The story of Erica

Who is Erica is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot after finally forcing myself to deeply reflect on how I’ve shown up in the world and treated myself and others. Most of my life I haven’t wanted to see: myself, my actions, what I had created for myself or what had happened to me. I played the victim while scapegoating others to make myself look and feel better. I’ve done this so many times and in the process have hurt others and deeply con-fused myself while never taking responsibility for myself.

So.. who is Erica?

She’s been a princess, a bitch, judgemental, seething, jealous, envious, two faced, dissociated, blind, confused, airhead, narcissistic, avoider, user, entitled, self centered, superficial, fake, a copy cat, liar, thief, pretend, insecure, mean.

This is who I’ve been but not who I consciously choose to be moving forward. The problem was I couldn’t see myself or how my actions were affecting others. I always heavily lied to myself and my default would be to also lie to others. I would know what I was doing but would self convince myself otherwise. I would scapegoat and deflect blame onto others because I couldn’t possibly be the problem. No accountability or self respect. If you can’t be honest with yourself how will you ever be able to be honest with others? How will you be able to make a change? Or heal your past?

I didn’t like my story or who I had been so I deleted it and I now fully realize that would never and will never work. You cannot delete your past/ pretend it didn’t happen. You can try but you cannot simply delete yourself because you don’t like who you’ve been. Trust me I’ve tried.

I’ve severely self limited myself throughout my life and have always had other people do mostly everything for me. I’ve kept friends and partners around based on what they could do for me. I used others and in the process coned myself out of a lot of really expansive life experiences of learning who I am and what I like and don’t like. I’ve never even gotten my drivers license: never having been in the drivers seat of my own life.

To be continued