I forgot how to girl

I see a flaw with your interpretation of your life narrative. That's not your fault, it's your brain reacting to feelings of past injustice. You can choose to feel really unsure about not fitting into your perception of conventional gender stereotypes, but then you sort of miss the courageous, insightful and independent thinker that you clearly are.

That's right, I'm not off the mark here to say you are courageous, insightful and an independent thinker. Just because some former co-workers, employers and friends were full of shite for allowing their prejudices to cloud working relationships with you doesn't mean your brilliance as a human dimmed. Some humans hold on to their faults like it's all they've got, so fuck them. What's crucial here is that you recognize you are quite solid as a person, even when you have conflicting feelings about yourself.

So onto the accusations by your ex for a minute. He chipped away at your self worth by trying to define you at at time you were still working on defining yourself (and you probably thought you needed to work on yourself a LOT more when he was chipping away). You see, abusive relationships have a way of making you wake up one day as hindsight is insidiously eating away your innards. It can be maddening to believe someone loves us while they cruelly undermine our self beliefs and build bombs in the walls of our emotional selves. You see, there was no where for the pain to go at the time of your abuse than back into yourself, and if you experienced this, then your brain overfired and in fact may still overfire at the thought of that relationship. Or relationships in general.

The fact that you are having questions about your identity and worth right now, while uncomfortable for you, sounds really normal in the context of everything you've described.

As you try to build new friendships with people, keep in mind that it's a lot easier to spot true matches when you are being real about your perception of your life narrative. Feeling depressed, harassed and abused emotionally sucks at the soul level but ultimately it is quantitative data about yourself. Your courage, insight and free thinking are more qualitative, and are much truer identifiers of your life narrative than the former.

What are some other qualitative traits about yourself that you can you think of?

It's not how much pain you can measure, but how well your cup can hold scalding hot liquid and remain a cup.

/r/TwoXChromosomes Thread