In today’s world, it’s all well known and even mainstream or common to seek therapy. There are more types of therapy than items in a Chinese restaurant menu. Personally, I never thought of pursuing anything related to the study of the human psyche, let alone something closely related to people who needed to assist others, work at hospitals, or needed to be available in an on-call basis. I never felt attracted to anything that had to do with rescuing, or blood, or human relief, not even joining the Girls Scouts when I could have joined them… You see, when I was four or five years old, I wanted to be either a flight attendant, a waitress; a singer or an actress. Later on, once I started primary, I wanted to be a teacher, a cook, or a nun. When I entered secondary, I knew I wanted to be an architect or an astronomer. But when I entered high school, I decided that I wanted to become a writer, a translator, or a diplomat. Because, truth be told, I never really needed to explain anyone why I wanted to be or become any of these. I, however, explained it to myself several times as follows… to travel the world, to be of service, to live somewhere else, to be understood. At the end of the day, aren’t we all the result of all of our sensorial and life experiences? What we see, feel, hear, read, touch, eat, smell, and live by and through…
What compulsive behaviour rules you, which one overrides your will, which one do you tame -at least mildly or successfully-?
We become what we do the most, and we eventually resemble those persons we get to spend most of our time with. So, you’d better choose wisely!
I look back and see with a bit of romantic nostalgia those days when I used to lay on my bed while holding the lyrics of the album I just recently got/bought, to listen to it and learn them. That is one of the most cherished memories of my teenage years… I was not worried at all about the future, and I would sing my lungs out to all sorts of love songs, some pop, and some 90’s dark electronic/techno. So, obviously, besides a wonderful Literature teacher I had for 3 years between 7th & 12th, these music genres and lyric-study-activity landed me gently on the path of embracing books, specially poetry, gothic literature, wearing black, loud hair and makeup. Back then I also started writing for pleasure, out of love, and mostly out of not being loved back. The more I practiced, the more skill I would gain, of course. I would write for me, for my crush(es), for my friends, for their love interests, etc. And then one day, all of a sudden, I stopped writing, I don’t know quite well why or when, but I guess I just grew out of it, because “it was about time to become serious about what I really wanted to do for a life, with my life”. I started reading boring books to pass certain admission exams, to apply to different universities. I read about ten books on political science, international affairs, history, economics, geography, and diplomacy in less than two months…and I killed my artsy aspirations… I applied to this ivy league school whose admission process only takes place every two years, and I passed the crazy math tests, and of course I aced the writing-three-essays-in-three-hours madness too (which was the reason why I needed to read all those damn books in the first place). However, I didn’t pass the interview process. I made my mom quite proud and happy by going through all of this, -by fulfilling her dream of applying to this prestigious university to then pursue a career as a diplomat after graduation-, but I made myself miserable. Then life decided for the two of us, and even though my dad wouldn’t believe me when I told him that I didn’t get in (he got off the car and went to confirm by himself that my name was not on the list -after having defeated over 500 other candidates in the two previous examinations-), when we got home and told my mom about it, she just said something in the lines of “I knew it was too good to be true. Did you fail on purpose so that you can go study literature?” I didn’t do it on purpose, but life knew better than the two of us. Of course, I had a plan B, and that plan was studying English Literature -so I could become a writer, a translator, even a literary critic-. But mom warned me: “Just don’t become a teacher!” And guess what happened…?
I ended up teaching for over twenty years…
Somehow, I have partially lived some of my dreams, accomplished some of my desires. In some strange way, I am still Me. And I still want the same: “to travel the world, to be of service, to live somewhere else, to be understood.”
That therapy might have saved me lots of tears? Who knows? I wouldn’t have known where to start… Now, I have seen the benefits of so many other alternative healing techniques that just work wonders for different individuals from all walks of life that I am not going to open that menu with over 300 indigestible items that are hard to pronounce and swallow. I have peeled layers of social constraints, limiting beliefs, underlying narratives that even didn’t belong entirely to me, things that all of us have absorbed historically and culturally, and not necessarily within our families. Today I am happy where I am. I am thrilled to have found my purpose, my path, my mission! I honour my roots, my steps, my past, my parents, their love and teachings. My compulsive behaviour has been to aim to be free, to love learning, to not be afraid of starting over, and to do everything out of love, never out of fear.
Inevitably, we become what we do the most! And in this part of my life, I still want to believe that everything is possible, and that with some accountability, I can help you not to give up on you and your dreams…