Personal ego

 I didn't realize for the longest time that personal ego was such a main ingredient in one's making good decisions and my lack of vitality which I used to feel in almost every aspect of my life was due to a poor personal ego. I was too afraid to be my own person but tried to acquire skills, studied some courses and tried keeping myself busy with something or the other, but this numbness which felt like sadness didn't go away. It felt as if I kept shooting arrows in the dark and was forever lost in a space that made coming home to myself harder, specially as I didn't know how far I had moved away from myself.

I played the group person part very well because it was there that I had to be the listener the most as I got used to being one and that became one of my hiding spots of sorts as the real me can remain in a shell and just go along with the flow of people's opinions, discussions, and not that anyone cared to know my opinions truly but I didn't take efforts to put forth what I genuinely felt but just sided one person or the other or gave a neutral response which was layered with diplomatic niceness. I never confronted either. On second thoughts, it never struck me that my mind, my ego was something that actually mattered, and just repressed it almost naturally as if it didn't strike me to have a voice of my own. I yearned to have my very own individuality but was not having enough back bone to back it up and expected that I would be supported by my parents but I was viewed as a sensitive, weak person, and the more that I avoided talking my heart out with anyone in the family, the more denser, crowded, and noisy my inner world became.

It increasingly felt like I did not have a say on my life and lost a sense of joy and adventure in exploring my life. It became more and more wired to shoulds, should nots, ideals, other peoples approvals and so on. I deserted myself for the longest time in search of finding the true me. What's right within me is my right to feel connected and inspired being myself and that has been work in progress for few years now. This is not to prove anything to anyone, but just find closure to my stifled voice and bring myself to say that life is really short and the more time I had wasted in being someone else's idea of good enough was never truly enough to be my very own person. And so, stop trying to fit into shoes that don't fit and wear your legs out with your own decided journey to live, laugh, let go, respond, forgive, and most importantly love - love yourself fully to be able to acknowledge or respect the other for whoever they are. 

No amount of knowledge, no amount of learning will make you prepare better for life because they mostly don't. It's what you learn hands on when you make mistakes which is what makes you true to your life and not how insulated and error free you encase your life and be so afraid to fail which is what makes the moving on harder, the drawing the lessons more painful and letting go the mistakes of oneself or the others a ruminative drill in one's head.

Now I get the reason why I took to proofreading, transcriptions editing as some sort of personal mission was because I could get to fix errors and completely sacrifice my time at that and pack the content in some sort of encased, formatted, client friendly document, and each such attempt was a means to bring my broken self together but only for so long. Because not wanting to be wrong, not wanting to make mistakes, and wanting to be accepted was something that I had taught myself from childhood and it robbed my authentic and natural sense of freely expressing myself no matter what. And when that didn't feel possible on a personal level since my personal ego was almost invisible, I tried hard to latch on to something that would/could make me feel like I belong somewhere, like learning some courses, working on some skills, and so on but just remained to live in some sort of void within me as I was not strong willed to make my individuality happen and gave in to the flow or the situations around.

Personal ego makes you who you are and to feel like you are worth it from within is a personal decision to acknowledge your mistakes, to accept yourself, and to stay connected with your essence.

  

 

Don't neglect your Soul purpose

 Emotional neglect to a child in a middle class family is like wolf in sheep's clothing -  the material things are provided and in exchange for making the child feel "comfortable" enough to sustain neglect from parents as a day to day conditioning and thus making them believe that that would be enough to support the child and it would not probably incur any complaints from the child.

The child grows to believe that it deserves the neglect for the way he/she is being if the child does not satisfy the parents expectations whether it is through health, academic grades, extracurricular skills, survival skills, smart personality and so on.

It's like the parents simply don't acknowledge their lack of awareness and just want to manifest their expectations through the child or children. The child is expected to grow by itself, emotionally and mentally, and no support whatsoever is given meanwhile to understand the child's adapting to neglect, and the survival skills if any of the child is to brave it through all the emotional neglect and live in some sort of inner frozenness and lack of trusting and opening up and expressing of what he/she truly needs from the parent(s).

This is why the priority for self care for the grown up person who has gone through severe emotional neglect feels almost alien and overwhelming. 

To uncover such thick layers of parental indifference as in my case was quite painful. I am raised by a single parent and was also part of a joint family consisting of my mother and her elder brothers and their families. It seemed like the elders at our house were so full of themselves and their silly egos and wife controlling habits and simply disrespectful of one's boundaries, whether it is of a child or a grownup, their all pervasive control (specially the uncles) was worthy of numbing myself and shutting myself down to avoid any sense of interaction with them unless it was absolutely necessary.

Joint family broke the image of "my family and my people" for me over the years as it was simply a bunch of broken and temperamental people who needed help and who were of no help, no guidance to us youngsters back then. A lot of projection though from the elders as they liked to believe that they were unique since they all chose to be (mindlessly) together and simply liked the appreciation from friends and their families for still being in a joint family and this was almost 4 decades ago when joint family concept started to crumble more and more.

Emotional neglect is a real pain; it's not imaginary and it's totally true to one's difficulties in coping up with lack of attention and acceptance for who one is from the environment where the child is raised. It's not just parents who raise the child to an extent, but it's neglect that ironically the child learns to grow up to fall back on and gets used to being neglected. 

Self care is not just putting back the care and attention in the self all over again but learning to do so with kindness and patience as a soul/sole purpose of living. It's as much about discovering your inner wounds that were born out of your parents neglect of you and also learning step by step to reparent yourself each and every day as much as it's possible.

Your inner wounds when truly empathized with makes you feel seen, makes you feel whole, and no better person than you to look within yourself. Just choose to be there for yourself over and over as if your entire life depends on it. It truly does matter no matter how late this inner journey might start for you. 

Remember that you are alive to feel your life, so don't hide under the "comfort" or shell of self neglect.