Who Hurt You?

You cannot heal in the same environment that made you sick.

anonymous

I saw this quote on Instagram and it struck me hard. Reading it, the statement looks obvious, something that shouldn’t be any news to anyone with common sense. Yet, common sense is not always as common as it is made out to be, right?

Have you ever had food poisoning? Things coming out of every end kind of food poisoning? If you answer with no you know you might be lying to yourself but I’ll just leave it at that. I had food poisoning at the beginning of the year. It was bad, really bad and it took me a couple of days to start feeling like a human being again (no, I am not exaggerating at all).It all started with me feeling like eating Chinese food, so I ordered glass noodles and veggie stir fry from a restaurant I had never ordered from before, that's what I get for trying to be spontaneous I guess. A few hours later, my rumbling belly woke me up in the middle of the night and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. I’ll be so kind to leave out the nasty details, but my better half wasn’t quite so lucky. Just imagine me trying to keep it cute while puking and then locking the door with the water running as if I could hide the horrible and loud noises that were coming out of me. Well, since then I’ve said bye bye to ordering glass noodles and veggie stir fry and I promised myself and my traumatized insides that I would never order food from THAT restaurant again.

I saw what caused the problem and what made me sick and chose to not go there again, ever. Trust me, I have learned my lesson especially because I had to learn it the hard way.

I wonder what makes us go back to places or better yet never leave places that made us sick in the first place. We stick to the same routine that hasn’t been working for years, we stay in environments that are not conducive to our developments, die for people that are just in it for the ride, the fun ride and not the long run. Still, we stay. Dimming our lights, polluting our lungs, destroying our brain, breaking our hearts - killing ourselves. For what?! I ask myself.

I know I have had a lot of self sabotaging moments in the past where I spoke about healing and getting better but didn’t move an inch from the environment that just wasn’t right for me, in fact I clung to it tighter than ever almost like my life depended on it. Knowing very well for example that me picking up my phone and texting wyd at this ungodly hour can only lead to trouble but still doing it anyway. Or knowing very well that my weakness for all things whiskey and wine will have me regretting my actions the very next day and still going for that extra sip (or two glasses). Knowing that me not studying for this exam will very likely lead me to failing the exam but choosing to sleep through a supposed study session. The main thing here is that sometimes we create our own harmful environments and sometimes it is created for us and we step right into it.

Oh, how we seem to love harming ourselves. I wonder sometimes what it is that makes us make those reckless decisions? It oftentimes seems like we do not have a clear view or choose to go into situations blindly, purposely closing our eyes to the obvious danger we are running into. A stop sign can be overlooked if you just avert your eyes a little.

We ask God to give us a sign and then we ignore the hundred signs he throws at us, we swerve past it, because the signs were  not that obvious, at this point some of us would look the other way even when God himself would stand in front of us because everyone deserves a second chance, or whatever excuse we like to come up with when it comes to letting go of certain things and people and environments that we can’t stay in if we want the highly requested healing we have been crying out for. Stepping out of that environment can be hard, to put it lightly. As any process that involves uprooting and leaving our comfort zone - yes, even toxicity can be part of our comfort zone.

Who hurt you? What hurt you? And why are you still there? What can you do to start healing? Questions we all have to ask ourselves eventually, answers that we will definitely find, even when the answer may not be the one that we want to hear, out of experience I can say that it is very likely the one that we need to hear.

Love,

Maame