TENA'S WORLD

This is me. I know I have probably posted a 100 pictures of me on social media. But if you really look, you will see this is not the same me.

This me is smiling from the inside. This me is posing, showing my stomach, thirst trapping while being way too old, doing so many things that have made me so uncomfortable my whole life.

I have had body image issues for as long as I can remember. Like all the way back to 5th Grade, sitting in Mrs. Wamsley’s class and putting my Snoopy tote bag over my thighs because when I wore shorts my legs would look wider when I sat down in the chair, and I thought I was fat. I was 10.

How can a 10 year old little girl ever even have an understanding of what “fat” was, and how could I feel that way about myself?

Enter….worthiness.

I have done enough life work to understand why 10 year old me felt the way she did. Why 10 year old me turned into 50 year old me, still feeling the same way, still choosing to allow people in my life that made me feel that way, that was a lesson that was learned, and earned, the hard way.

To not feel worthy can completely alter what a person is, to what the person ends up becoming. You end up not loving yourself, feeling like you don’t deserve love, that are a burden to others if you need help, you allow people to treat you poorly, you lose the essence of who you are by trying to become what you think others will love. You can be told a million times how beautiful you are by some boys, but will morph, change, die to yourself for the one boy that treats you like shit, just longing to hear him say you are beautiful.

And they hold out on you, make you earn a simple compliment, showing you who is in control.

You see when there is no worthiness, it allows for people with narcissism to enter your life. They come in hot and fast, say and do all those things that you want to hear and tell you all the things they see that need fixing They fill those holes that make you feel empty by telling you that you are capable of doing things without help, making it easier for them to never offer help. What once felt like pride in your own abilities suddenly feels like you have taken on someone else's responsibilities and burdens. A bit of the light you once felt truly shined, is dimmed. You feel less, not enough, smaller. They entice you with attention, then oh so quickly, pull it right back and state that to receive that kind of attention again, well, that must be earned.

Now, the divine feminine part of myself, who thrives when she is pursued, made to feel safe, and feels protected, when she is simply be allowed to be her authentic self, is now forced into the role of the divine masculine. She must pursue him. She has to be presentable, pretty, behave, settle, put his wants before hers, feel ashamed, because she was never enough for him. Over pleasing, over doing, trying to get back that feeling of being desired.

It never comes.

The attention, the love, the empathy, the respect, the passion, the kindness, the softness, the humanness. It never comes.

Countless years spent at counselors. I would leave thinking, wow, he just mind tricked the counselor too. It was amazing to watch. I had such an odd but very real understanding of this behavior. It was like I wanted to believe he was this amazingly successful, strong, outgoing man. It is what he lead with when I met him and would lead with every single time he encountered a new person. My first impression was confidence. I was mistaken. It was insecurity. Huge difference.

But I knew, like in my gut, I knew, he was about 99% bullshit. He would speak so eloquently, and use all of the words he learned getting his English Degree , and put them together in such a way that the audience would be left thinking, damn, that’s a really smart guy!

I thought that. I can see now why. I had no idea it was happening at the time though. I can see how I went from feeling like a very strong, capable, empowered woman, to a version of myself I didn’t even recognize.

He would walk into a situation I was in, one where maybe a problem needed to be solved or a project completed, and I would immediately either do, or say out loud what I planned on doing to solve the problem or complete the project. Trying to avoid any criticism that I knew would come. However, as soon as I tried to beat him to it, he would stop me and say, “you know what I would do”, and then proceed to tell me something completely different, less efficient, usually made no sense, and then talk incessantly about what should be done, “the way he would do it”.

What that does, especially over time, is make you doubt yourself. That is how they do it. Nothing is more paralyzing than self doubt. If you pay attention to people, you can see it in real time. Self doubt. Simple things, a shot not taken, a hand that went to raise because you knew the right answer, only to pull it back right before the teacher glances your way, the boy across the room on his way to talk to the girl and suddenly “remembers” he needs to check his phone and never makes it to say hello.

Self doubt. If they can make you doubt yourself, the rest is just them being the puppeteer and you the puppet.

All human beings want to be love and respected. All of us. I believe it is essential to become a fully functional adult. Without that as a foundation, worthiness and self doubt just sabotage all the joy and potential for joy from your life.

Almost 2 years after leaving that relationship, I hear through friends and people I know, about what they thought of me, of us, of him. I have been told countless times, I just could never figure out how such a strong, capable woman ended up with someone like him.

I know why now. Brutal process, but I learned why. Narcissists are drawn to co-dependent people.

I learned what co-dependency is, what it means, and that I was indeed co-dependent. And I learned that being a narcissist is not just a saying, “he’s such a narcissist”. I always felt it was just a person that wanted to be the center of attention. It is that, but so much more. So very much more. It broke me. Destroyed me. Made me want to end my life.

But I learned, I suffered and did not quit, I had the courage to leave, I found my worthiness in myself.

Cancer was hard, but the cause of the cancer was harder. Surviving 18 years of absolute insanity makes things like Stage IV cancer feel like easy work.

It is my intention to share my journey, the good the bad and the ugly, because for most of my life, I felt very alone, full of shame, so sad, and no one should go through life feeling that way.