I am the villain and I am free
For most of my life, I was terrified of being seen as the “villain.” If I was being perceived as mean, bad, wrong, or cold, I would do everything in my power to change the minds of the people perceiving me in that way.
Much of this was because I grew up in a volatile environment, and as a way to cope, I compartmentalized my home life and my social life. At home, I was just as volatile and intense as those around me. But in my social life, I made sure to present in a way that was chill, friendly, laid back, and nice.
I learned how to make myself fit the shapes of the spaces around me. Usually, it felt like I was a circle trying to fit into a square peg, only fitting when I forced myself into submission. In retrospect, this was obviously a survival mechanism that kept me alive. But with it came endless people-pleasing, stuckness, anxiety, codependency, and avoidance.
In Tuesday’s newsletter, I talked about becoming the villain in some people’s stories. It is no understatement when I say this was literally my worst nightmare. So when standing for myself meant I actually had to become the villain, it required a full-on shedding of every identity and survival tactic that I had adopted up until that point. It was gnarly — and here’s how it happened.
2020 was a portal. It was a catalyst, a transformative doorway that I jumped through in order to shed, release, and unfold into who I am today. But that didn’t come without grief, stuckness, anger, and a feeling of being deeply lost, off the path by miles, wondering which way would lead me back home.