Re-create Yourself

[James B.]

Law Number 25 - RE-CREATE YOURSELF

"Judgment: Do not accept the role that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you".

"Understand this: The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed. Your power is limited to the tiny amount alloted to the role you have selected or have been forced to assume. The act of defiance is Promethean: it makes you responsible for your own creation.
The first step in the process of self-creation is self-consciousness..."

 

[h2o]

Hi James B,

Thank you so much for your words...very profound. Will keep hold of these.

Many thanks,

h2o

 

[SafeAllAlone]

Thank you for posting!

 

[Jade-]

I have been thinking about this thread for quite awhile and just now decided to respond.....

There's not a "pre" trauma time in my memory. I was too young. I don't know who I was meant to be, all I know is who I am because of my traumas. I have let myself become my traumas. I am those things I have witnessed and experienced. I have let myself take on all the blame and shame for them, and I have taken on some traits of my abusers because they were all I was ever around. I have believed everything that was said to me, that I'm worthless, hopeless, useless, stupid, etc. I have believed I deserved everything that happened to me. I have believed that I will die if I speak up or stand up for myself. I have believed everything that a couple of crazy mother ****ers pounded into my head for the first 18 years of my life. And I'm sick of it.

I've been wearing what I think and believe and my fears and phobias like a tight fitting glove all these years. It's all I have known, it's like my second layer of skin. I've been afraid to take it off because I don't know what's underneath. Even though life hasn't been good, it's been my life and I hold onto it because I'm afraid. I mean, who the hell am I if I'm not who I am right now?

I don't know who I was meant to be, and I don't like who I have become. So maybe re-creating myself is a good idea. Anything has to be better than the way I have been and the way my life has been. I'm so tried of beating myself up over all the shit that has happened in the past. I'm so tired of worrying about dying if I speak up. **** it, If I do die from telling and speaking up now, at least I will die with a ton of bricks off my shoulders.

 

[TLight]

Freakin speak up and know that you can free yourself of them

I too don't know anything about me but pure survival and the sickness and torment I lived through......it absorbs everything about life it seems. I don't know if the sadness ever goes away, it's always playing in the background it seems.

But, I do believe I will go to an even worse place if I kill myself. The threat of that keeps me keeping on. Even though I really hate it here.
I have to believe that it is anti-creation to die at our own hands. I'm afraid of that.

So, instead of dying slowly and in agony like this, we have to somehow find a way to recreate ourselves. It may take some radical steps. For me, simplifying life and really getting into what has kept me alive is what I try to focus on. Nature, the beauty of nature...........staying away from humans. Trying to rest and take in the beauty of nature and try to recreate it through writing, poetry, painting, photography........whatever.

Grab onto beauty. It is out there, we do feel it sometimes (or at least I'm capable sometimes....not always), grab onto it for your life.

 

[Cthulhu]

Maybe this is what divides a person with PTSD from one with early onsetting cPTSD?
It's strange for me to read postings from people who wish nothing more than to become who they were "before".
Or spouses who wish the same.
They really have a distinct image of themselves how they were "before" and how they want to become again.
This is so unfamiliar for me. The pure thought of it pushes me away instantly, I don't know why.
I don't remember a time where I was "intact", just a normal, friendly, happy person. I never was like that. Maybe this is why this wish of becoming "fixed" again is so strange for me. Feels a little like dying everytime I think about it. It would be like dying because me, my personality here and now would go away... I don't think there is something other than this deep inside of me, I've searched for many years and all I found were more broken splinters.

 

[anni]

There IS a seperation, with the CPTSD and PTSD, since I absolutely had that intact child, so formed a 'me'. Lucky. I will say I have zero recollection of who the heck that person was who married the *sswipe, though-no idea on the planet. James's original post was terribly poignant for me, in that it speaks of pretty much reinventing oneself as one wishes to be, quite simply. I'm much more fortunate than someone with a fractured and mangled childhood since I have icons from childhood-blueprints, I guess, to maybe choose from, and the ability to at least know which one to pick. Whoever it was, I was, got erased, is the only way to describe how much I do NOT remember who that was. I've stopped trying to retrieve anything because am pretty sure she's just not there so it's kind of pointless. I'm not sure I'd like her terribly much anyway, since she's the ninny who got all this rolling in the first place.

James is completely correct, although I do feel it's much easier for me to say this not being afflicted with C than those who are. 'Create yourself'. It's what has to be, but it's possible, too.

 

[Marlene]

The act of defiance is Promethean: it makes you responsible for your own creation.

I LOVE that line. Prometheus stole fire, gave it to the humans, changed the status quo, pissed off the gods...it's great. I've spent so much time recently thinking about the changes in my life, how I've worked to recreate myself the way I want and all that's involved in that. We've stolen our lives back, gave them back to ourselves, changed the status quo and maybe even pissed off people in our lives (or even ourselves) and yet...we still did it. We found the courage to do this despite past training, habits, families wanting to keep the past quiet to keep themselves looking good, and our desires to keep the bad stuff put away ourselves.

Great thread, James.

Lisa

 

[louisa]

Nice one. Thanks for Posting this,

Louisa

 

[NIKI]

Jade, What you wrote is everthing I feel also. I could not have said it any better than that!

 

[forgotten]

I am new here as of tonight, and was sitting out in the living room in my too quiet house thinking about who I used to be and if I am who I think I am now, or if it's all a cover or am I barried underneath all this pain and fear and anger? I was thinking that I am a liar and am very rarley honest with my self, that I am a great actress and have a very sick mind and that I can be cruel and cold and unkind and angry,, then like multipersonality didorder I can be cute and sweet and loveing and bubbly, some one completley different than me, or was that happy bubbly person me and I am just being this angry person because thats how I was molded or made to be? If we could reinvent our selves would that not be a role we were taking on, another cover another role to play? Playing another part, like we are on this great stage of life? I can be many differnt things and I can be someone else entirely, and yet that is who I am, this is how I survived what I did and it is ingrained in to my very soul. That being said if I could become this new re invented self and leave everything behind with the old me, I would gladly take the chance, but where does one start when your life has been re invention after reinvention but always coming back to you, the you that you are now, with everything that has made you who you are, in all it's ugliness and nightmares, terrors and pain?