Good Enough

Lately I’ve been reflecting on where I used to be and where I am currently. I tend to focus on my career and education, but the growth in my faith, emotional state, and mindset has been significant over the last 6 years.

6 years ago I was married to my husband who refused to go to church with me or even study the bible with me. My gut intuition was screaming that something was wrong, and I was right. Between the death of my mom and my unsupportive partner, I started therapy to help improve my emotional state. While therapy helped, I was missing the other components until free church found me. Once my husband left me, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I wasn’t good enough for him. In the middle of a panic attack, I heard God speak to me and He told me I was good enough despite this feeling, and that He had someone better for me.

5 years ago I was in a rebound relationship after my divorce because I didn’t know how to be alone. While I was going to church, my emotional state and mindset were not in a good place. I tried to focus on the surface level things and ignore the deeper level stuff. This led to me feeling sad and trapped. I still didn’t feel good enough, but tried to fake it until I started to believe it. Unfortunately, I never fully believed it.

4 years ago I was trying to continue living this fake life. Physically, I was in the best shape of my life. Emotionally and mentally I was still a mess. I found out my ex husband got remarried and I lost my shit. I become angry and jealous. All of the pain came rushing back. I thought I had healed with time, but this was not reality.

3 years ago I had Aria and her dad living with me. Finally no longer alone, but once again ignoring my faith, emotions, and mindset. When I shared my emotions with the person living with me, he made excuses why he couldn’t love me. He gave me a list of things wrong with me but never owned up to his mistakes. Living with him became miserable since I knew I’d never be good enough for him. Once again, I felt trapped and sad.

2 years ago I asked Aria’s dad to move out and a month later COVID-19 hit. Going through the pandemic was hard on me in many ways, but it allowed me to focus on my emotions and mindset. I started reading the bible daily and listening to positive podcasts. I had more time to run and reflect. I finally started focusing on the deeper level stuff, but once things started opening back up there were habits that were hard to break. I started chasing the attention of men and didn’t focus on finding a healthy, positive relationship that I deserved.

1 year ago I was in a bad place mentally and emotionally. I struggled to not have deep feelings for Aria’s dad despite our differences and non-compatibility. It took him starting to date someone and still trying to come over for me to finally wake up and refocus on myself and my mental state. I started therapy which helped me no longer be angry and upset at this person that I was trying to maintain a co-parenting situation with. I finally started to feel good enough and started realizing my true worth and value.

Today I am still a work in progress, but I am no longer believing the lies I used to believe. I am no longer only focusing on surface level things. I am taking the time to read the bible and pray. I am focusing on God’s plan for my life. I am so very blessed and loved by Him. I no longer let others trigger me, instead I take my time to reflect before responding. I still speak my truth, but I don’t linger on any situation or person or thing. I don’t hold grudges, I forgive and move on. I’m not perfect by any means, but I am trying my best to be the best Jen I can be. I am trying to be as much like Jesus as I can be. And I look forward to growing in my faith, mindset, and emotional state.

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Growing in emotional maturity

For the longest time, I was looking for love in all the wrong places. In college, I was holding my breath waiting for my boyfriend to trust me. Once he didn’t trust me, there was no relationship. I just kept pressing forward only to make things even harder and more painful when I finally walked away. After college, I pursued a married man. He ended up doing to me exactly what he did to his first wife, but you could say I had it coming since I was the reason he left her. After our divorce, I started pursuing just the physical aspects of relations. I was literally too scared to get hurt to even consider a committed romantic relationship. Once this life caught up to me and I started considering seeking a healthy relationship, I found out I was pregnant.

With the pregnancy came all the feels. Looking back, I had a very physically healthy pregnancy, but my emotional well-being was very low. I was facing an uncertain future with a baby and her dad who wasn’t capable of loving me. Here I was, once again, looking for love in the wrong place. I yearned for him to even try and make it work with me. But it wasn’t in the cards. I had to finally stop being emotionally immature and move on from the things that weren’t helping me grow. Once I let him go, I felt my heart finally healing. Healing from the college guy who never trusted me. Healing from my husband who left me for someone(s) else. Healing from my baby’s dad who likely really wishes we had been more careful. (I refuse to use the word he did on here, but that part was definitely the most painful).

I started and have been reading the bible daily. I’ve been listening to certain podcasts and reading books. I’ve really taken the time to be selfish, if you will. And focus on myself. And I agreed with myself to take time to be single and heal with one exception. If someone were to enter my life and help me to grow then I’d allow it. I met someone unexpectedly about two months ago and it’s been an interesting ride. Shortly after we met, the city where we live entered a shelter-in-place that’s still occurring. Through this time, it hasn’t been easy to get to know each other. At first, things seemed great. But as time goes on, it appears to me that while his words are great and helpful, his actions seem to be misleading. I’m not quite sure if he sees me as his girlfriend or just a friend with benefits.

I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt since things aren’t normal due to Covid-19, but I also have to be true to myself. I keep praying to God to show me what He wants for my life. And I will continue to pursue His word. I just felt like I had to share, since because of the growth I see and feel inside of me, I will no longer settle for anything less.

I hope everyone’s doing well despite the craziness. 🙂

When to walk away

Do you feel emotionally drained and don’t know why? Do you doubt yourself after talking to your partner? There are 5 things that every emotional manipulator does to confuse and drain you.

1. They will persistently dismiss your emotions. If you ever tell your significant other about something they did or said that hurt you, they will turn it around and say you’re making it a bigger deal than it really is, disregarding your feelings. Their apathetic attitude will eventually make you start doubting yourself, so you introspectively gather your thoughts and start believing it’s your fault. You lose motivation to pursue the issue any further.
2. They play “tit for tat” pretty well. If you ever become confident to approach them with what you think they are lacking in terms of affection or intimacy or emotional support, they  will respond by listing all the things they find lacking in you. They might try and throw it back at you and once again blame you for the reason there’s even an issue in the first place. If you’re like me, this will just make you crawl into your shell further.
3. They are completely different people when no one else is around. You’re with your friends having a great time, everyone’s laughing. But then at the end of the night when no one else is around, your partner starts a fight saying how terrible you are with his friends and how mean you are to him in front of his friends. He can make fun of you but you can’t make fun of him back. Sometimes it feels like he just wants to fight.
4. They try to convince you that everyone else is on their side. We all make mistakes, but if you make a mistake and you’re with an emotional manipulator, one thing to look out for is if they try and point out to you the error of your ways and tell you that everyone else is in agreement that you’re wrong. These supposed phantom alliances that allegedly conspire against you leave you feeling left out and insecure. If you inquire as to who’s saying this, you probably won’t receive an answer or they will just lie to your face.
5. To them you are not intelligent enough to understand their reasoning. An emotional manipulator is not prone to explaining their own actions to you when asked, their reason will be that it’s too complex for you to understand. Their goal is to put themselves above you by pointing out to you your lack of intelligence. If your partner continues to withhold information from you, you will never know when you do something right or wrong. This puts you in a terrible, vulnerable place to be attacked over the smallest things.

Speaking from experience, if your significant other is doing these things, it’s time to leave. There’s no reasoning with someone who’s unwilling to be reasonable. And no one deserves to be manipulated like that anyways. We are all our own people and we all have a right to our feelings and emotions.

Defend yourself from these types of people. Raise your tail feathers and quills. Don’t let manipulators get to you.