How to Re-build From Scratch?
How do you even begin to start relearning everything you've learned?
For as long as I can remember, I've struggled. I don't remember the blind happiness so many people seem to experience. They don't need to have a specific reason for being happy, they just are. Life itself is a reason to rejoice, waking up everyday is a reason to give thanks, and simply being brings about a sense of purpose. But what if that isn't second nature to you? What if waking up everyday is hard, what if living your life is a constant struggle? How do you learn happiness? There are certain things in my life that prevent me from being truly happy, from experiencing and truly living my life. But those are the things on which I've built my life. I dont remember a time or place where I didn't bring these beliefs and actions with me. I don't remember a time where they weren't present. I'm sure there was a time, in fact I know there was, but I don't remember what it feels like. I don't remember how it was to simply be alive. And now, I'm being told that everything I managed to teach myself is wrong. Everything I took for truth is a lie. Everything I've put my faith in is untrustworthy. Living my life this way is killing me. After so long, how do you tear everything down and start over again. I've come to define myself in certain ways, I've come to judge myself (however irrationally) on these false beliefs and now I'm being told to discard them. Something that has taken me over nine years to learn is supposed to be torn down. But where does that leave me? Where do I stand after everything I've used to define myself, to find who I am, is stolen? What's left of me? What's left underneath? Nothing? Then I have to spend another nine years re-defining myself, re-building from the ground up? Or is there more to me than I give myself credit for? I don't believe that, but believing anything else is dangerous. If I can't find who I am underneath this all then do I really have a life worth living? If this defines me, becomes who I am, there's nothing to live for. So in order to re-build everything from scratch I have to first believe in myself. I have to first believe that I am worth fighting for, that I have value just by being me. In order to re-learn everything on which I've based my life, I must first tear down all my false beliefs and empty meanings and start with nothing. I must break myself in order to live again.