Your Story is Still Yours
Originally published on November 05th, 2019
It feels like it’s been a while since I did the whole “here’s a story from my life and here’s a lesson I learned from it” thing, but here we are again. This is a format I know well, so hopefully I’ll get this written and published by tomorrow (I’m writing this on the 04th, it’s supposed to go up on the 05th, and I’m hoping you’re not reading this on the 15th because I procrastinated too much).
Anyway, so, as you may know, I have returned to weekly counseling. I chose to do this for a number of reasons, and the thing that officially made me go back is a story I’m writing for later this month (hopefully… I do have finals soon, though, so we’ll see). The main reason I went back was because I was starting to experience similar feelings to the beginning of my senior year and to how I felt while taking my class back in August. I was nearing compassion fatigue + total breakdown territory. So I made an appointment, had an intake, and then got an email to schedule my official return to weekly counseling.
As of writing this I’ve had two sessions, and I have my third this afternoon. It’s been going pretty well. I go in, we make tea, and then I kind of ramble on about what’s been going on and my therapist somehow manages to take my rambles and make a coherent point out of them. One of the big things she pulled out of my word jumble during the first session was that I seem to give my whole self away when trying to help others. In other words, when I’m listening to someone explain something that’s going on in their lives, I (like most people, I assume) am able to relate to what they’re going through by taking a story from my own experience and remembering how it felt when something similar happened to me. However, instead of leaving it there with a healthy amount of empathy, over the years I have somehow managed to think it makes more sense to then give the other person ownership of my own story. So then whenever I think of my own experience, it somehow becomes connected to the other person and I don’t think of my own self having lived that experience anymore.
Another thing I’ve learned about myself over the last couple weeks is I seem to have this inability to believe that my happiness is just as important as me caring about and for others when they aren’t okay. As an example, A Wrinkle in Time was a really good experience for me. I’m very thankful for it. I got to play a character I love, around people I love, and other people I love came to see it. I was always excited about rehearsals, and I was so sad when it ended. However, there were people around me who had a hard time with parts of the show (to put it very simplistically). Over the last few months, I have stopped thinking of AWIT as having been something really beautiful and good to thinking of it having been something that was bad and that caused a lot of problems. I took this story and experience from my own life and forgot that I lived it. In trying to make sure everyone around me was okay, I forgot that I was there too.
I’m still trying to figure out where to go from here. Like I said, I have another counseling session this afternoon and I’m hoping I’ll start making progress on this whole thing soon. But for now, here’s a reminder for me and maybe for you too- Your story is still yours. No matter how much you focus on other people, or how much you stuff your own happiness down. Your story belongs to you, and you get to claim it no matter what. Yeah, being there for the people you love is important. But don’t forget to be there for yourself, too. Be thankful for the good things around you. Appreciate the little things, take care of yourself, and let your story stay yours.