What does independence mean to you?
I looked up the meaning of independence & it said……
‘one can live a life of his own choice when he/she is economically or emotionally independent’
Well, emotional independence is what happened to me when I understood about the negative voice that was in my head. The one we call the script.
You see that negative voice had kept me a prisoner in my own head all my life. And the worst thing was I thought that negative voice was me until, I understood how it worked. I actually felt like I was going crazy because it was telling me, all the time day after day, that I was a useless person. A bad person, a bad mother, that I was stupid etc etc. It went on & on & on day & night. I just couldn’t shut it up.
For years it stopped me living life to the full because it told me I couldn’t do things. I wasn’t good enough, it stopped me from reaching my potential. Because it told me everyone else was better than me. So it wasn’t worth me even trying, it told me I was a bad mother, a useless wife. After all I had been divorced twice & dragged my children through the ups & downs with me.
So you see I believed everything it told me & every day I had a civil war going on in my head. It just made me feel small & insignificant, like I wasn’t worth anything. When I was awake it was beating me down and when I tried to sleep at night it did the same. There was no getting away from it, I was a prisoner in my own head.
The hardest thing for me was that by listening to this voice I had no idea what my purpose was in this world. After all there had better be a good purpose if it was putting me through all this shit! But I had absolutely no idea who I was.
But when I learnt & understood what that negative voice was doing & how it worked it was like it set me free. I understood that I could actually choose how I felt & that the negative voice wasn’t me. Wasn’t who I really am, after all it couldn’t be me as I was the one listening to it! Well, that was when I discovered I could be emotionally independent. I could be me, the me that had always been there but had got lost & bogged down in life. Because I had been listening to that negative voice and worst of all I had believed it was me!
Knowing that I could choose how I felt each day and enjoy life how I chose to was life changing. Knowing that I could have shit in my life but that didn’t mean ‘I’ was shit was life changing for me. To know that I could separate from that negative voice because that voice wasn’t me was life changing for me too.
Now I can love life. I can get up grateful for each day & choose to see life as a journey, my journey. Like a film where I’m the producer writing my own lines and that choice allows me to be emotionally independent.
That voice didn’t go away, it still whispers in my ear. But I now know I have the freedom to choose not to listen to it and just ignore it. I can choose to separate myself from it & be free from it.
So that’s what independence means to me.
Love from Tracey