Please Welcome: Buzzword *Resilience*
I don’t only work in an industry where the keyword RESILIENCE has been thrown around like confetti at a carnival as of late, but I also had to learn to be resilient in my personal life and boy, am I tired of hearing it.
I am by no means implying that resilience is not a great personality trait to inhabit but I do feel covering every struggle with the power of resilience is a bit like coating an onion in chocolate. An onion famously has many layers and so do we humans. Saying that, the phrase is also a tad misleading. Yes, each layer of an onion is just as edible as the next, but they are all the same and a human’s layers are not, thankfully (in most cases).
There has been abuse in my life. There have been suicide attempts. Mental illness and a 16-year long eating disorder. All of which required for me to build up some resilience, or… to be more truthful about it, forced me to be resilient. What does that even mean, however? Resilience! That I survived my suicide attempts and kept going? That I have mended my relationship with food? That I left my abusers? That I kept going, kept trying? Was it all down to the magic attribute, resilience?
The roads were long, narrow, twisted, dark, tunnelled, speedy and slow at the same time. At one point I believed I would never be able to take the wheel and steer myself in a happier direction. I gave up at junctions and crossroads, leaped myself off this journey but outlived the crashes. Now I sit here writing this having healed from the wounds and the last thing I want to hear about is resilience. I find this new buzzword every topical speaker uses as their theme, tiresome. I find it to be deceitful. Most of all, I find it to project the wrong message to people who are struggling, because when we are in the depth of the pain, resilience is the last thing one needs but compassion and understanding, most often not even from others but from oneself.
Over the past year, during the midst of the pandemic, I found myself reminiscing and comparing the past to the presence a lot. I wanted to figure out why I, at 40, still found myself attracting the same people who hurt me in my childhood. I was always aware that my upbringing had affected my adult life and I understood that I had incorporated a sort of sycophant attitude within myself to please whomever I thought was more important than me (which in general was everyone that wasn’t me). I had already recognised my mistakes yet couldn’t make sense of the past continuously repeating itself. So, I went down that rabbit hole in its entirety. I allowed for myself to really feel every gash from my past. I cried. I cried a lot. I was angry. So angry. I even went back to experiencing suicidal thoughts. I detested myself. I cursed myself for being such a nuisance (something I had learned from having heard it said a lot to me). I hit myself on occasion (like others did) and I fought back (brought someone of my past to court to be held accountable).
Embroiled deeply by emotions and hurt for a whole year, I struggled to see a way out. Until I finally came to the point where I carefully revisited every single past route my life map once navigated me to take, and I hit the brake pedal. I took a deep breath and for the first time ever I felt free to open that door and choose my own course on foot. I took a heedful step and then others followed, more confidently. I finally understood that none of my past was my fault. I can’t change anything as far back as yesterday, but I can believe in myself tomorrow and can take a break for myself today. Which I did and still do — that break for a day, let my mind wander, and listen to my own needs.
Resilience is fantastic and I admire my strong, undefeatable peer, but for my own healing I needed to cry for the better of a year to fathom my past to allow myself to look forward to a future (which I never thought I would have). I wasn’t resilient during that year. Quite the opposite. I may have put on a strong exterior, but my layers were covered in fragility not resilience. Not unlike the onion covered in chocolate — I was not lying only to everyone else but more damagingly to myself. It was the best time I could have allowed to give myself, because before that I believed I would just have to deal with it. Be strong. Be durable. I walked through life for almost 40 years believing I could not be weak, vulnerable, delicate because that was what was expected of me, or at least what I felt was expected of me and with that credence I deprived myself of the liberty to be truthful to my own needs and my own necessity to be understanding of my hardship endured. It almost killed me ‘staying strong at all times’. Literally.
I feel that there is great power in weakness, vulnerability and fragility when employed at the right / safe time. You learn not only about yourself but also about everyone surrounding (having surrounded) you and that is invaluable for ensuing a more authentic and content thereafter.
