“I have the right to have the right” has been the greatest aha moments of my life.
I was reading Louis Hay on one of my worst nights and she asked this question: What do you want? I paralyzed. Blank. I wanted and needed so many things in that very moment. I had to leave behind all the life I built for my daughter and I when everything seemed impossible. We got at my sister’s house in Madrid with a few suitcases. I felt that I let my daughter down. The jobs I had didn’t give me enough to move to our own place.
The answer should have been easy. But no. All I felt was guilt. Who said I could ask for what I wanted?
But then I made this exercise up. I was going to give myself the permission to say anything I wanted in one minute, that nobody would know, not even God, and after that I promised I would go back to “normal.” You’ll know what I asked for at the end of this post.
I realized that I had never asked myself, “What do I want?” because when I wanted something I felt that I didn't deserve it, that it was selfish to ask. That I was taking something from others. From life. It’s important to ask ourselves what do we want, it doesn’t matter if we don’t know. We don’t have to know. It’s ok not to know, but we have the right to always ask. Do you even ask?
I thought I had to pay to be able to deserve anything, not with cash, no. With hard work, sacrifice, pain, accepting humiliation, crossing my mental, spiritual and physical boundaries and capabilities, and nothing was ever enough to deserve, to have the right, like for example, rest, a five minute nap.
Years later I was in my session with my counselor, Charity, working once again on how to be free from guilt. I had already understood for a while that I wasn’t, but I hadn’t felt it yet. My head and my heart weren’t synchronized. But that day something happened, a click. Somebody turned the light on and I could see for the first time. I realized the lie I had lived.
Almost forty-five years of my life wasted. I cried and cried. I cried for the death of that part of me. I mourned. Numb. I was cold. Shipwrecked. Chestless. Too much space, but that space was necessary to let the healthy new me grow. Start from zero. Rebirth.
The first days while going in the car I looked through the window observing everything, the sky, the trees, people, from a peaceful place inside of me. I wasn’t stealing anything from anybody, or from life. I didn’t have to pay anymore because I deserved to feel anything good. It was my choice. Not others’. I didn’t know that I had the right to feel anything good or pleasant because simply I had the right to make that decision or to make that choice.
It took a long way to get to this point in my life. There were many ups and downs, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis and Springs, a couple of sunrises here and there, a colorful flower growing through a crack in the cement. I could never tell how close I was to freeing myself from those chains, honestly, but I never gave up.
Nobody should have the power or the right to tell you that you don’t have the right or you don’t deserve. We don’t know this when we go through abuse and trauma. We learn to feel a lie. We learn to think a lie. The truth is that we have the power and the right to have the right. We can have that power back. We deserve that. It’s a rough trip when we don’t know, but we can learn even when it looks and feels impossible. I had absolutely no idea that it existed. I just knew I didn’t want to feel rotten, scared, tired anymore. And I tried this, and that. Over. And over. Until I made it.
“No matter what happened before now you deserve to be happy.”
My abuse wasn’t my fault, I didn’t do anything wrong. It was in my hands now. It sounded so hard and difficult. Painful. But it was the only way. I had no idea how much I could do even when I didn’t have one atom of strength left. But there’s more. I swear. I looked for the tinniest spark hidden in the darkness and started with that. I worked and I’m still working on accepting who I am, who I’m being, what I have done and what I haven’t done. I can’t change what happened in the past, but what now. I decided to change my present. That’s my power. My right. I can change now, we can change now.
You have The Right To Have The Right. Feel. Want. Dream. Think. Rest. Cry. Rest. Laugh. Scream. Ask. Fight. Fall. Rise. Fail. Rise. Fear. Heal. Trust. Be. Live.
As I promised. I didn’t ask for a big house, or money, or a good job.
I wanted a family.
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