When I was growing up, my mother had a cabinet full of files all about me.

It had my name on the outside and was located in her office downstairs in our home. It contained such files as “weekly activities,” “college prospects” and “sports.” These files held information pertaining to journalism summer camps, piano lesson dates and recitals and brochures on teams I could possibly join. I hated playing sports and always have, but yet there was still a folder.

This file cabinet included all that I was to ever accomplish and multiple resources on how I was to accomplish it.

I was taught from an early age that I would go to journalism school and become a great writer—just like my mom—hopefully on a piano scholarship, at a local prestigious college, and become a pillar of the community. My mother had worked hard her whole life to become one of the strongest female role models in our community and in her profession, and she was determined that her daughters would become the same.

She continued to fill the cabinet with new prospects until she was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 13. Slowly,the files became smaller, the cabinet gathered dust, and weekly activities were replaced with weekly doctor visits and chemotherapy sessions.

The track I was on was slowly going off course and with it my sense of self. I became angry and rebellious. I became so resentful of her cancer that I began to resent her and what she had wanted for me. I hated piano and stopped going. I began skipping school, not caring what projects were due, what grades I was obtaining, or what my friends were doing.

As the cancer consumed her body so did anger consume mine. I defied her and the cancer which was destroying her by doing the exact opposite of what she wanted me to do with my life and above all, I stopped caring.

She passed away two weeks after my 16th birthday.

After she died, my days became hazy as I had no idea how to survive without her. When my friends were visiting colleges with their parents, I was taking a leave of absence from school as I could no longer cope with life. Everything I had known, all the plans which were laid in stone for me—all of it was gone. I became a blank canvas.

As a result of feeling insecure and lonely, I turned to my boyfriend at the time for a sense of security and, unknowingly, a sense of identity. What he liked, I liked. What he wanted to do, I wanted to do. What he said, I believed, even if I knew it deep down to be untrue. So began my tumultuous pattern of dysfunctional relationships.

After a few years, he and I broke up and he was replaced with another guy I tried to find myself and life purpose in. Then we would break up and someone new would come along with better promises, the prospect of a new beginning, and the pattern would repeat itself. 

No matter how emotionally damaging the relationships were, I stayed. I did so because at least I could find the security I had lost in my life through someone else. I could find what I thought was love and acceptance even if, in reality, that love and respect was not reciprocated. I could be what and who they wanted me to be and distract myself from the reality of my life.

Rather than focus on bettering myself, or learning what I liked to do, I lived each day to please others and as a result I became someone else in the process. Each relationship, each set of new friends, each distraction did nothing but deter me from the person I was meant to be and from living the life I was meant to live.

The cycle went on for years. Each time I would say to myself, “Why didn’t you learn this time?” Yet I found myself repeating the same pattern over and over. It wasn’t until one specific relationship ended that I found myself alone with truly no idea of who I was or what I wanted out of life. The breakup was dramatic, emotionally damaging more than the others and draining.

In that relationship I had accepted unacceptable behaviors. I had behaved unacceptably and pretended to be someone I wasn’t. I compromised my values and beliefs by accepting lies for truths even though I knew better, all to keep someone from leaving me.

After we broke up, I found myself alone, empty, void of happiness, purpose or love. I had nothing left to give someone else, never mind myself. The years of compromising, of distractions, of looking for love in all the wrong places finally hit me. I knew there had to be something better. I had to become someone better. My life was worth more than to live at the whim of someone else’s emotions and anger. The pattern had to stop.

Something inside told me that to find such peace, I needed to be alone.

I had to stop jumping from one relationship to another and live life for myself. I had to stop allowing my mother’s death to be a crutch for unacceptable behaviors and an excuse to be living the way I had been. I had to stop running away from my emotions and resisting the path I was meant to walk down.

I went to counseling. I began to talk to someone. I allowed myself to grieve, to feel and to cry. I wanted to be happy. It was at that moment when I realized that all my mother had wanted was for me to be happy and to live the best life possible.

Through her file cabinet and planned weekly activities, all she was doing was hoping that I would find happiness the way she had found it, to be successful and have what I wanted in life the way she did. She was just trying to help guide me into being the best person I could be and who she knew I could be. Her death resulted in so much anger and self-sabotage that all I had been doing those past years was the opposite.

Once I came to this realization and allowed myself to be alone, I found myself wanting to do all the things she had planned for me. I was drawn toward piano again, so one day I decided to play—I played for two hours. I found myself wanting to write, so I wrote about all my sadness and happiness. I completed a journal within a week. I found myself wanting to help others, so I began volunteering with children who had also lost a parent.

By being alone, I was able to listen to that voice deep inside of me that had been waiting to be heard for so long. And what I heard it saying was that I deserved the best life possible, that I could no longer live in the resentment and pain I had held onto since my mother’s passing. I had to start living life for me and become who I was meant to be.

Sometimes it takes trial and error to find inner peace and love, but it is there. All we have to do is throw away the idea of what we think others want us to be. From what I have found, most people just want us to be happy. Discard those thoughts that say we aren’t good enough, and don’t settle for those who don’t deserve us. If this means being alone for a little while, or for a long while, then so be it. Don’t compromise.

Do what you know is best for you and allow yourself to find out what you want from life. Realize that you may fall back on old behaviors sometimes, but that’s okay because life is a learning process. Realize that that part of you, who you are truly meant to be, all that you are capable of, is in there, and once you stop looking for it in others, once you drop the walls you have created, your capabilities are endless.

 

Author: Elizabeth Wade

Image: Eutah Mizushima/Unsplash

Editor: Nicole Cameron