I am Worthy of a Life that Reflects my Spirit

Around the years 2021 to 2023 I started waking up sad every morning. My eyes would automatically fill up with tears and my spirit felt heavy and dejected. I told this to my counselor today in therapy.  My Counselor asked me if it was despair, I was feeling, If it was because I was not looking forward to the day ahead, because of my job at the time was chaotic but I told her the job was only one part of it. I woke up not recognizing any part of my life nothing felt meaningful, nothing felt like mine.  I felt like every detail and aspect of my life was accumulation of things I picked up trying to do what other people wanted both inside and outside. Trying to be less emotional, trying be less ADHD, less dyslexic. Trying to get a job that made my parents happy and trying to get my life together so they would stop worrying and leave me in peace. Trying to make others happy. I woke up one day almost everyone was gone, and not alive anymore, and nothing that I wanted in my life and no one was happy, especially me.

Today at counseling I began saying how I think you can create each today. This idea came from journaling session I did where I talked about my existential boredom that is always hanging around these days like it was a person. It told me it needed to run around and jump and skip like a kid, a spirit wild and free and it told me that I needed meaning and purpose in my life.

As I journaled about this meaning and purpose, I realized that I had a new idea about purpose and meaning. Before I felt like purpose and meaning was something outside of me something that maybe God created and I had to find it like a quest for the Holy Grail. My purpose was big, and outside me and I had to find it. Now I think my purpose and meaning is what gets me out of bed in the morning, not like an alarm clock but something that would make that sad girl happy to be alive for another day.

To my counselor I listed, good food, friends that make feel emotionally safe to just show up as me without having to adapt myself in some way and I am sure there is more.

As I got dressed after showering, I looked around my room. It was a little messy and I thought about what I said about my life not feeling like mine. By mine I mean It was reflecting my depressed me, adhd me, Zoe who struggles, Zoe who has no friends, Zoe who believes she is worthless and unworthy of friends. I am talking about the stuff in my room, my apartment that doesn’t feel like me but also my job, my friends and how I spend my time and my thoughts I think.

It wasn’t showcasing or reflecting my spirit. Does this make sense? I didn’t know that I could design a life around my spirit. I thought I had to do what everyone else was doing, to do what I was told, to earn kindness, to earn good things, I thought I had to be cool and to be cool is to blend in and to fit in.

My spirit is precious like a baby, a child, a beloved pet, a unicorn, or a fairy. Everyone has a spirit, and each one is unique but like a beloved pet or child. To me this means worthy of unconditional love without a doubt, worthy of being ooh and awed over. This is a new understanding for me. I have now learned to look at my spirit as a pet I take care of. I love my animal friends-the pets I have taken care of in my life. I see my spirit this way now and now feel the same level of heartbreak for myself I would feel for any of my beloved pets or any young child who told me that they felt unimportant or worthless. There isn’t a sadder story, no death or tragedy that can compare to child who has learned to hate themselves or see themselves as worthless.

Now, it makes no sense to me to not make a life that doesn’t reflect my spirit.

It only makes sense to make a life that, does, reflect my spirit.

I am a weirdo and use everything I spend my time doing as a way to look at my life. I have been playing alot of Animal Crossing as you are all aware. Animal Crossing is all about collecting and collecting what you like, to decorate your house with the things that make you smile.   Create a house decorated with books, pick wallpaper that makes it look like your wall to wall with shelves, add some physical shelves of books, and a cozy sitting area with a fireplace, and a couple of tables for piles of books and snacks. Today I was thinking I need to change one of my rooms in my Animal Crossing home to be for dancing, a jukebox and a disco ball and an otherwise empty room to dance around in.

If this apartment, my real-life apartment, was an Animal Crossing home, what would I have to change out to make my apartment and my life match my spirit. What wallpaper and objects do I need? What do I need to discard?

I am an emotional person- I cry, I laugh, I run around with spirit and glee, I jump for joy, I get scared, I panic. All my emotions use to bother people. They would call me too sensitive and say I feel too much. I am overreacting. I used to believe them and try to feel less. It didn’t work. I just felt sad and depressed. Now I let feelings run wild and free. All my emotions are welcome. All of them. I have learn to sit with them and be with them, they don’t act out when you have tea with them and give them space to hear like in my art therapy exercise or journaling. That’s why I love art, music, movies and novels, they are all made with emotions, the emotions are art materials like paint or spices.  Otherwise, it would be math, logic and spread sheets that’s cool but its not me. I like symphonies, I like good books and that makes me laugh and cry.  I need a room with tissues. I need a room with ways to process how I feel through art and writing. I need lots of chocolate.  I actually have come to love all my emotions. All of them. Even sadness, even fear, even anxiety.  Why do we have scenes in movies like the in Lion King where Simba’s dad has died and Simba is all alone or at the end of the movie, when Simba is taking his rightful place as king after feeling like outcast, unworthy of his place as king, because it makes us feel and feeling even sadness feels good like music vibrating through the instruments of our heart. Why do we love haunted houses at Halloween time because it’s fun to get a little scared, it’s even more fun when the sense of relief comes over you.

I love interior decorating, always have. I always thought that it might be job I would like to have. That’s why I loved The Sims so much growing up, and Animal Crossing now and youtube channels like Caroline Winkler who is an interior designer. Caroline Winkler is also someone who has shared that she started her YouTube channel during a period of time in her life when life felt meaningless and she was at her lowest. Where something inside her said, “do what you love, what you want to do or perish.”

I feel like I never stay on topic but now I am shifting to another emotional truth connected or not. Another thinking I love to do, is talk, I love to talk, writing is just talking recorded on paper and I also love connecting seemingly unconnected things together.

I thought the job I got in 2019 was my happily after ever despite getting it one month after the death of my mother.  It was the job I dreamt of on paper, full-time library job not requiring a master’s degree with freaking unheard of benefits, In a small community, only 30 minutes from my home. I would get to write and help create newsletters and marketing flyers and help create library programs. I saw myself staying there forever. We would make cool stuff together. I love reading. I also see libraries and see them as creative hubs where you can get connected to other people who like what you like, like in Animal Crossing and honestly I just love seeing people nerding out and like what they like. I love seeing people in their enthusiasm so much so that if they like something I have never tried and never thought I would try their enthusiasm would get me to try it. I love places that connect people and create community. And my happily ever after turned into a happily ever after nightmare. The dream I envisioned collapsed almost immediately after I signed on. It included cruel coworkers, massive amounts of confusion, fighting, people abruptly quitting. I was forced to look at my shame and internal belief of being broken. If this is a fairy tale and that job looked like a glass slipper it ended up being too tight, pinching my feet and causing me blisters and it broke my heart already broken and submerged in grief.

That job did not reflect my spirit in the end but parts of it did.

Small town, community, connecting, nerding out, program creation, books, computers, enthusiasts, writing, new experiences,

What more reflects my spirit:

Friendship, kindness, harmony, warmth, teamwork, spirit, joy, understanding, love, time outside, games, fun, laughing, uplifting myself and others, good food, peace and ease, and warmth

The funny thing is, I used to think, “what did I do to get this job?” There must have been something wrong with me. I now know, if it doesn’t fit and or feel good it’s not the meant fit, the job, the friend, the home, the partner , the whatever and also and this might be crazy, but now also believe that everything I was met with at that job and during that period of time even outside of that job was reflecting some part of me that thought thats what I was worth, the parts of the job and my apartment that I don’t like I deserved.  I deserved unkind coworkers, I deserved a messy apartment, and I deserved things falling apart. I didn’t think I was worthy of the life that my spirit had envisioned at the time.

It’s funny because I am suddenly aware of that all the things that made my spirit sad -all the unworthiness I now realize I have power to change it by just choosing different and I realized that none of those things, the feelings of brokenness and unworthiness, not fitting in, needing to be cool, do what I am told, earn my place, none of these beliefs were mine in the first place. It’s like I inherited or accumulated a pile of possessions some treasure but also some absolute junk, broken objects, dust and garbage, and this can be literal or figurative, either way not mine and I can now choose what I keep. I am not the shame from being different, from being neurodiverse (ADHD.  dyslexic, autistic, HSP ) and not fitting the mold. I am not my mess the mess is from me believing I am messy and accepting the messiness. I am not saying that I am not allowed to be messy or make mistakes, that’s what my perfectionism would tell me. What I mean to say is my spirit is like a child, wild and creative and loving and imperfect and worth of unconditional love, worthy of a fairy tale love , I can choose spirit and choose that I am worthy of unconditional love or I can choose “money” I am using money to represent -a worthiness that is conditional, based upon merit and a very specific societal mold of being everything I am not  and being “cool” ,  which will always be and pay me short of my worth.

I am my spirit- wild spirit free, who feels emotions like colors. I am what I love. I am worthy of a life that reflects my spirit. I know what I am worth now. Its far more than money could ever account for. I am worth a life that reflects my spirit every facet of it and the depth and width. I am worthy of a life that can match me for laughs and smiles. In my spirit I am unconditionally worthy of love, a fairy tale love, it goes on and on and on and on and doesn’t make sense and for no reason, just for me being who I am. A child forgetting her worthiness and reclaiming-is a fairy tale with a happy ending, to laugh and cry over.