When change is around the corner

I have always considered myself a strong person.The one who can easily cope with problems and not show “weak” emotions in front of people. I have pushed my feelings deep down burring them inside of me. Sometimes when I was too weak to dig holes and bury my weaknesses I only covered them with different masks just like you cover your shivering body with a blanket on a cold winter’s night.

Where did I develop this habit, I ask myself?

Whenever someone has problems, we fix them from the inside, but when we look for the cause of the problem we should be looking on the outside. The surrounding, the society, the closest people around, friends and far more important, the family.

Looking back, few years ago, I understood it all started with my father. But I always wonder: Why did I react the way I still do and let him affect me, mold me into the person I am today? Was it something I already had in me that his actions only woke it up effortlessly and made me so cautious around him? He was the closest person to me, so he affected me - the way I could read his face, therefore thoughts, by the expression he would make, by the way his eyes would change whenever I did or say something he disapproved.  I am curious about it all because I believe there are million different ways I could have reacted, millions of different ways my character could have become, I could have not let it affect me but no, I didn’t, and it did.  It did affect me so strongly and it spread to other people as well during the years as I grew older. Now, here we are today, so many years later still trying to change, writing this and hoping for the best.

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Back to present, what does strong really means? Before finding out, more important is what made me question everything I know? My daily habits, the routine I was in day in day out; what made me so uncomfortable that I had to change, I couldn’t bear be in the same life style again. Travel. The travel and the two things that go with it: Independence and freedom. Freedom to start all over and introduce myself to the world. Independence to make me aware of the responsibilities I have around my life and by doing that to appreciate freedom even more.

Strong is letting your soul be happy. I see it as an armor protecting your inner child from the uniformity of the society. The environment is like a factory that shapes our emotions, thinking and behaving into one. The accepted. The approved. The normal. The armor wears off by the time we get to our teenage years. Lucky are the ones who get to keep it because after them the world divides into two groups of people: Ones who never fully wake up to the illusions of their reality and the others who years after they lost the shield to the routine try to build it back.

Now I see that I would rather build a whole house by myself than try to build back my shield. It sure would be easier. Even better, I would rather build a time machine and go back to protect myself, my happy self who once was innocent enough to not be afraid to love and trust people, to believe anything’s possible and set no limits in my abilities, because that is the way to conquer the world. Try and try, over and over again, and not get tired of it until success comes.