Tag: addiction

I used to think becoming meant turning into someone new.

A destined version of myself.

A chosen reality.

Someone I could design, choose, and finally become.

Lately, I’ve realized becoming has very little to do with becoming at all.

It is the slow, intentional act of stripping away everything that is not you.

Everything that was handed to you.

Everything you carried because someone else taught you to.

Everything that was never yours to begin with.

For forty-two years, I accumulated layers that did not belong to me.

Other people’s opinions.

Generational trauma passed down like an inheritance.

Twisted family dynamics.

Expectations I never agreed to, but somehow learned to obey.

My own habit of people-pleasing.

My desperate attempts to become someone worth staying for.

Somewhere along the way, I buried my true self beneath the expectations and needs of others.

Alcohol was woven into my childhood.

By the time I became an adult, I thought I was making my own choices.

Looking back, I can see I was also carrying an inheritance I had never questioned.

I carried it differently than my parents did.

Better, maybe.

Quieter, maybe.

But I was still carrying the weight of something that was never truly mine.

That realization changed something in me.

One day I found myself asking,

“How much of this is really mine?”

I couldn’t even remember the night before.

How could I possibly remember when this started?

What was mine?

What had simply been handed to me?

What did I actually want?

Who did I want to become?

Somewhere between putting down the bottle and picking up my own life, I realized I had spent decades carrying names, expectations, fears, and roles that never belonged to me.

I had spent so much of my life becoming what other people needed.

Family.

Friends.

The men in my relationships.

I knew how to become useful.

Needed.

Comfortable.

Easy to keep around.

But I realized I was not the woman I needed.

That realization haunted me.

It also became the catalyst for change.

For the past eighteen months, I have been slowly shedding layers.

One choice at a time.

One truth at a time.

One old pattern at a time.

I have learned that a big part of becoming is defining and releasing everything you are not.

It has not been easy.

The trauma gets loud.

The old wounds get loud.

The uncertainty gets loud.

Some days, everything I am trying to release competes for my attention and tries to convince me to pick it back up.

But each time, I have a choice.

I can keep carrying what no longer serves me.

Or I can lay it down and step into the light a little more.

The more I leave behind, the more clearly I recognize the woman in the mirror.

Her boundaries.

Her needs.

Her opinions.

Her beliefs.

Her voice.

She was there all along.

I just couldn’t see her beneath everything I was carrying.

Becoming is not adding another layer.

It is finally having the courage to remove one.

I used to believe becoming required finding someone new.

Now I think it requires trusting the person who has been quietly waiting underneath everything else.

Maybe she was never lost.

Maybe she was simply buried.

I do not have to try to be anything.

I just am.

Finally.