[SPA-ENG] Ladies of Hive Community Contest #64 | What I would have liked to know

English

What are you most grateful for right now?

It's amazing how reflective we get when the year is ending and a new one is beginning. We remember the good, the bad, the mistakes, the errors... and a whirlwind of things go through our minds. In my last therapy in 2021, I was talking to my psychologist about the things I would have liked to know ten years ago so that I wouldn't have had all the blows I've had.

I was telling her that I regretted not having gone to a psychologist years ago, that it would have saved me so many problems, false friendships, abusive relationships, unnecessary tears, fights, time... especially the latter. And I told her "I wasted so much time on silly and pointless things instead of focusing on my dreams." But she very wisely answered me: "precisely, everything you lived through led you here, without that you wouldn't have learned."

And it's true, I know what patterns not to keep repeating and on what basis I will raise my future children (if I have them in the end). But why do I still feel the same way? The problem is to continue living in the past and in what could or could not have been. That's the hardest thing about being human, focusing on the present, which is the only thing in our hands that we can control.

Looking back and seeing my evolution I feel proud, I embrace myself because doing therapy is the best decision I have made and, even though last year was not the best, the internal change I have had has been incredible, many of the mental "knots" I had have dissipated. There are still many more to untangle, but they are fewer and fewer. I still have so much to discover about myself, I feel that now I am really getting to know myself.

I no longer feel like I'm running aimlessly, I feel like I'm walking more consciously, really observing my reality.

I am going to share with you a few things that I would have liked to know and that I now understand well. If you are 20 years old or younger and you are reading me, even better! I will tell you what I would have liked to know at that age.

The judgements, comments, mockery, labels, prejudices, invalidations... that have been said to you at some points are the problem of the person who said them to you, it has more to do with them than with you, I assure you. You are not to blame for how they feel in their own skin, nor for the hurtful things they say out of the blue. We all put out what we carry inside, so imagine how people who only live to hurt others must feel inside.

Your family's frustrations have to do with the way they were raised. Chances are that your grandparents were frustrated in the same way, and if the wounds are not healed, they are passed on from generation to generation. As mental health has always been taboo, especially in the olden days, it is normal that we are all emotionally destroyed. Fortunately, nowadays this has been changing and fortunately these are different times, we have the opportunity to heal and break the cycle, to pass on the importance of mental health.

Only you can make the decision to change, no one can do it for you. It is true that we are the way we were raised, but as adults it is our choice to stay with the toxic patterns that were instilled in us or to open our minds and get rid of them with psychological help. Remember that they will always judge the family member who wants to break away from the herd, the member they see as happy and without all those mental knots. Deep down, they would like to do the same as you dare to do, but they don't want to and, in some cases, they really won't be able to do it, (because of some affective or personality disorders not treated in time, for example).

You are more than your physique. The body and youth are ephemeral, the physique will always go. What will take you far? Your mind and your heart, neither of those two things expire. I know it sounds cliché, but it's the truth, we don't get far by being the "most beautiful", what makes us leave our mark on the world is what comes from within us to leave something beautiful in others. And that doesn't come from physique, it comes from your essence.

If you were to take me back to January 2021, when I was extremely depressed, with no hope for anything, thinking I couldn't get out of the hole... and you told me that I would be this good now, I wouldn't have believed it. I wouldn't have imagined by mistake that I would be better. This speaks volumes about my evolution and growth. I still have a long way to go. I still have to understand that it is not every day that we can be happy and that there is nothing unusual about that.

It is literally one day at a time. That's why you have to focus on the present.