On me... and turning 30

It’s funny, if you ask some people who have really gotten to know me intimately they’ll tell you that I have several different personalities. These people have at times asked me who is the “real” Vanessa. I can tell you straight out that ALL of them are. If you’d met me some years ago and asked me to list the things that to me are the most important in life I would have told you: family, love, expression, enjoyment, spirituality, and work. If you met me at another point in my life I would have answered exactly the same thing – but in a different order! That is where my “inconsistencies” lie, but actually I am just very average J

The self-hating years

The single most hurtful thing ever said to me was “you’ve had a perfect life”. Yeah, it was hurtful because it was said by someone close to me who obviously didn’t know me much at all. I don’t believe there are such things as perfect lives or perfect childhoods, everyone does the best with what they’re given. I don’t know if I am (or was?) autistic to a degree, but I never really connected with anyone as a child. And it didn’t bother me to have no friends; I was quite happy in my own inner world, my make-believe play, and reading books to learn something that interested me. At age 10 I was faced with circumstances that are actually very common in most cultures but that I would never wish upon anyone. As a result of this I lost the ability to trust, to believe, to feel safe and worthwhile. From then on I started hating more than just my own physical self, but also my future self, believing that I deserved nothing good to ever come to me in my life. It was very draining, and my inner world grew increasingly darker and I became more and more self-deprecating.

At about the age of 20, after I had finished my undergraduate degree in science, the self-loathing and self-denial of my own need to be human finally climaxed. I started psychotherapy for the first time then. What came of it? My single greatest victory was to forgive those that had hurt me and to forgive myself for being hurt. It seems so miniscule and meaningless that I can summarise it in one sentence, but the amount of healing the simple act of swapping the words “sorry” for “thank you” is hardly able to be explained. I finally stopped apologising for being Vanessa, for allowing myself as a child to be hurt, and I stopped apologising for the simple fact of being alive. Instead I started to be grateful to be alive and I allowed myself to have (and not feel guilty about having) human needs of personal fulfilment and achievement. It was a very slow process to accept myself, to disrobe myself of the self-loathing, to finally become and be comfortable in being Vanessa in all my forms.

At 24 my curiosity and interest in spiritual matters brought me to commit to Christianity after having studied several theological and philosophical systems for many years. What lead me to finally make this commitment was that I came to understand that it’s ok to not be perfect, it’s human nature, and that the ability to feel connection to God is not barred to me or anyone else regardless of their past, present, or future. That was spiritual commitment and to some extent also fulfilment. During and after this time I also gradually learnt to not hate or feel ashamed of my physical appearance, of my lack of social skills, of my naivety, and of all these things I had for which I felt I couldn’t be like “normal” people. I guess in all this I may have eventually overshot the mark  :P

The self-loving years

I was around 26 before I could bear the thought of being ok with being seeing as me, as a complete and separate person of my own. I guess by that stage I had allowed people to get to know me, all aspects of me, and to become my friends who I could trust and expect some trust and caring in return. I grew more confident in many things also. I finally was not afraid or concerned to be seen for me. I was nearly 27 before I finally allowed myself to remove my clothes off in front of another human being – someone of my choosing and with my full consent. This part was the hardest step for me, the rest was quite easy. And in fact it probably got to be a bit too easy J

My mistake was that after I learnt to love myself, I probably started to love only myself. I started to consider romantic partners as purely things to increase my own enjoyment and happiness. They say that people with histories of abuse most often become either one of two things in their future relationships: the abuser or the abused. I had decided from when I was 20 and started therapy, that I would never again be a victim of abuse. And so here I was, playing out another role. I had never had a time in my life when I didn’t feel guilty about being alive, but maybe at times it would have been good to at least feel pity for others. Needless to say, several  partners later, I still wasn’t a winner. Despite me finally being able to love myself and form sort of bonds with others, I still hadn’t learnt what it was like to love others. I mean, of course, what it was like to be in love.

The loving years

Wait, having sex and making love aren’t the same things?... No. I eventually learnt that too. June 2010, or sometime after that, I fell in love for the first time in my life! How did I know it was different? Because I found myself missing someone else, wanting someone else’s approval, feeling safe and confident to be associated with someone, feeling a part of something very special. It didn’t last long and I was a different kind of sad to what I’d previously known when it ended. But you know what bothered me most about it ending? Because after all those years it had taken me to convince myself that I was a worthy human being, the overwhelming message I was getting was that I wasn’t worthy of another being’s sacrifice to be with me. My partner wouldn’t sacrifice any of the things I would have sacrificed in a heartbeat to be with them. And that hurt me so much. It was like being told all over again that I wasn’t a worthy human being. But this time I didn’t believe it for long, because sometimes all you can do is let go and remember that regardless of what someone may think of me, I am still Vanessa.

And then the unthinkable happened and I fell in love for the second time in my life. Wow! What a blessing it was. It was beyond what I had ever imagined;  my new love met and exceeded every standard I ever had. This was truly the love of my life, the one person you could have sworn was fabricated purely using every guideline for a good person I had in my mind. Words can’t do this story justice. Of course, I was in love with this person so you’d be right in saying I am biased, but I didn’t care what anyone had to say. The only approval I needed in this world was from this one person . Truly, never have I felt so secure, so safe, so myself, so part of something greater than special, than when I was part of this partnership. Then the worst thing happened! The worst thing to have happened to me at this moment in time after what I’ve been through, I mean. There were reasons for it, but I was left alone again. I only wish I had been given a chance to correct my flaws, that whatever good was at first seen in me (what I think I see in myself too) would have been worthy of another chance, of a sacrifice. Or am I really not as worthy as I think I am?

The years of being loved

I hope in future to be loved, but it’s not enough just to be loved here and now. I hope to have someone fall in love with me truly, to want me, to wish to be with me, and that this wish is enough to motivate the things every successful relationship needs: compromise and self-sacrifice. I am worth it, right? I think I am. It’s been 30 years, and I’m ready to be loved the way I eventually learnt to love too. I am ready for so many things. But I am ready mostly to say that only God can judge me for my life.