If you’ve been a regular reader of my blog, you’d be well-aware about my struggle with anger and my endless efforts at becoming a peaceful parent.

Since I started questioning my anger, I have read many books on the topic. Though they all provided me valuable insights and broadened my perspective, I was yet not certain where exactly lay the roots of my anger.

From blaming it on my surroundings and genes (read hot-tempered parents, grandparents and sibling) to annoying circumstances to my child’s temperament.

I am shocked and ashamed to admit that I have done it all and learnt that they might have been contributing factors but were NEVER the real reason why I have been so angry most of my life.

However, the good news is, I never settled in with the EXCUSES my mind came up with and kept on my quest for learning the root cause. And neither did I stop asking questions that could possibly lead me to the real answer.

As it happens, finally, after looking at all the wrong places, I believe I have found the one answer that will help me solve several problems in my life.

My absence from the blog scene was because I was too busy, emotionally, grappling the depth of the evidence I had found. It all came to me wrapped up in an article I had been reading for an altogether different reason.

Since childhood, I was rebuked for being the person who lends a helping hand or a patient ear to the people around her. As a kid, what I understood was that it was mainly because of safety concerns.

Though what puzzled and hurt me most was when my mother comfortably turned a blind eye towards my feelings, hurt, pain and even sickness. As a child, I could not comprehend how these things added up.

Especially because all around me, I would see mothers being kind, compassionate and understanding towards their offsprings. It was quite the case with my mother showering all her love and attention to my elder brother.

In those years, I understood it as a blatant case of favouritism.

And no wonder, I struggled to like my elder brother who left no stone unturned in making me feel worthless and unwanted in the family.

But when I turned into an adult and stepped out of home, I couldn’t help but notice that there was nothing wrong in being compassionate and empathetic.

Empathy, the ability to understand someone else’s point of view, thoughts, and feelings have been a part of me all along. Though I learnt its name very late in life.

The more I probed into understanding why my parents (especially my mother) was so averse of being empathetic, I was drawn towards the feeling that maybe, like her, I too was deficient in the one thing that formed the core of human connections. Or worse, I was not getting the whole picture right.

While trying to wrap my mind around the people who lacked empathy, and praying hard to not find myself in the list mentioned in an online article, I stumbled upon something that changed the course of my life.

As I went in digging further, I found myself falling in the pits of a black hole because no matter how hard I tried, I could not unsee what I had just learnt.

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”

~ John O’Donohue

They say knowledge is power.

It is.

But right at the moment when it strikes you, it isn’t always as comfortable as flipping on a light switch.

In my case, knowledge hit me like a bolt of lightning.

I learnt, how the many problems of my life were a result of the constant emotional abuse I suffered in my childhood and growing up years. And since I returned to live with my parents, things have been going haywire because of the reasons I had never understood, until that fateful day.

I’d be honest, I had often considered my parents as toxic people. I had full realisation of their emotional blackmailing tactics from time to time. But I had never in my wildest dreams imagined all that I had experienced in my childhood and what I am constantly battling on a day to day basis constituted systematic emotional abuse.

Though from the outside, my life is still the same, but from within, this awakening has made me an altogether changed person.

We have all crumpled and experienced the walls crashing in as life topples us over. But this time, when my world fell apart, I was left with tainted childhood memories because now I could clearly see what I couldn’t as a child.

Years of guilt, shame, aggression, gaslighting, manipulation, repression, self-hatred, lack of social skills and more came roaring like a thunderstorm that darkened my horizon and left my mind panic struck.

As anxiety tightened its grip over me, I could smell fear and self-doubt choking my lungs with every breath.

Luckily, this phase didn’t last long.

I am grateful that my mind could break free in real-time.

My hard work on learning to set healthy boundaries, learning to stop taking things personally and most importantly the practice of empowering myself with self-care came to the rescue.

The past few months have been psychologically taxing for me.

Looking back at my journal entries of the days gone by, I can clearly say, I might take time to heal but I will survive this and will rise like a phoenix.

Yet again.

In light of my findings, I feel awakened.

I can never be the old, ignorant, lost self again.

“Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae,’ there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.”

~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I am now confident that I finally understand the root cause of the many problems I had been beating about the bush for answers.

I am sure, I am still just scratching the surface.

But with perseverance and determination, I am going to educate myself enough to allow for my healing while protecting others dear to me.

And this journey into self-awareness and healing is what keeps me busy these days.

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The song on my mind: Lakshya (title track) ~ Lakshya