Giving up on painkillers, part 2

With my new routine I was able to maintain a healthy amount of sleep and waking up at the same time day to day. These were the positive changes, and while I decided not to rush to get another job I was enjoying my time.

I was spending most of the time reading books or watching Youtube, looking for a way to unfuck my life. I found ADHD traits in my behavior and many more issues I started to deal with.

While my routine was allowing me to keep my muscles in a shape, preventing another pain disaster , I decided to take care of my mental health.

Baselines and boundaries

I was looking for a baseline, for a norm. What is ok and what is not. Where are the boundaries? I discovered I have no boundaries. I find out I was ignoring myself for many years, because that is the way I’ve been educated. There’ve been always more important people than me.

Switching from doing right, to doing what I feel is right was a major change. I was aware of the risks: loosing money and people. Now, 2 years later I can confess I paid with both.

Due to being exhausted and burned out I was not the most polite and friendly guy. My insecurities were preventing me from building more meaningful relationships. Not saying it’s someone’s else fault, but that’s the way I’ve been taught. The wrong way.

Loosing what was never mine

When the journey started I already knew people, who I was considering to be my friends and some of them even partners in business just stopped the communication. I haven’t heard from any of them since that time.

I had to face a bitter truth: people I’ve been treating as my friends, they did not even tried to talk to me. I got ignored or as we say: ghosted.

Reflecting about this fact lead me to a few conclusions:

if somebody matters - always talk to them
even somebody does not matter too much - I should say what’s wrong for me. It might be easy to fix.

After all we’re all alone

Within a couples of months I figured out that I have no more friends. I stopped being convenient, started building my boundaries and it opened my eyes. This was a harsh lesson, but I stopped taking these painkillers.

I faced my loneliness and I started to discover how boring I am. And after a while of endless questions “what I want” I started to figure out what I really want.

I gave up on a work I’ve been doing, sort of freelance, leaving all the money on the table. I said goodbye to my last friend at the same time. I knew friendship and partnership can’t work without a respect. We met once the other day, but I never had a call since that moment to have a talk what’s between us.

At this point I understood what it means to loose money and people. I did not make me sad this time. I accepted it. I think it could end differently, but disrespecting attitude wasn’t my choice. But my choice was to not tolerate it.