A Love Letter to Self

Dear Mikayla, 

It sure has been a hell of a year, shit, it’s been a few or even several…. Who am I kidding, if anyone was actually counting, more years have looked a lot more like hell from the outside than not. But if they were close enough to know the truth, they’d know that the greatest growth and development came from those fiery pits. They’ve forged the very being you are today, Mikayla. 

These last 4 years have really taught you a lot about yourself haven’t they? It’s been entertaining to see how far you can soar when you thought you were buried too deep. Tucked away at the core of the Earth, smoldering, and becoming unrecognizable; and you were completely unfamiliar after so long. You were breaking down to the rawest form of yourself. Everything had been stripped away and you thought you had nothing left to live for, when truly it was just the excess weight that had to be trimmed away so you could rise when the time was right. You festered and reduced to embers while the Earth dramatically and fantastically cracked around you and crumbled away freeing you from the prison you’d allow to swallow you, but nothing could hold the energy of your spirit captive for long. While it seemed like disaster had struck and you were losing all that was familiar to you, you couldn’t see the ruin that had begun to rot. It became your norm, so you became used to the smell, you accepted it’s ugly, and took it as your own. When something is a constant for so long, what then is “normal” and what is terminal neglect? Between your bouts with Stockholm syndrome and manic depression you knew in your soul that you couldn’t survive in the environment you were in, but this was your life and you’ve vowed to take this journey with your partner to the end, come what may. But when the Earth began to rumble and its plates split apart, fear was the first reaction. Then came uncertainty, insecurity, and codependence, you had fully succumbed to self pity believing this was the worst thing that could happen to you.  Oh how you couldn’t be more wrong my love, but not all prisoners recognize freedom when it first appears. Thankfully you wouldn’t remain blind for too long, your vision was blurry just long enough, just until the tears dried. People started to see you, and offered you the chance to see yourself through their eyes, and boy did you really wake up and remember how beautiful you really are. When you aren’t playing the role someone else has imposed on you, a prisoner to your own desire to be desired and loved, just not for who you were. But not anymore. There was never anything wrong with who you are or who’ve you been because it’s always been about who you will become, and that’s where the focus deserves to be. You can see it much clearer now, can’t you? 

You can be thankful for the disaster and destruction now, now that the fruits of the work are beginning to show. It’s wild how hopeless it all seemed at first, but I’m thankful you held out and held on, because look at where you are now. You not only got to return to yourself but you got the opportunity to grow into the most authentic version of yourself. For years, you had dwelled in crippling social anxiety and mostly solitude. A lot of outside influences and substance abuse had diminished your self worth and self esteem, not to mention how codependency stripped you of a lifelong identity of independence and eccentricity. You were swallowed into a role and shaped by the judgement of those you sought approval from. It wouldn’t take you long before you were ready to burst from that captivity and find the comfort in your own skin again. You lead with more confidence than you ever have before, and you do your best to test and push the boundaries in place to keep the edge of that thrill. Existence has been your form of expression for a majority of your life, the best gift is having support while you navigate these new yet slightly familiar waters. May the best of opportunities continue to find their way to you, and may you remain tenacious in everything you wish to do. 

Healing isn’t linear, or so it’s been said, and you’ve found this to be true. While a lot of work has been done in the last four years, there’s also a fair amount of work remaining. Life manages to bring us back to triggering circumstances to test our reaction and whether or not our lesson has been embedded. You’ve become aware of a lot of mistakes you made in the past and are learning how to balance and maintain energies in high tension situations. Circumstances continue to show you who you are and how much you’ve invested and retained through this healing journey. Your progress has been evident and your action to improve is the key to overcoming the old habits and mistakes. You deserve the results of your actions, and may the results be the reason you are most motivated to continue the work. Trauma and mental illness have sent you full speed into war for most of your life, and in a great number of those cases it was necessary. At your place and stage of life, you remain wired for war, but no longer needed on the front lines. War has defined you because childhood and young adulthood was warfare, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Survival turned acts of desperation into normal behavioral patterns and any form of validation began the awakening of an insatiable hunger. As an adult with abandonment issues, you’ve managed to find yourself in some questionable situations haven’t you? An almost 10 year relationship left you gutted because you refused to admit to yourself years prior that it wasn’t a fit, instead you ended up married like that certificate was some sort of insurance that someone else wouldn’t leave. Thankfully it wasn’t, and more thankful to say that would never happen to the woman you are today. I’d say you definitely learned the most from that experience. A peculiar blessing and lesson it would be that your marriage would provide the blaring message that self sacrifice is not love, just as self abandonment is not love. With that said you learned from that experience what love is not. Or better yet, the kind of love you couldn’t and wouldn’t settle for.

Consequently, you had to remind yourself what that looked and felt like to be loved, and loved in *your* language. It also didn’t seem to make much sense that anyone else could be allowed to have part in the early stages of your journey, at least not until you could love yourself first and foremost. You’ve learned the power of forgiving yourself and allowing yourself to be a work in progress, and more importantly you’ve accepted that this is how the rest of life is meant to be. Progression and growth are signs of life, and you’re opting to exist in the present to embrace that feeling entirely. Taking care of yourself, your mind, body, and spirit are taking a lot of effort and rewiring, and it’s showing up in so many of the little things in your life. You’ve given yourself the opportunity to fall, crawl, and walk again. You stand in a place where you’re doing things you wouldn’t have dared to dream of years ago. Wounds are surfacing and properly medicated, while life continues to offer challenges and opportunities almost hand in hand. You can see how fortunate you’ve been, and you see how far you’ve come, just imagine how much further you will go! You’ve not only endured but you’ve risen above the frequent challenges and have made the most out of nothing at all. That’s something to be proud of. Forgive yourself and forget all the guilt you’ve made yourself to feel when your spirit has been beaten into exhaustion and your body has surrendered in more ways than one. You deserve to love and take care of yourself regardless of the circumstances, you come first, you are your priority.   Thank you for choosing to love yourself first, to love yourself MOST, and love yourself above all, because if you’ve learned one thing for sure; it’s that the people who genuinely love you will be the ones who never leave and will always support you on your self love journey. They really are the secret sauce 😉 (Just like all of you reading this)

The world’s your oyster! At this moment you are the head chef of a really cool establishment, and have been for almost a year now. You have a kind and loving partner who adores you, a boss who inspires and appreciates you, and two sweet little fuzzbutt cuddle companions. You’ve rekindled old friendships, had opportunities to make new friends, and have placed necessary distance between other relationships and friendships. All in all you have worked on doing exactly what is necessary to take care of yourself rather than shrinking and going silent for the comfort of everyone else around. I can’t express how fucking proud I am of you for that, it’s a challenge still we recognize, but you’re learning new things about your boundaries and how you can be more successful at enforcing them. These are monumental changes and they promise a better outcome. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next <3

I’m rooting for you every step of the way boo thang,

Mikayla L. Castillo

aka

Miki Len 😉