Victim of Me

June 23rd, 2022

“You cannot heal in the same environment where you got sick.”

What a full load of bullshit.

But that phrase (or related ones) keeps popping up like a weed, in real life and the not-so-real life we know as the internet.

This sentence perpetuates the idea that we cannot get better right now. This moment.

Which is a lie.

Not one that people tell us.

One that we tell ourselves.

I knew I had to get better, and I had known that for a long time. I also knew that getting better was going to be a lot of work. I was going to have to radically rearrange my life, and I was going to have to face the thing that humans hate to face the most: change.

When we really don’t want to believe something, we will keep looking for an opinion that agrees with what we do want to believe. Thanks to the internet, that opinion will always exist, as long as you keep looking.

This particular opinion – that you have get out of your environment to get better – exists and is widely shared.

That opinion is a good one if you like to run away. And people who don’t want to face change are very likely to run.

My book Theia is about a lot of things, but at its core it’s about realizing why you run, and transforming into someone who stays. That was who I had to become.

I had to stay in the environment where I had been sick to make amends for the person I had been.

Change is hard. Running is easy. Staying is the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done.

This sentence from this morning’s daily reflection makes much more sense to me:

“I am not a victim of others, but rather a victim of my expectations, choices and dishonesty.”

I am not a victim of my environment. I am, and always have been, a victim of me.