Taking the Power Back

For the past two days I've felt completely paralyzed. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't smile. I can't move. My bed has become my island and everything that surrounds it is hot lava. I honestly want to venture out of self-induced isolation, but I am afraid to get burned. The world doesn't seem safe right now so I'd rather be alone.

Looking back, I think this started with the confrontation online the other night. After talking it out with Blake's family and a couple of his friends, they reassured me that they were supportive of whatever I felt was right. They never saw my actions as tarnishing Blake's memory and urged me to brush off comments made by people who don't know me and my real intentions. I was comforted by this, but still there was a small seed of insecurity planted in my head.

This seed was watered the other night after another jarring conversation, this time with someone who knew Blake very well. I'm not going to go into details out of respect for that person, but this interaction set me back to the time right after Blake's death when I was questioning everything. Did I know him at all? Was everything a lie? Did he ever love me? It felt like this person enjoyed saying things to have these questions resurface, even after I explicitly explained how the way they were saying things made me feel. I should've let it go. I should've backed away. But I continued to push back, thinking that maybe somehow I could change their mind.

People have told me a thousand times at this point that I need to find inner confidence in knowing who Blake really was, what he wanted, and how truly in love we were. If I am at a place where I let that guide me, no one can rattle me. I have nothing to prove to anyone. Negative comments or critiques won't touch me because I know the real truth.

I am giving people way too much power over me. I refer to myself as a people pleaser, but pleasing other people should never be at my own expense. I can still strive to make people feel comfortable, happy, and loved without taking away from my own comfort, happiness, and love for myself. Every time I give someone the power to instill doubt or insecurity in me, I am chipping away at my self worth. If I cross that line and don't respect my own right to these things, no one will.

That's not to say I need to be selfish and only worry about my own wants and needs, because that would make me no better than the people who have gone out of their way to put me down. Instead, I need to protect myself above all else. There is absolutely no reason for me to waste two days of my life paralyzed on an island of my own making. I say "my own making" because I can't blame the conversations or the two people I had them with for getting me to this point. No one put me here but myself. It was my own decision to let these things affect me in a way that caused me to shut down. I need to take the power back.