All my life I have been blowing in the wind, bending this way and that, adapting to my environment, trying to establish a control over all my relationships so that I wouldn’t get hurt. At school when I was teased I pretended I was OK, I was tough, I didn’t need anyone and shut everyone out. I tried to be ‘good’ and not upset any of the teachers.

When I left school and went to University I struggled with the course; it took me four years with re-sits to get the three year degree but I laughed it off and pretended I was having a great time.

When I went into a career, with every job I adapted to what I thought I needed to be at work as an employee, and as a manager.

When I was married I tried to get it right at home as a wife, with friends as a friend and then with the children as a mother.

By the time I got divorced I was miserable and hugely overweight, so I lived on my own for five years and worked on my Livingness, refining the food I ate and slowly the weight dropped off and I was back to my ‘normal’ slim self, thinking I had left my old life behind.

I was thrilled when a new man came into my life and looked forward to our new life together. Only 18 months into the relationship I was back to being overweight and miserable inside. Only 10kgs this time but enough to know that something was still wrong.

On reflection I could see that once again I had given my power away, adapting everything I did to fit in with what I thought was wanted, despite being told to just be myself. Somehow it felt like I couldn’t get anything right and the constant barrage of what I took as criticism slowly wore me down because I silently accepted everything for the sake of the relationship.

The hurt, the pain and the overwhelm I experienced was huge when I realised that I had repeated the same old pattern and set myself up for another failed relationship… and all because I did not fully express who I was at any moment in time.

Some of us tolerate abuse without question, sometimes without even realising it is abuse and then once we do it is sometimes too late because we have allowed resentment to build up. We then react to everything, which offers little opportunity for a reconciliation because we have let things get so bad it feels like the relationship is beyond repair.

That is how the world is too, on the macro scale. We have let corruption, jealousy, greed, competition and comparison get to such a high level we feel unable to stop it. We are being railroaded by systems that do not truly care for the people they are supposed to be supporting.

Q: How can we prevent more harm happening in the future on the micro as well as the macro scale?

A: By speaking up. By calling out wherever we feel there is abuse and by honouring what we feel in our bodies and expressing it regardless of the outcome.

We have been so conditioned throughout the centuries by abuse, torture and death that somewhere deeply embedded in our psyche is the belief that speaking out is dangerous to our survival so we clam up. Evil continues because we say nothing. This has to stop if the world is going to change.

The world’s change begins with the self when we individually choose to not accept self-abuse and to stop being so accommodating with others, no longer ‘blowing in the wind’ but calling out anything we can feel in our bodies that is not love.

By Anonymous

Related Reading:
My understanding of abuse
From self-abuse – to self-care
How to truly express yourself