Acceptance at 39yrs old

Have you ever thought that you accepted yourself fully, only to realize there were conditions placed upon that acceptance?

Today, I am 39 years old and there have been points in my life when I realized I had stopped making progress with my self-esteem and my emotions.
I would make some positive shifts that remained with me, like eating healthier and phasing out negative friends.  I felt like I was finally getting clear on what I wanted my life to look like and discarding the rest.  I was no longer a slave to all the self-doubt and anxiety that plagued me as a teen and in my early twenties.

I was still experiencing some of the same old negative feelings I always had, like dreading certain social situations and despite all my progress, I somehow still felt a little behind everyone else. 

I would still slip into self-sabotaging thoughts, mentally talking down to myself when I didn't achieve perfection. I would still compare myself to others my age, coming up with stories as to why they were “better” or “further ahead” than I was.
Despite knowing how critical it was for me to stop doing this, the sense of self doubt seemed overwhelming and inevitable at certain times.  Knowing these issues were still present meant I could sort of abandon them inside me. 

During this time, I dwelled hard.  Unfortunately, I am a massive dweller, I didn't reach out to anyone. I felt a nauseating fear in the pit of my stomach that made me want to give up on everything. The light at the end of the tunnel had all but flickered out. Convinced that I was alone in these feelings, I stubbornly forgot that other people went through these same emotions all the time.

“I'm not normal. I've learned nothing after all this time. I'm foolish and completely hopeless. Who would even want to be around someone like me?”

These may seem like words from the journal of a severely depressed, or maybe even suicidal person. When you read these words you might think, “Eek. I can't believe that you have shared that publicly!”  But in truth, these are just two of the sentences I spewed out into a Word document on a particularly bad day.

I no longer buy in to the belief that these kinds of thoughts make me “bad” or a “failure”.  I've learned not to restrict myself when I'm venting onto a blank page. I dig deep into the negativity I feel, because if I don't, I truly don't know what emotions lie beneath the surface or why they even exist inside me.

Sometimes we don't really know how we feel until we start expressing it.  I have always thought that this is when we can easily surprise ourselves with beliefs and emotions we didn't even know existed within us.

It takes time, effort, courage, and brutal honesty to get acquainted with your email, especially those that are deep and dark.  My natural instinct is to just run and run but I know I need to dedicate myself to my shadows rather than condemning them.
These emotions, I know don't make me bad, they don't make me worthless, and they don't mean that I am batshit crazy. They are simply the heavier, unacknowledged sensations waiting to be heard and healed—waiting for their moment in the spotlight.

These scary dark emotions rise up not so we can feel ashamed, but so we can integrate them and forgive ourselves. This process is the foundation of healing, self-care, and self-acceptance.

For many of you, just like me, self-acceptance is a foreign path that we only embark on after years of self-rejection.
A lot of the things you must allow yourself to do will seem counter-intuitive, like expressing dark thoughts or letting yourself surrender to pain rather than fighting it.

I know now that I am in a steady momentum of positive habits that I know definitely will make my lows less treacherous. Having that stable found of self-respect already built into my daily life will remind me that it's ok to struggle every now and again.

Struggle is temporary. Struggle makes me human, and it certainly doesn't make me any less whole.