that from family, including me.
My things were his things. I remember a time when I got a new bike for my birthday. My brother took it one day and destroyed it. He brought it back all banged up, it was useless and he thought it was hysterical.
What happened next? Oh, I just didn’t have a bike anymore.
You see, my mom taught me to endure and be powerless. When I came crying to her about it, all she could do was look at me and say “what can I do about it?” She knew it was futile to tell my dad, he wouldn’t hold my brother accountable.
It was hard to process as a kid, but the anger was brewing, I knew that much. I watched as my things were taken from me and ruined, no repercussions, no feelings of regret or guilt on my brother’s part. You know why? Because to him, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. This was his world.
Do you know how hard that is to live with as a child? Someone that was so numb and oblivious when hurting another person. So incredibly insensitive. I could never put to words what that was, all I could do was rage, and punch walls. I didn’t feel heard or believed or supported.
I remember telling my brother, “there is something wrong in your brain.”
That’s all I could say as a kid, that’s the only way I could describe it. I felt like he didn’t value people, like there were no feelings, and everyone was dumb. I felt that my intelligence was insulted, as I would literally listen to ridiculous lies, same as I do today.
My mom would always say “I swear he thinks we’re stupid.”
But if you’d ask my brother about that, he would tell you that my mom and I are two of the smartest people on the planet. How does that make sense?
Where I’m At With It
I’m a big believer in the idea that we recreate our childhoods within our adult relationships. Think about it, we couldn’t really understand how to overcome these unique challenges as a kid.
So, we gravitate to and wind up with people that share the qualities of our parents, good and bad. This gives us the opportunity, as grownups, to finally change, do things in a different way and thrive.
Today, as I continue to recreate my childhood within my adult relationships, I can definitely see the pattern, as well as the corresponding opportunities.
I realize now that I grew up with something I can only explain as narcissism, which is kind of buzzword-ish these days, so I apologize.
Nonetheless, it now has a name, and with it comes an antidote.
Sarah Saxby is a Holistic Nutrition Consultant, Transformation Coach, and blogger that uses Kabbalistic Astrology, Human Design, and intuitive guidance to lead her clients to finally live with clarity, fulfillment, and internal happiness. You can also find her at Strategies for Happiness where you can schedule an Astrological Alignment Reading or a free, 15-minute Discovery Call to discuss Nutrition and/or Transformational Coaching sessions.
My beautiful soul Sista…reading your blog and connecting with the depth of pain that you’ve experienced, my heart aches as your healing takes. Let’s reconnect…one soul, one goal…to remove the space between.