I am sitting here contemplating my life. In particular I am thinking about how I have allowed my fears to decide my choices in life. My main fear has been a fear of people and the way people will judge everything about you–the way they criticize you and condemn you and basically tear you apart for every flaw that you possess, every mistake you’ve ever made in your life, every negative opinion they hold of you regardless if it is an accurate reflection of who you are.
I know that you shouldn’t look backwards with regret. It’s a pointless thing to do and it’s something in which I try not to indulge; but it is not always easy to maintain a forward focus and avoid allowing your thoughts to go back to times in your life when things happened to you that were harmful to your development. I certainly had more than my fair share of experiences with people judging me and criticizing me and condemning me–starting way too early in my life; and it had a severely detrimental impact.
The fact is, people are going to do what they’re going to do. They’re going to think and believe what they’re going to think and believe. You simply cannot live your life in fear of people’s opinions about you. Are people going to judge you? Yes. Your own family will judge you. Sometimes they judge you more harshly than anyone else. They scrutinize you. They pick at you. They point out your every flaw every chance they get. They try to embarrass you. They try to make you feel shame. This is the way of life. You cannot do anything to control other people’s thoughts and their actions. The only power you have is the power to control your own thoughts and your own actions. The funny thing is, that’s the only power you need; but some people don’t get the magnitude of that point. I didn’t get it when it mattered. I allowed people’s opinions of me to decide what I deserved in life. I allowed myself to believe that I was nothing and I was nobody and I deserved nothing good in life. So I ended up with the life I allowed myself to believe I deserved based on how people made me feel about myself.
Today I understand the magnitude of that point. You can’t control people’s thoughts and actions, but you can control your own thoughts and your own actions, and more to the point, you can control your reactions to people’s thoughts and actions; but I fear that it’s too late now for me to do anything with that knowledge. Who knows what I could have been had I known when I was a young girl what I know now that I’m a grown woman? I don’t know what I could have been. I had many dreams. With some self believe I could have turned any of those dreams into a reality that I live today; but it makes no difference what could have been. The question is, what am I going to do now? Am I going to continue to allow people’s opinions to decide my choices? Because if you ask everybody else, it’s certainly too late for me now. My life is basically over. Will I accept this to be the truth of the matter–wake up and stop dreaming and accept my life for what it is? Or will I now fight to get the life I want for myself regardless who thinks it’s too late and I don’t deserve other than the life I have. Because my life is not over until my life is actually over; and until then I have a choice to continue as I am or to at least try to get some value out of the life I have left to live.
