Remember plucking flower petals and reciting “He loves me, he loves me not”? Guys, it’s okay to admit you did this too when you were young. Now replace that pronoun with “I”. Does that sound like a realistic love and hate relationship with yourself? That describes my healing journey because I have gone through a lot of loving me and love-me-not journeys.

The times when I loved myself, I was proud of the decision I made because I chose me. When I placed other people’s happiness before mine, which happened a lot in this healing journey, I loved myself less. Why? Because I thought I knew better than to make that mistake again…and again. I knew better than to give grace to that person again…and again. It took a colleague to ask me something I never thought of for myself. He asked me, “Eryn, how kind are you being to yourself?” That question sat with me and still sits with me now. However, that question is a constant reminder to be okay with fully and unapologetically loving myself as Eryn. 

Metaphorically, I always like to keep an open-door policy for people who are close to me. Closing doors has become an acquired taste that’s grown into a quick habit over the last three years. This process caused me to realize I never thought about the baggage that came through my internal door and dump it on my table. Their personal baggage sat on top of my emotional and mental state which made it hard to clear off their baggage to deal with mine. 

After dealing with betrayal in relationships and friendships over the years, it makes trusting people more difficult. I wonder if they’re going to treat you the way they have been treated, though I have often treated people how I want to be treated. There are moments of imperfection, but I've never had a problem admitting my faults, with one being admitting to a fault just to keep the peace regardless of who was at fault. I just wanted it to go away hoping it would not come back around again. This was not the healthiest way to deal with conflict with close people that you care about. I can break this down to a couple of situations. Sip on some tea while I address how I healed from Mr. Jones.

There was a situationship I had with a guy named Mr. Jones that I wrote about in one of my blog entries. I did not go into full detail because it would catapult so many questions as to why I did not let him go. Let’s just say that my open-door policy was not healthy. That honeymoon phase with couples that normally lasts perhaps 2 or 3 months crashed in 3 weeks when Mr. Jones mentioned sharing a hotel room for his mentor’s retirement party with another woman. He crafted a nice justification. Because Mr. Jones’ grievance over a death distracted him (his ex-fiancé to be exact; I told y’all this was a mess), he did not reserve his hotel on time thus causing a financial bind. The next question that came from me was “Is this woman attracted to you?” When he nodded yes, it set off a trigger of distrust. Normally, any woman in this situation would walk out the door immediately. However, I wanted to believe his grievance would eventually smooth over. I admitted not feeling comfortable and offered another option. Unfortunately, Mr. Jones was not cool with that which caused a big argument. Finally, I left him…then I went back to him two months later which began a toxic circle of this situationship for a year. We ran into each other less than a year ago in a better space mentally and emotionally. Seeing him again was a nice reminder of being kinder to myself by abolishing this unhealthy open-door policy. If only I applied this more with my friends.

One major deal breaker in any relationship is if someone creates a false image about me to others to make themselves look better. This has happened to me a lot in my life but I will only talk about two situations. The first situation happened with a friend who became my roommate. We will call her Kray (others who know her said the same thing before y’all say I’m being petty). So many things happened the moment Kray became my roommate that I will not address here.

One major situation caused me to sever a close friendship with her. She thought I was publicly talking about her on social media. I posted a statement on my media page where no names or situations were directly mentioned. Kray felt attacked when I complimented how good another friend was being to me. Kray decided to send this girlfriend a private message and said I shared personal information about her with Kray, making me look like a bad friend.

However, Kray was unaware that I already addressed this to that friend and I apologized for it. This thing Kray did was deemed not trustworthy because I realized she will use information I give her to attack my character. This trait offsets a trigger to what I find disrespectful and dishonorable because of past experiences. It is said, believe someone when they show you who they are the first time. This peanut gallery situation Kray tried to cause goes a bit deeper with me in my past because I have had people in personal and professional relationships create stories about me that are not true. Over the years, it has taken a few more times for me to see this because I always want to see the good in people. Because of this, I take those hard lessons as growth to what I will not allow in my life.  

In the professional world while I was in graduate school, I was an intern. While working with this company, a coworker (or two) discredited my work morale and thought I was a sneaky intern who took advantage of my work time. I eventually started working with a new supervisor who observed my work ethic and timeliness while still managing my schoolwork. The moment she said “They were wrong about you”, I realized people will create whatever story about you to keep you from evolving to the next stage of your life. The sad part is I helped that coworker understand their new manager’s work style and expectations when they got promoted to a higher position. I am sure work pressure may have caused some stress, but all I tried to do was work my hours and finish my homework for class that evening. Once people get to know me, they realize it later and always bring up what was said about me. At the end of the day, if you want to talk about me, tell the whole story. I don’t need anyone’s validity to prove who I am, except for God. 

With all that said, let me address how healing looks on me.

Although I don’t look like what I’ve been through, I have done the work to look at myself introspectively to become who I really am. I have hidden a lot of myself from everyone to keep from exposing jealousy or resentment. Before, I just wanted people to like me when I should have just liked myself.

Now that I am in a place of awareness, it feels good to know that I took the effort to understand my reactions to situations that I took very personally. I cannot place unrealistic expectations on people based on how I treat them. I can trust people to be people. I can trust them to know that they will be fickle some days and I will have to sit in my room of pain and take it in, then go back out and readjust my feelings and choose to stay on that path with them or go forward on the path that is more suitable for me in this journey called life. Not everyone in that season of your life is supposed to venture that new path with you. Some people are just seasonal people, and I embrace this full heartedly. This is where I am beginning to evolve, and this healing season for me is looking pretty bright.