Darkness before Light

I am Perfect and Whole

Growing up in a dysfunctional family, I always had the feeling of being defective, of being less than others. Shame and self-hatred enveloped my world.

I sought help in a myriad of ways. I joined spiritual programs, experimented with various religions and schools of spirituality, saw therapists, gobbled up self-improvement literature, had long conversations with people and friends on similar journey, went to meditation retreats, tried creative therapy, tried narrative therapy, and so forth. I looked in every direction for tools that could give me some respite from my darkness, and make me feel good about my world and my place within in. Well, each of these tool did provide me with some respite. But the darkness continued to exist within me – the inexplicable heaviness in my chest that would attack me at any given time during the day.

It was only during an interaction with a friend, when the friend pointed out that I was still living out the victim script in my life. I wanted to live a secure and stable life. I was afraid of making mistakes. I was frightened of experimenting and taking risks. And all that pointed towards the fact that I did not accept and forgive myself for the choices that I had made in my past.

That night, I went back home and took out the pictures from the various stages of my childhood and growing up. Each one of the pictures seemed to scream at me, ‘What have you done? How did we get here? In that moment I realized the amount of self hatred that I carried within me. I realized that I did not accept myself. I picked up the pictures, one by one, and started talking to them. I asked each of them to forgive me, to understand that I had done my best.  I slept very well that night.

And then the next day, the friend pointed out, “You have been trying to seek so many ways of fixing yourself. You seem to consider yourself as someone defective who needs to be fixed.”

This was another enlightenment for me. Memories came flooding back. How I had grown up with the feeling that I was defective that I there was something wrong with me. Relationships, money, career, achievements had not taken away that feeling. I still lived with that feeling everyday. It was evident in my choices and thoughts.

You committed the same mistake again. You lost the keys again. You cannot go out for lunch with a man, you don’t know how to handle them. Stay on the safe path lest you will make a mess of your life again. These were the thoughts that ruled my life. The past had a firm grip on my present, and the child within me was trapped.

As I became aware of these feelings and thoughts, I made a decision. The decision to love and accept myself completely as I was. The decision to accept my limitations and imperfections. The decision to accept my human-ness.

In that moment, I set myself free. In that moment, I became perfect and whole, as God had intended me to be.