● Am I Just A Shadow?
❥┃ Who am I really? I feel like I'm a stranger to myself, like I'm watching a hollow shell of my former self move through life. It's as if I'm observing myself from the outside, watching a person who only casts a shadow walking. The person I used to be feels so far away, like a distant memory that I can barely grasp. It's like a part of me is missing, and I'm lost without the sadness and pain that used to define me, or at least felt like the biggest way that I use to define myself.
I no longer cry myself to sleep like I used to. The absence of those tears makes me feel like I lost a part of myself. Those bad experiences and pain they brought were part of what made me who I am or who I was, at least I think so anyway. If it wasn't for those experiences, would I still be me? Would I just be a better version of who I am now and who I use to be? I'm not really sure who I'm supposed to be without them. Writing this makes me notice how stupid it sounds to have a whole personality based on just my negative emotions while ignoring the positive ones. I don't understand why it's so hard to see the good within myself and only focusing on the bad as if it's what shaped my own reality. But isn't it true that some part of it affected who I am now?
It's like I'm stuck in a void that’s suffocating me from within. Almost like I'm becoming someone I don't recognize, someone I'm not use to being. Someone who is numb and disconnected from everything around me. Learning to navigate these new emotions or lack of certain ones, or more like less of the negative ones.
It's not like they are removed and gone completely. But my normal baseline was always low and now it seems balance Strange and different. These changes make me question who I am and who I'm supposed to be or who I want to be.
I'm afraid that without the sadness, I won't know how to define myself anymore, like the label is what made me or a label is a way to define me. I guess it just felt safe, knowing I didn't have to think or create a version of myself for myself. I can just be the version that the label represents to feel like I am something or that I belong to something or somewhere.
The best way I can explain it is like a music artist who writes a sad song about heart break. Lots of their songs are good, but in order to have written those songs, a lot of the times one must experience some sort of pain to reflect and express that into music. Not saying that happy music isn't a thing, as there is a lot of it.
But most of my life I've been writing sad music in my inner world and only listening to those sad songs and lyrics in my own head, creating a version of myself that sees the world from the lens of someone who is broken.
So I'm lost, searching for a sense of identity. Am I losing my mind? Have I been saved, or have I been changed? What does it even mean to be saved? The person I used to be, the one filled with pain and sadness, was someone I no longer wanted to be. I was so tired of it all, on the brink of ending everything. Now I'm in a better place, yet I feel like I've lost a big part of myself.
But is that a good or a bad thing? The part I lost was the version of me that was always crying and sad every night. I still cry, I still get upset, I still have all these emotions that keep me up at night overthinking every convo I've ever had, no matter how small.
It's been years, and I thought I lost my creativity, my purpose. I used to think my only purpose was to be sad, that without sadness my life had no meaning, my world had no lyrics I could read or listen too so to speak or without the sad songs my life wasn't worth listening to which is such a toxic mentality to have.
I'm afraid of being happy. I always have been You know when you're happy it almost seems like time goes by way too fast then you end up at some point in time where shit goes wrong, and you realize how far forward you have moved from your past, and then it all hits you all at once feeling like a lot of wasted time depending on what negative experience happened at that moment to make you reflect on time itself.
It's all so overwhelming, and I'm just so incredibly tired, tired of finding purpose, tired of trying to live up to expectations, tired of being replaced as if my only value is in terms of what I can provide or do for someone else. Chasing ambition or success instead of just enjoying and living a life I can be happy with. Why do I let the perspective of others weigh on me so heavily, as if they are the ones living my life?
I'm afraid. I desire happiness, yet fear it at the same time. Why are my emotions so conflicting? How is it possible to see myself in such a negative light, but I can see those I care for in such a positive one despite their negative traits? I’m my own biggest critic, walking around all the time judging myself so harshly, never giving myself space to breathe to truly reflect on myself and my life.┃ ―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
⎡ I was reading my journal, going over a lot of different things that I have wrote in the past. This is one of those. I just posted it as it was years ago, and it was nice to sort of reflect and look back at how I used to be and where I am now. Seeing my perspective change on certain aspect of life and of myself. ⎦
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