Thursday’s child has far to go

I was born on a Thursday. The 21 of November, to be exact, at 1. 20 in the morning. I was told I could have gotten a perfect score, but I was born with the umbilical cord around my neck. Very Chekhov’s gun of me, considering the depression and the suicidal tendencies. It was a more discreet arrival for me after my sister chose to come out with her arm raised; she has always managed to attract attention. I find myself thinking more and more about this connection between my birthday and the nursery rhyme. I keep on thinking of my life and what I have achieved, and still, the only thought is that Thursday’s child has far to go.

One of the meanings is that there is a long, successful life without limitations, going far in life. That is for sure one of the fantasies that I have always had. I have always thought that there will be a bigger picture that I am not seeing, a greater purpose that I have, and it will be revealed. I have fully bought into the Disney image that you will have a tough start, but something will happen, the world will realise what a mystical unicorn I am, and everything will go my way for once. Gather enough good karma, and the fairy-tale ending will not be far behind. All the villains will be punished, and all the goodhearted characters will get rewarded for their trouble. I had spent so much time by myself that this was one of the ways to entertain myself. I could remember having full conversations and making up full stories in my head for hours because I was lonely. I did not create stories because I was creative; I became creative because I had to be.  Furthermore, I was watching reels on Instagram, and one of them mentioned children who talk to themselves as a coping mechanism because they felt like it was not safe to talk to anybody about their feelings, and it made me cry. Even now, I go walking, and I talk to myself. I let Bruno off the lead, and I walk around, and I talk, allowed in the night, looking at the stars. I want to think that this is all for a wonderful future to come, character development, but for now, the fairy tale ending just doesn’t seem like it is the right meaning.

Another meaning is that the child will go on a journey. That is indeed the one I like most. It is truly my life’s dream to travel the world. I used to watch so many travelling shows and used to imagine that I would be able to go and see them all, walk the same paths, smell, and eat the same food, and soak in the atmosphere. Learn from other cultures, have my ideas challenged and let the world be my teacher. My parents never really travelled anywhere. When we were young, we went to the same seaside resort, to the same hotel all the time, or we would go to see my dad’s parents in the countryside. My parents never showed any interest in going abroad. I have been living in the UK for almost 10 years, and I am still sorry that I didn’t get to see more of Romania before I left. I wish I had been a tourist in my own country. I now live in Scotland, and I have seen more places here, and I have a list to see more still.

I want to be able to see at least one city in every country in the world, but I am so scared of travelling by myself. I have so many fears around it. To be honest, I have a lot of fears about doing things alone. I have said in the past about going by myself to the cinema or doing it by myself for a meal, and people kept on suggesting that this would be something lame and they would either offer alternatives like doing it together on another day or simply another activity on the same day. This is social conditioning, and it just keeps me trapped in this idea that I can’t do things on my own, that I need somebody as company or as a guide. It enforces the idea that I need somebody else to regulate my emotions, or I need somebody else to save me. This is such a huge problem for me that I have this limiting belief. On the one hand, there are all the things that I want to see, and I want to experience; on the other, there is the belief that if something goes wrong, I might not be able to manage it, and in this mismatch of beliefs, I remain paralysed. Before I can start doing this big physical journey, I need to be further along on my spiritual mission.

This image brings us beautifully to the third meaning that Thursday will struggle. This is the meaning that sounds closest to the truth for me at the moment. It feels like a mountain, and I go up the slope, working on the issue, and every time I sort things, I think I've got to the top and lo and behold, it isn’t the peak. It is just another leg of the journey completed. I started out thinking that I have done therapy for so many months and then I came to a stable place and things got easy so that must have meant that I was done and I patted myself on the back and congratulated myself for doing the work and then I realised that I still needed help and then I went back to therapy and I started to dig deeper and I started to wonder how many session it will need to be cured. It became obvious quite quickly that I would be cured as such that I would just have to learn how to manage things and if I become ware of where the issue lays and how my patterns work and what I need to do to take healthy decisions then that will be enough, and this is an ongoing process that I have to accept, and I have to manage for the entire life. Dug a bit deeper, climbed a bit higher, connected so many more dots and kept on climbing that mountain and for a long time, there was a plateau, and I imagined myself at the top again. Patted myself on the back again and figured I had this figured out. Boy, did I fall into a ditch and roll in a valley.

I am now three years into this process, and I have changed three therapists. I have moved from CBT to Jungian psychoanalysis. I have awareness, and I have the skills that I worked so hard to acquire, and now I am learning to accept all parts of me, and once all those parts have been resolved, they can be integrated. And at this time, I feel that everything I have worked on until now has just given me enough strengths and it just removed the scab and the scar tissue that had formed over these wounds and now, that they are all raw and I am poking them with a stick and what I feel most of all is anger and out of all emotions I do the worst with feeling anger.

I absolutely hate people telling me that I should only have positive vibes or that I should think positive thoughts. I hate people saying that I should be grateful for what I have and that I should consider how other people have it worse. All of these are good pieces of advice, but there is a time and a place for these pieces of advice. If I am in a place where I am trying to express my emotions and express my pain, and I get told that I should only have good vibes when the state of mind that I am in is utter depression, then this is not helpful advice. This becomes an expression of the other person being triggered or not being able to take on my energy, and as they become uncomfortable, they use this message to shut down the emotion and put an end to a situation. Your feelings are making me feel uncomfortable, so you should stop feeling your emotions and change course.

I get that on the other side of the spectrum is trauma dumping. I have been guilty of this myself on various occasions because when I started to unravel the thread of my issues, there was so much to process, and it took over all of my thoughts and all of my discussions. I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I was not aware of the energy that I was spreading, and I was not aware of the effect that I had on others. I would not take the time to make sure that they were comfortable and ready to receive the information that I was giving them, and when they were struggling themselves, I would trigger them even more and force them to come on my journey. This was not done out of ill will, but I was struggling so much, and I was turning every conversation into a focus group and holding on to anybody that would listen to a buoy in my storm. I have not had experience with effective and healthy communication in my family, but I am trying my best with the little that I have.

It is a matter of whether I isolate and process everything by myself, which means that I am not asking for help, and I am not meant to be hyper independent, as that is a poor coping mechanism too.  If I say all that, I feel I am being too needy, or I am trauma dumping. I feel damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Some people also try to tell me how I should feel my emotions and what I shouldn’t feel which to me is not right either because all of my problems have come from tagging my feeling as unsafe and blocking them or not being able to say how I feel, not being able to say the things that have happened to me because people might judge me for them and they might push me away because of them. I know that some people are trying to help, and they have good intentions when they are doing this. One should be aware of what help is being asked for and how help is being given. If you are shouting at me that you want to help and raise your voice with anger, telling me how I should go about fixing my life, I am sorry, but it is not the right way to go about it.

The reason that therapy works so well for me is that I can be authentic, and I can share everything that I feel, and there is no expectation whatsoever for me to be in any way other than truthful. No thought or idea is viewed as good or bad. What is brought into question is whether this idea helped or hurt you, and if it hurt you, why do you hold on to it? The sessions allow me to speak about myself and workshop all of my thoughts and set them free. I know for a fact that, at the moment, I am still trying my best to be a good listener but, I know for a fact that I don’t fact the strength to keep my own emotions in check and break from my own patterns of blocking their emotions to be able to allow for space for the other person like my therapist does for me.

From time to time, I go through checkpoints, and I try to see where I am. I try to take stock of all that I have learned, and I try to be aware of how much I have come and be proud of myself. I can still see that some of my patterns are repeating, I can see that sometimes I am drawn to my own ways and other times I can stop the dangers and navigate them. Thursday's child has far to go, but I am determined that I will do what it takes to heal my wounds and live the life that I was meant to lead.