I'm Getting Married

to myself, Dennis Rodman style lol

One thing about me is, I’m gonna be slowly learning the same life lessons over and over until I die. This used to discourage me into giving up before I started, until someone graciously gave me the insight that I’m not going in flat circles, I’m going in a spiral and the spiral is going somewhere: upwards.

So much of what I write about is the recovery of being bogged down by the religious shit of the 90’s I experienced as a young girl, but there’s other stuff woven into my undoings, like the codependency I took on from childhood and have been working my way out of since forever.

I’ve been on a mission for over a year to take radical responsibility for my life. My experience. My inner thought world. My emotions. My energy. My home’s energy. My success, or lack thereof. My everything. I finally decided I was gonna quit blaming anyone else because as it turns out sitting around bitching and blaming wasn’t very fun for me. I wasn’t getting any happier. In fact I was getting madder, and sadder. Coincidentally it also wasn’t very productive.

I think it took me so long to explore the role of self-responsibility for a few reasons. First, liberals hate anything that smells like bootstrapping, and as somebody who has desperately needed to be seen as good within whatever I identify as, I felt like I wasn’t allowed to say that it seemed possible that I was responsible for some of my own suffering, even the part that involves finances.

Secondly, I think my experience with organized religion really tired me out on the concept of self-discipline before adulthood even started. It’s not that what I was being taught was all bad, it’s just that it was always framed as punishing, and I was doing it for someone else’s rules and direction, not my own instinct. And when you’re not learning how to find or trust your instincts, you’re doing stuff just because They Said So, and that isn’t sustainable. I saw self-discipline as punitive, so I mostly threw it out.

But the past two years I’ve been reframing. What if self-discipline isn’t just punishing. What if it’s like really intense love, what if it’s a key to a portal toward the freedom and peace that I want to feel. I’ve learned to say, “Yes, and.” As in, “Yes, there is a lot for me to be enraged about and complain about. And, I’m going to show up for my own success and peace anyway. Simply because it feels better.”

It got me thinking about how pretty much my whole life has been codependent. With parents, an ex-husband, some fucked up version of God I was handed, sometimes my children, the list goes on. I always had someone else I could hand off the responsibility to. All the pleas I’d hear passing through my lips were always directed to everyone but myself.

I wish you respected me enough to listen to how I feel.
I wish you could make me feel treasured and cherished.
I feel like you don’t appreciate me and all of my hard work.
I wish you’d slow down to be curious and present with me.
I’m so frustrated trying to get you to hear me.

It’s finally clicking that the calls are coming from inside the house, babe. If I am pleading with anyone - friend, family, partner, whoever - to respect me enough to listen to how I feel, to appreciate me or be present with me, then maybe I actually need to respect myself enough to stop putting so much responsibility on people who clearly can’t hold it. Maybe I actually need to respect myself by learning to stop giving my energy away to people who haven’t shown they can be trusted with it.

Maybe I need to respect myself enough to stop putting myself in situations where I find myself begging for what I said was a non-negotiable. If I am longing to feel treasured, it might be time to treasure myself. If I am longing for presence and respect, perhaps it’s time I give myself presence and respect. If I am longing to feel in control of my energy and emotions, maybe I need to stop handing that control over to others.

And that’s where I am. Loving myself so much, I feel like proposing, like I can’t let this one get away. I feel like romancing myself, buying a dress, putting on a ring, and always showing up for myself in all the ways I’ve always longed for. I feel like vowing to her in front of the world that I am going to save all my best energy and care just for her. I’m going to love, protect, and cherish her with reckless abandon, til death do us part.

As the saying goes: “I do.”

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My name’s Jolie, I’m a 30-something single mom in Columbus, Ohio writing about my life and healing post religion and marriage. You can connect with me here on Instagram, and you can hear more about the coaching work I do full time here. If you’re interested in working with me as your coach, you can always book a call to talk with me about it here. Thanks for being here reading, subscribing, and sharing. XOXO