God, the amount of times I’ve written about change, about wanting to change, about my thoughts on how futile the idea of people changing is.. Needless to say, my opinions on “change” have, well, changed a lot. That is due to my back and forth relationship with the concept. It’s easy to say “Things will never change” or “People are incapable of change” when you’re in that dire situation, especially when you’re back in it for the umpteenth time. And it would be ridiculous for me to say that this time I know for sure whether change is possible, this is just another one of those times where my opinions are definitely influenced by my current situation but I will say I have learned something that has changed the way I think about this whole subject. Now, I think people can indeed change. It’s just not as simple as this happens so now I change, and that change isn’t guaranteed to remain. It’s this constant battle between what you are comfortable and familiar with versus the motivation or reason that you have to break away from that familiarity.

This post is a little inspired from advice I have recently given but something I noticed was advice I quite haven’t taken myself. It was to try and change for yourself, not for someone else because missing someone you care about or love.. wanting them back in your life is a hell of a motivation to get you to change. I mean it. It’s incredibly effective, there’s nothing better to want to uproot your life and fix everything you, your family, or your loved ones deemed problematic. You want them back or you just want to stop seeing them hurt. I’ve been on both ends of this plenty of times. People will easily do a complete 180 just to fix what they broke or lost. The problem with that, is that change is something that has to be continuous.. you’ve got to keep working at breaking your ways of coping. We’re habitual, and we will keep doing what we know works. That’s what makes us feel comfortable and safe. However, that motivation of getting someone back kind of drops drastically once you get that person back. Sure, there’s the motivation that comes with now having them back and not wanting to lose them again. But whether we like to admit it or not, the motivation to keep a good feeling, to keep a person in your life isn’t nearly as strong as the one that comes from wanting to stop that pit in our chest and our heart from losing someone. We will always work harder to stop feeling something that hurts us than to keep something that makes us happy. I’ve been down that road so many times, and I learned to not take someone’s pleas that things will be different this time, that they’re sorry. And on the other side of that, I’ve also learned not to trust myself either when it comes to wanting to change because I miss someone or I’ve hurt someone and I want to make amends.

I made a change a couple months back. I made the decision to finally cut the shit I’ve been going through, this constant cycle that was just becoming exhausting. Sure, I nearly relapsed because the feeling of missing someone is incredibly overwhelming, but I didn’t want to change for them. And as much as I love the person I have in my life I didn’t change for them either, at least not entirely. I don’t want to fuck up what I have and that fear of going through what I’ve gone through again just with somebody new is definitely a strong motivator but I know no matter what I do that fear isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Instead I took a hard look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I hated myself and I had different reasons as to why but what I didn’t understand was why I was the way I am. It wasn’t until I watched “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” with Lili did I see this pattern of obsessive tendencies, of desperate and crazy validations for feeling the way I felt, drastic mood swings, and the need to see the world and the people around me through the lens of, well in the main character’s case it was musicals, but for me it was movies and TV shows just to more easily understand life and it’s complexities. Ironic, that it took me seeing myself in a TV show to see how problematic my seeing myself in TV shows have been… It did though make me realize that maybe I actually did have BPD like I thought I might had a few years back, and it directed me towards DBT therapy which has helped given me that direction and goal I’ve been searching for for years.

That’s what’s motivating me now. This idea that I’m on the path of bettering myself, for myself and for the others around me. Perhaps I’m a bit too reliant on this therapy, it was brought up that maybe I’d have to stop it for a bit if I needed to move elsewhere and that made my heart sink.. I’ve got separation anxiety for this and perhaps that’s something I need to work on in time, but as of right now I don’t think it’s that unthinkable that the thought of losing something in my life that’s helped keep me stable (at least more than I have been in the past) will make me extremely anxious. However I’m still optimistic that I’m truly on a better path than I have been. I’ve saved enough money to finally move out (thanks to me not noticing I’ve been accidentally charged each paycheck for an insurance I wasn’t getting through the company.. it’s almost like I had my own savings account I’d been saving up without even being aware of it), which I’m hoping to do real soon. Already have the place picked out, the one thing that’s holding me back is making sure my mom’s going to be taken care of but I’ve already talked with my brother and he supports my decision and he’s going to stay. He told me “Don’t worry about me, I got my chance to be free, to live on my own. Now you need yours.” And I can’t even begin to describe how thankful I am for my brother, he’s always been there for me. He was the first person I wanted to go to when I was afraid I was going to kill myself in senior year, and he’s the first person I went to for advice and guidance when I’ve now wanted to finally start living my life.

It’s a little too early to tell. Therapy’s still been a rocky road and my moods have been a roller coaster as of late but I have someone who makes me happy, I have friends who are supportive and for the most part understand what it is I’m going through, a brother who doesn’t quite understand but cares enough to want to help anyway, and a future I’m really looking forward to. Maybe things are finally on the up and up (or more realistically in my case, on the up and down and up and down.. with a little more ups than the downs). We’ll see…

-T.