Sarah Smith’s Path to Healing

Hey you,

Something unexpected happened today… I was actually triggered. I think that was the first time in months. It has been a while since I was so triggered that I wasn’t able to distance the story from the moment.

I was in a call with a group of people I meet with to learn more about core energetics, and one of the women was talking about how her daughters don’t tidy their rooms and how she feels like she has to do most things in the house and everything seems to be her responsibility, and that the daughters should keep their rooms tidy.

I was back at my parents’ house emotionally. I was back in that old room of mine that was always tidy, because if it wasn’t, we would have been hit or we would not be allowed to leave our rooms for at least a day, or until it was to my father’s standard. Even my mum forced us to keep our room tidy. We weren’t hit if it was messy, but our toys were thrown away if it wasn’t clean.

It seems to me such a silly topic to get upset about… but for me, my room was a safe space. It was my space. It was the only space that I had any real control over, and even that was taken from me.

My parents would dictate what I was to eat, when I was to eat, when I would go to bed, how to spend my free time, who to be with, what I could watch or listen to… I don’t think there was an aspect in my life that I had control over.

The thing that truly upset me, though, was the fact that it had a massive impact on my adult life.

I literally could not bring myself to keep my flat or room clean. I could not bring myself to live in a tidy space because it always felt like I was losing control again.

I love having a clean space. I feel good when I have a clean kitchen or a clean bathroom. I feel good when my bed is made or my blankets on the sofa are neat. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, because I did not want to live the life that was forced on me.

I realised today that my parents took the only space that was mine and decided how I should shape it. They chose the colours, the bedding, the tidiness. Everything about my “space” was theirs…

So I made my space, after leaving, into MY space by letting it be messy.

I would rather hate the space I am in than lose the only control I feel I have.

How could I have ever loved myself like that? That’s not an accusation… it’s more a realisation.

How could I love myself if I constantly chose to live in a space I hated just so I could feel like I am in control?

Control isn’t love. Earned trust is love.

Maybe that’s why I am able to keep my space a little cleaner now… because I have earned my trust. I don’t need to be in control anymore because I don’t fear that my space might be taken from me… or maybe I trust myself enough now to know that I will fight for me.

Either way… I am grateful for how I chose to live, even if everyone else condemned me for it.

Thank you for choosing to hate yourself for long enough so that I could learn to love myself.

We are done hating now… we are done controlling now.

It’s time to trust and it’s time to love. We are allowed to choose ourselves now, because I will protect the space we built and I will protect the core you chose to set free.

I will protect that authentic you by setting healthy boundaries.

Thank you for everything you did to protect this.

Lots of love,

Me