I Want to Write

 After a year away, I figured I'd start writing here again. 

I'm not sure why it's so difficult for me to maintain this blog. 
I enjoy it a lot, it lets me escape for a couple hours, get deep in my head and think hard about what it is I want to say to whoever reads this thing. 

I was reading my previous posts and I must say I'm proud of them, I have always found a love for writing. I think what gets me so hung up on this blog is that I have no idea what people think when they read it, do they like it? Do they think it's stupid? Did they find a spelling error? Do they even care about my eating disorder? My kid? Being a mom? Are they making fun of me? Do they care about my therapy work? Do they talk shit about it with their friends? 

Madison, 

Who the fuck cares. 

This is my new mantra. 
I have cared so much, for my entire life, about what people think of me. I would do anything to make someone happy, even if it inconvenienced me to the highest level. As long as I got their stamp of approval, all was well for me. 

But, fuck that. 
I am human, I have flaws, I have strengths, I have a voice and I'll be damned if I waste any more of my life's time not using it. 

I have wasted so much time pretending to be someone I wasn't, silencing myself for other's benefit and comfort. It has taken me so long, so many difficult paths, to come into myself and this realization. 

This is where I could bring in my eating disorder's back story (as if it's just a single story and doesn't at all have hundreds of moving parts), but, I'm on a roll. 

Anyway, 

If people don't like me, that's their problem. If they think that the things I care about are stupid, that's their prerogative; they must care about other things that I don't care about and that's my prerogative. 

Once I removed the heavy weight off of my shoulders that forced me to be a two faced you-know-what, I was no longer fighting in a battle field with my own mind.

I can tell people no? I can tell them what I think? 
And if they get mad I can .. Walk away? 

Wow, I have the fucking power.
I am literally Eleven from Stranger Things. 
I am a badass woman. 

When I began working on this 'concept' in analysis (as in psychoanalysis, as in Freud, as in.. Just Google it), I had a very frank conversation with Joe, my analyst. 

Joe: "Madi, when they speak to you that way, humiliate you and borderline harass you like that, simply because you think differently than them, you can say 'If you don't stop acting like this and disrespecting me, I am going to leave'. 
Madi: *silence*
Joe: "What stops you from doing that? Saying stop, leaving? What would happen if you said/did those things?"
Madi: "I didn't know I could"

I wasn't exaggerating. I honestly, whole-heartedly, did not know I could make others take my needs into consideration; it just wasn't how I was raised.

I grew up in a violent household, there was a lot of anger around me at all times. Such big emotions surrounded me constantly, which made me uncomfortable, but there wasn't room for me to say that; not that anyone would have considered it in the midst of the dumpster fire we were all living in. And I knew, if I did say anything, I would be told: "Don't be a cry baby" or "Be a big girl", with lots and lots of anger behind those words. In the moments I fought for myself, I was met with shame from an adult; really, really big amounts of shame.

So, I have been a big girl, I haven't been a cry baby. In fact, I have kept myself, my truest self, completely silent in order to protect myself. I have done whatever I needed to do to keep the boat afloat for everyone else. 

But, fuck that. It's exhausting, humiliating and miserable. 

I'm ready to show everyone who I am, and I am ready to be challenged with moments where I have to advocate for myself, my daughter, my partner, my family. 
I welcome it now, and that is such a freeing statement. 

I encourage you to welcome it, too, no matter how scary it is. If this is something you struggle with, I'm glad you made it to this part in this post, because I am living, breathing proof of the statement "You matter, too" :)

-Madi