Expectations...the only ones you are required to live by, are your own.

“Expectations, they are all around us, they come from others, our environment and most of the time from ourselves.”

At the age of 19 it came time for me to leave the place that had been my version of home in search of a new place, and so I went far.  I travelled hundreds of kms away from the one person in the entire world I never wanted to leave.  Almost as much as I didn’t want to leave Michelle, I knew I couldn’t stay.  I needed another opportunity.  So, at a small university in a small northern town I set off on a journey with no connections to anyone.  Being alone gave me the chance to become my own version of self.   There was no one there who assumed to know who I was based on someone else’s story.  For once, it was my turn to write, and the next stories would be mine to tell.

This chance, this escape, was kind of like being reborn again with no expectations but more importantly with no judgements.  The self I presented to others didn’t get clouded by any part of my history that I didn’t want to be there.  As I travelled my journey in northern Ontario and into the rest of my life, I realised something.   While I had successfully left the physical beings that put me down and doubted my ability to achieve in my past, bits of their negativity had made its way into my future.  Some of what they had said had made their way into my head and I had translated them into my own inner voice. 

I lived with those voices for a long time.  Sometimes they told me that I wasn’t good enough, or laughed at me, and sometimes they screamed mean things that made me cry.  But no matter how loud the voices or the consistency of their message, my will was stronger and I believed in something else.  I believed that not only could I prove the voices wrong, but I could rid myself of them for good.

Ridding myself of the negative inner-critique wasn’t easy and at times there are moments still when I hear their faint whisper of doubt.  My will to out-speak the voices in my head was powerful, but it required me to not only to view myself in another way, but to also speak differently to myself.  So, I chose to internalise the kindness I gave to the world.  I was committed to caring for my spirit, my integrity and my inner beauty before giving anything up.

As I move through the years and the experiences in my life, I have built up an awareness of my inner self-talk, now I know which words are mine and which messages of doubt are someone else’s.  It is often said that awareness of a problem is always the first step.  I believe that awareness is the only step preventing me from caring for self or not.