Sometimes, we need someone to help us see a situation for what it really is. Our view of life may be a false reality, an altered state, a perception of the truth that we believe to be true no matter what negative impact it has on us.
I know we’ve all been there. We are all influenced by our own belief systems, and they have a huge impact on how we see the world. We even let ourselves go through tremendous stress, and emotional or physical pain because we cannot see the truth even though it may be obvious to other people. We let ourselves believe that what we are going through is normal, and that our feelings are normal, and that the outcome is normal. It can tend to make us feel like failures; as if all that we do doesn’t make a difference in the world. It hurts. It hurts really bad. Sometimes these beliefs that we have are based on memories of better times. They are true events with real feelings attached, and they may even be recent memories. But things change. People change, circumstances change, and life changes.
Sometimes, we need to change our own circumstances to allow ourselves the freedom to live our own lives. We need to believe that we must make a change and that that change will create opportunities for happiness. Happiness that we forgot we could have. It will help us find peace within ourselves so that we can be productive humans. When we are so used to believing certain ways, just the idea of what we need to do to make our own life better may sound crazy. It will probably be the last thing you ever thought you would hear, but the best advice isn’t always the advice you were expecting.
The best advice I was ever given was to divorce my dad. When I first heard this statement, I definitely did not understand. How does a child divorce a parent? The answer is simple, it’s the same way adults divorce. Exist separately instead of as a unit, go on to live different lives that the other is not involved in, and no longer depend on each other. I needed to cut ties with my dad. I had to let him go live his life, his new life with his new family, and I could not be a part of it. I needed to do this so that I could stop feeling abandoned. So I could stop trying to make myself fit in where I clearly didn’t belong. I needed to stop having expectations because I always ended up disappointed.
It wasn’t the easiest thing to do. To change how I’ve been living my life for as long as I could remember, depending on him being a father. I knew I had to do it, and I’m glad I was brave enough to give myself the emotional freedom I needed to move on with my life. As hard as it was to take those initial steps, it’s been even harder keeping this arrangement. I have to keep my own peace and happiness at the top of my priority list. I have to remember how much pain I was experiencing, and how hurt and abandoned I felt. I also have to remember how liberating it was to just let it go.
Most of the time when you think about family, you look at divorce as a bad thing. However, sometimes it is the right thing to do. Don’t get me wrong. I think about my dad a lot. I often wonder what he is up to. I’ve also tried to allow him back into my life, but the experiences were never any different than they were all those years ago. I’ll continue to believe that I made the right decision, one that has given me the freedom to grow and move on. I know that my energy and love is appreciated and reciprocated by the people I choose to have in my life.
