How does one find their truth without disrupting the realities of others? I don't know if that is possible at this point. Everyone has a unique perception of their life and experiences that it is hard to untangle our perceptions from theirs. I have spent so much time in therapy that I feel I hit a pinnacle of healing that I can't move beyond unless the people who caused the trauma I experienced go to therapy themselves; I am just going to talk in circles about things I already understand. The other aspect of this is that I am not the only person who feels this way - I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the same position.
What is healing, and how do you know you've healed? After every traumatic period, I have asked myself to utilize therapy for recovery. In my mind, healing shows itself in a variety of ways. It shows most - for me - in the way I interact with other people and the way I socialize. The more I deconstruct, analyze and find acceptance with my past and subsequently my trauma, the more I lean into my introversion and the less I want to meet new people. I find it exhausting to do the introductory period with people because I can generally tell within the first 2 or 3 conversations if someone will have narcissistic tendencies. Being around narcissists your entire life gives you the superpower to discern who is a narcissist and who has narcissistic tendencies, and in both cases, I like to keep a healthy distance. With every narcissist, I tend to hide myself a little more and keep myself a bit more guarded.
I often wonder why I didn't adopt this method of filtering out the negative people out of my life sooner. Until I was 22, I genuinely tried so hard to be an extrovert. I wanted so badly to project the persona of being a potential "popular girl" without the pretext of experiencing what that actually feels like. I was plenty good at "faking it 'till I made it," but what I realized in reflecting on it now is that the faking it method led to me attracting people to me who were also faking a persona and who were also in the same cycle I was. I kept having these powerful, albeit short-lived, connections with people. We would bond over 2 or 3 common interests, hyper-focus on each other, and 6 months after that initial connection, the friendship would fade into the distance like a boat on the horizon - sometimes to return to harbor, but never to fully dock. It is both sad and insightful to analyze why this kept happening.
An absurd number of people will claim to not have experienced popularity, but that isn't how they were perceived. The difference between being genuinely unpopular and being popular and not realizing you were, is that being unpopular is something that not only builds more character but also forces you to rely more on your genuine skills. Unfortunately, so much of popularity relies heavily on being at the top of whatever hobby or craft you hyper-focus on - whether you are genuinely good at it or not - as well as looks. So, where does that leave the rest of us? Those of us who feel average and aren't feeling bad about it. Those of us who focus on our skills and being genuinely well-rounded people. Those of us who are constantly trying to be the best version of ourselves - even if that means avoiding other people for an unknown amount of time to achieve what we need to. We continue on our journeys to achieve the goals we have in mind. We find that we can read people and their intentions better as we get older. We make more genuine connections with more longer-lasting adoration built-in... Right?
