The Curse of Losing Yourself
External Perfection vs. Internal Disconnection | The Story of How I Lost myself in a Relationship I Never Chose
An Unhappy Marriage
“Just f***ing leave me alone!”
I screamed. I cried. No one heard.
The words echoed inside, fading before they ever touched my lips.
I stood there, staring at my reflection in the mirror, hollow and brittle, like a cracked porcelain cup held together by invisible super glue.
My skin stretched tightly over my sharp bones, eyes sunken into the hollow of my face.
Who is that? I didn’t recognize the girl staring back at me.
I had fallen. And I had fallen hard.
I was stuck in a marriage I never chose.
Trapped in a relationship I didn’t want to commit to, but couldn’t walk away from.
Somewhere, I had lost myself.
Somewhere, along the way, I had given everything to him - my freedom, my voice, my identity.
“Look at yourself.” Ed whispered.
“This is what I’ve done for you. I’ve made you better. Thinner. More desirable. Don’t you see?”
But the voice that whispered through the mirror… lied.
I named him Ed.
Short for eating disorder.
Seemed fitting.
The Divorce
At 14, Ed became my constant companion.
Not a person, but a promise.
A hauntingly seductive voice promising control, beauty, perfection, belonging.
And I believed him.
I once believed control was power.
That if I could master the art of restraint - of hunger, of desire, of emotion - I would become untouchable.
So, I made my body a battleground.
Each skipped meal, a victory.
Each protruding bone, a trophy.
Each dizzy spell, a reminder that I was winning.
Within the first 6 months of high school, I had lost over 30 pounds.
At 5’7”, I barely reached 80.
I wasn’t chasing perfection.
I was chasing erasure.
I remember the day I collapsed in my bedroom after school.
I woke up dazed, carpet rough against my cheekbones, unsure if I was in a dream or not.
I crawled toward the mirror, needing to confirm that I had indeed woken up and was still alive.
That was the beginning of my divorce with Ed.
But divorcing Ed wasn’t a clean break. It was a reckoning. A rebirth.
And… it hurt.
[more story time to come…]
In Pursuit of Freedom
Fast forward to now - 25.
Over a decade later, I’m free.
In fact, I’m an entirely different person.
Stronger than ever.
Recovery didn’t happen overnight.
It was a single decision, followed by years of learning to listen to my body again.
To feel. To unlearn. To reconnect.
To push through every time Ed came back to haunt me.
My relationship with Ed is just one of many stories.
Stories of how we, humans, lose ourselves amidst the noise and the chaos of the external world.
I had to unlearn the lies that society fed me.
Blueprints Not Our Own: Today’s System
Truth is, it’s quite easy to lose yourself in today’s world.
From a young age, we’re handed blueprints not our own.
Told who to be.
How to act.
What to strive for.
What beauty looks like.
What success should feel like.
We’re fed someone else’s map - teachers, sports coaches, bosses, politicians, priests, parents, peers - all projecting THEIR ideals onto us, until our choices no longer feel like our own.
We’re told to choose a life, from a carefully curated menu created by others.
Go to college. Pick a “safe” major.
Work your way up. Don’t ask too many questions.
Smile, stay busy, be likable.
Follow this diet, that diet.
Be thin, but not too thin.
Ambitious, but not intimidating.
Sexy, but not sexual.
Pick a side.
Pick a belief system.
We fall victim to this illusion of choice, thinking the only paths available to us are the ones from the menu we were handed.
As a kid, I never fully bought into the rules.
The school system.
The legal system.
The polite performance of pretending everything’s fine.
The lessons taught in history class (studying the same lessons in two different countries at a young age - Russia and America - showed me early on just how skewed the system was).
But, even “rebels” can get seduced by praise.
Because the system rewards obedience.
I was praised for discipline when I was starving.
Applauded for my willpower when I was vanishing.
You can lose yourself entirely, and still get a gold star for it.
But eventually, your body keeps the score.
The panic. The fatigue. The quiet ache.
The burnout that no amount of green juice or journaling fixes.
Then comes a moment when we burst - into anger, frustration - when the weight of it all becomes too much.
The “solutions” we’re met with?
Pills to numb.
Advice to conform.
Because if everyone were to realize that anger is actually our friend, the system would crumble.
A system that:
Thrives off of keeping us complacent.
Gives us just enough to survive, but never to thrive at our fullest.
Generates profits at the expense of our anxiety, fatigue, and disconnection.
A system that keeps its prey in survival mode.
Anger? Our friend? Yes.
Not a nice friend, but a loyal one.
The one who tells us when it’s time to switch things up, to go inward, to explore the deepest parts of ourselves we’ve buried for so long.
Rather than suggesting an ailment to numb us, to take it easy, anger tells us when it’s time to change, to grow, to be reborn.
And birthing, well, hurts.
This energetic mismatch, between our internal state and external desires, can actually be useful as we learn to discern our inner compass from the outer noise.
Our inner compasses guide us to the creator within, if we’re willing to listen.
The creator exists within each and every one of us.
We, humans, were all created, and are all creative, in our own unique ways.
The Return to Self
However you choose to interpret The Creator is yours to define.
To me, it’s the unseen brilliance behind everything that lives.
The way your blood knows to clot when you get a paper cut.
The way our heartbeat syncs with the needs of our body.
The way a woman’s cycle arrives every 28 days, on repeat. Like the moon’s cycle.
The way we breathe without thinking.
The way each moment can only happen once.
It’s what connects us to the greater flow of life.
It’s not something outside of us.
It’s within.
When we learn to discern and trust that same brilliance within us…
We stop looking for answers outside.
We stop fearing our emotions.
We stop fearing the unknown.
We start feeling. Fully and fiercely.
We open.
To experiences that rewire our patterns.
To emotions in their rawest form.
To the parts of ourselves we forgot were even there.
To be human is to feel what the machines never will.
Every emotion - energy in motion - has wisdom in it.
Even the messy ones.
Especially the messy ones.
And as we grow closer with our inner compass, a beautiful relationship develops.
A relationship that connects us to the creator within us.
The same force behind galaxies, oceans, nature.
The relationship we have with ourselves is THE MOST important relationship we’ll ever have.
Our universe is alive, intelligent, and deeply interconnected.
Think about an ant colony.
No leader barking orders.
Just tiny beings, each following simple instincts.
But together, they build colonies.
They adapt. They thrive.
That’s nature’s intelligence.
Humans too, are part of nature.
That’s how life really works…
Not through control, but through rhythm.
Our bodies are evidence of this brilliance.
Your skin regenerates about every 27 days.
Each hair strand every 7 years.
A new set of eyelashes every 4 months.
The cells lining your stomach? Every 2-9 days.
Even your skeleton renews itself every 10 years.
There is intelligence in you that never sleeps.
Intelligence, that we as a society, to this day, are still learning how to connect to.
It is running through you not because you think hard enough, but because you stop interrupting the design.
No design is one-size-fits-all. Not in nature. Not in us.
Each of us carry a unique blueprint, as original as our DNA.
You were never mean to follow someone else’s map.
You were designed with your own.
As unique as your fingerprint.
As intricate as a snowflake.
Fun Fact: Did you know that no two snowflakes are the exact same??
What is Power?
You have your own rhythm.
Your own blueprint that no one else can copy.
When you realign with your original frequency - the one you were born with, before the world told you who to be… you remember:
You are the map.
The one who carries all your answers.
The one who uncovers your original blueprint.
I believe real power comes not from control, but from rhythm.
From movement - whether physical steps or released thoughts - rooted in clarity.
From discerning your inner compass, your true blueprint, not the outdated map handed to you in childhood.
In a world changing at rapid pace - technologically, societally, financially, structurally - I believe it is all the more important that we, as humans, reclaim our true power…
To remain centered amidst chaos.
To maintain inner equilibrium regardless of external circumstances.
To not suppress emotions, but embrace them. Allow them to flow through us temporarily without overwhelming us in the long run….
This inner stability allows us to stay connected to our intuition, to read the signs, to maintain a frequency aligned with our true selves.
We don’t control the order in which the universe sends it’s gifts.
Some come disguised.
You may ask for love and be given solitude.
You may ask for answers and be met with more questions.
You may ask for peace and be given more challenges.
But what if every perceived “detour” is actually guiding you back to your path?
All carefully designed to awaken you, to strengthen you, to prepare you.
To align you with YOUR blueprint.
You are the blueprint.
And the moment you remember that - really remember it - is the moment you break the curse.
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