Clearing up my grounds

As I started this blog, there was so much I wanted to write about, preferringly all at the same time. But I'll try to slow my tempo down a bit, taking each and every subject and session one at a time.
What do you  need to know to be able to understand? What do I write to, as much as possible, strengthen others that have had similar lifes?
For me, the easiest is to write from my perspective here and now, from where I am today. Thoughts of today, uncensored. So I'll start with a introduction of what changed most of my way of living, emotionally and in my mind.

For three years ago, I broke down. I hit the famous wall, and it was then and there I started really wanting change. Although I was a successfull, middleaged woman, a strong single mother running my own buisness since eleven years and had a rich social life, I was never satisfied, never really happy. I was proud of my kids, of course, they to have grown up to be strong, caring humans although having to face tons of quite dramatic things in their lives. But for me, as a woman, I was always aiming for more, I could always do better, always be better. I never gave myself a break, in my mind I repeatedly slapped myself around for not ever being good enough, ever.
One of my employees (who became a good, dear friend by time) used to tell me to slow the heck down, breath, give myself credit. But no, I couldn't. What if someone saw the truth? What if someone discovered that I was useless, a lower kind of being? No, that could never happen, I wouldn't allow it!
So. Therapy - again - it was. As always I thought there would be a couple of months with a nice curator, turning myself inside and out, and then off to meds again, but not this time. Things changed for real, for life.

Somewhere in my mind I knew that I was fully enough. I was (and still am) a really good mother, and only that should be encouraging. I am so happy and proud that I haven't followed my mothers footsteps, not in any way. They say abusers bring up new abusers. Alcoholics raise new alcoholics, you know?
That never happened here. I thank any invisible god and power in the universe (no, I'm not a beliver really, but someone must have had my back and sent me a guardian angel from early age, otherwise I would have been dead by now...) for not going down that ugly road, for always loving my kids and treating them like any mother should.
It's not until recent years, and specifically the last one and a half year, that I've come to understand that I truly am amazing and quite unusual. I must also say, that any of this might not have been so obvious to me if I hadn't fallen into the care of my therapist. Maybe my life would have been ok without all this "selfdiscoveringchitchat", but I don't really know that.

Since early age 12, I've been to numerous of curators and psycoligists, eating one antidepressant medicine after another, always running straight down in the black hole if I stopped in therapy or with meds. Always hoping that this time would be the last, but always falling back in depressions.
But this time things are different. I've also chosen to surrender to "the big psyciatric investigation" whish gave a really good answer to just about everything. I have no diagnosis but "traumatized from happenings in childhood". I have also had, in my past, dissociative behaviours, but I've healed from that (that diagnosis I'm going to write a special chapter on here later on...) and no longer do I have different levels of emotional defence and "EP:s" (that is when you develop layers in your personality to soothe your feelings and all that). But again, more about that later.
I am considered really healthy, although my psyciatrist was stunned and happily amazed (her own words, spoken with big admiration in her eyes) that I've not ended up as an outcast drugaddict in the park. (Hm... It was kind of heartwarming to hear that, but confusing, because that has never ever occured to me to take on that road in life). The key to my, shall we call it success, was (according to her) my couriosity and ability to raise above and look at situations from above. That, and that I am unbelievably stubborn. Well. Thank you for those nice words!

For years (as I wrote in the chapter before this) I was convinced that I was stupid and disabled. What I didn't wrote was that I also thought I looked like a monster, a freak. Yes, for real. My posture made Quasimodo look like a ballerina, my entire being always tried to hide, to not being looked at. Ugly. A fear to the eye.
My first grade teacher (bless her) always told me to straighten up, to speak up, to keep eyecontact. To clean up my pretty face, to five myself a pat on the back for being so intelligent. She never gave up on me. But I never understood why I should straighten my spine and speak forward, instead of whisper to the ground. I can still hear her voice as she encouraged me not to whisper, but to speak louder, clearer.
There's nothing wrong with me and my looks. Not to my voice either. And even if there was, I would still be a good person, I would still have human rights. I would still be worthy of living a real life. Not a life locked away, not a life spitted on just for being alive. I am enough. I know that now, at age forty.
So. What changed me? Partly, I myself changed me. I also got a good amount of help from dynamic therapy and part of the way from mild antideppresant medications as a crutch along the road.
Could I have done all this emotional work all by my self? Maybe. But I wouldn't have allowed myself to feel so good about my own being, I wouldn't have seen the whole, nasty picture as it really was. Denial can be a strong force. Although knowing that my mother was wrong, I somehow had my doubts that she was entirely right about this freak to a child of hers...