I give up

“To heal a wound you must stop scratching it.”

-Paulo Coelho

My father has badly hurt my feelings, time and again. I hold terrible grudges against him since childhood. He has let me down throughout childhood and has never admitted to his mistakes. He is extremely selfish even when he is supposed to be a “caregiver” according to the universal rule of our society. Needless to say, I end up having expectations from him (really basic ones, I swear!) which always remain unfulfilled. He only cares about himself and his convenience at all times.

Yesterday, I felt extremely helpless. Even though he hasn’t fulfilled his moral obligations towards me, I am expected and obligated to do so. Whenever I am asked to do this, all the memories of being terribly hurt in the past, disappointments, unfulfilled wishes, unmet expectations come rushing back to me and I feel helpless. He has absolutely “NO RIGHT” to expect anything from me, yet he does so, with pride. I end up screaming, yelling, trying to bring some sense into him without respite. Nothing works, nothing has ever worked when it comes to this man.

I have no choice left but to give up.

I give up having expectations from him, of any kind or nature whatsoever

I absolutely do not give him power to make me feel helpless and hopeless in life

I take back his ability to act as a hindrance in my journey of personal growth

I do not wish to enter into conflicts of any kind or nature with him

I take total responsibility of building my life from scratch and do not expect any help or support, whether emotional or financial from him

I will fulfill all my obligations towards him without fighting it (whenever I have tried to fight my way out of this, they end up mounting and become multi fold. The Universe is never in sync with my escape attempts and wants me to go through this pain. All I can do is change my attitude towards it so that it stops hurting me or have any impact on me.)

This is not a one time process and will require daily dedicated practice till the time I am immune to this pain and don’t allow such situations to have an adverse impact on my mental health. I wish to never feel hopeless and helpless in my life anymore due to such situations.

I’ll try to use the following techniques to deal with such situations whenever I need to encounter them :-

• Take deep breaths when the mind starts churning out negative thoughts at the speed of light
• Calm yourself down, go for a walk or a stroll, listen to music, write in your journal, do anything that works to divert your mind from the current situation
• Be quiet, try to avoid conversation with the person who is the source of your pain (in my case I end up using harsh words to prove my point which ends up making me feel guilty without having any impact on the person)
• Know that you are NOT at fault here, you are NOT being punished, nothing is being taken away from you, you are NOT destined to be unhappy or in pain, this is NOT your reality. The Universe always has a way of balancing things out, GIVE with an open heart and positive mindset
• You are HELPING someone out of their misery, you ARE doing a good deed, try to avoid taking such situations to heart, have NO expectations in return

I somehow feel that this the thing that has been holding me back all this while. If I make a tiny change in my mindset, I can look forward to a fulfilled and abundant life.

To each his own

#40/100

One of my close friends is going through a difficult phase in her life currently. She isn’t able to be at peace and happy with the proceedings in her life. I, including our other close friends tried to calm her down, give her solutions, tried to make her see the silver lining in her current situation. Somehow, she isn’t able to do that and it makes me helpless to the point of feeling frustrated. I’m not able to understand my behaviour.

I have gone through such difficult times too in my life. I try to keep such things to myself and get better on my own. It takes a long while but I get past the hurdles eventually. I feel helpless when my closed ones go through such situations. More so, when I’m not able to make them feel better. As a spectator, I can clearly find a solution to each of their problems. But when I go through a difficult phase, my mind blocks out any sense of relief or possible solution to make me feel better. Nothing seems practical and I’m not able to find sense in any of the solutions provided to me by anyone else. Being in misery and pain is really awful. Deep inside you know that you want to be happy but being in distress somehow feels easier than working on finding a way out. It’s always easier to quit than run the extra mile in a marathon. But the runner in me never likes to quit even if the pain gets unbearable. During one of my recent prolonged episode of anxiety and depression, happiness felt like a distant dream. I was irked with every single detail of my life and just wanted to quit everything and do nothing. After days of feeling absolutely terrible and sad, one fine day my mind reached it’s limit. It didn’t want to be the spoilsport anymore. I decided to live in the present, be grateful for whatever I have in life and find happiness in small things. These are truly my mantras for living a peaceful and happy life and they have been working wonders for me.

I’ve tried telling this to my friend but it’s very hard for her to make sense of this. I’m trying very hard to make her understand and motivate her to work on her happiness but she needs some time. Pain and sorrow are a part and parcel of our life. Life is too long and filled with uncomfortable incidents that are bound to make us jittery. The only thing that matters is the manner in which we handle them and grow stronger with each such situation. I hope my friend feels better soon. I remember when she was going through a horrible phase some years back and truly felt that was the end of her. But she got through that and I’m sure she’ll get through this too. There’s always a silver lining.