Making peace with the past, and its scars

In the process of writing last week’s post about transformation I started thinking about my phoenix tattoo, which got me thinking about regret and acceptance.

The phoenix is, of course, a potent symbol of transformation. It’s the mythical bird that rises from the ashes after adversity. The caterpillar emerging from its cocoon into a beautiful butterfly. You get the idea. 
I was certainly making a statement when I chose to get a phoenix tattooed on my upper back at the age of 22. I was also ahead of my time, as Ben Affleck has just done the very same (although his is more colourful and impressive).

To give you some background, at the time I got inked, I had come through the other side of a battle with depression and a redundancy. I wanted to carry a mark that would symbolise my resilience and inner strength. I hoped it would give me something to draw on in challenging times. I believed, in the naïve way that only a 22-year-old could, that I was through my biggest personal crisis. I did not then understand that life is a series of challenges and strength building, and that we are reborn again and again and again (unless, of course, we choose to stay stuck).

Instead of being a badge of honour, the tattoo became a source of regret. It didn’t remind me of my transformation, it only reminded me of the misery that had permeated that chapter of my life. I felt disappointed that I had not grown enough to become the person I had believed I could be on day in a dingy Auckland tattoo studio. Plus, it was kinda ugly. 

So, in my early 30s I decided to have it removed. Unfortunately the laser treatment process was excruciating (vastly more painful that the tattooing process), and was predicted to become more so as treatment progressed. It was also costly. So after five treatments I decided to make peace with the now slightly faded bird, and quit treatment. 

My tattoo removal story in Women's Health magazine

I totally understand how people who have tattoos of their ex’s name on their forearms, or Kermit the Frog tattoos on their butt (I actually know someone in this situation), would want to have those removed. But my tattoo wasn’t that awful. So why had I wanted it erased so badly?

What I’d been trying to do was the equivalent of what people do on Instagram every day – edit out the ugly side and present only the elements of myself that I wanted to be seen. I knew that getting rid of the tattoo would not alter the course of my history, but at least it would mean I wouldn’t have to keep reflecting on it – because every time someone saw the tattoo I had had to explain (in the vaguest of terms) that I had been through “a rough period”. In doing so I was invoking the heavy energy around that period once again. I felt a whiff of the despair and, just like a dementor in Harry Potter, its darkness loomed large. I didn’t want to be dragged down by that chapter any longer. I wanted to put that behind me once and for all. 

So very idealistic.

The past is ugly. It has shadows and it leaves scars. It cannot be erased – even with the heat of a laser. The challenge for me has been in finding a middle ground between acceptance and regret. More than a tattoo could, it was in writing about my battle with depression that I finally made peace with the parts of myself from which I had bled so profusely (read that post here). I now neither embrace nor recoil from reminders of my past struggles. I have taken the lessons and am doing my best to gently move on. I have regrets, but I no longer ruminate on them.

We are all better off for what we’ve been through, good and bad. That’s the unsightly truth.

I used to hate birthdays. Now everything is different

I celebrated my birthday this week. I mean that literally – I really celebrated it. This is significant for me because in past years I’ve greeted my birthday like a smelly, irritating relative that comes to stay every year, whose presence I endure with practised stoicism. The only celebration would happen the day after, when I’d wake up awash with relief that it was all over for another year.

My reasons for resenting my birthday were partly due to the fact that it drew attention to me – and as an introvert, this is excruciating. Seriously, I will vote for the next politician who promises to ban the singing of Happy Birthday in workplaces. *shudder*

But at the heart of my day-of-birth anxiety was the fact that they were a reminder that another year had passed and I was not living the life I wanted to live. 

There was a sense that I was running out of time to be happy, or to achieve a life that looked anywhere near as glossy as those of my peers. Every year my misery increased exponentially as I was faced with the realisation that my life had not changed significantly from how it looked at the last birthday.

This year, however, felt different.

I’ve made some major internal changes during the year that have affected the way I see myself and my future. I have a clearer sense of my life purpose and, most significantly, the value that I hold. I can look back on my regrets without feeling burdened by them. Right now I’m in the process of changing careers, so I don’t feel stuck or inadequate professionally any more. I no longer fret about being single, nor interpret this as evidence that I am flawed. It feels like I have enough time, and enough support from the Universe, to grow to a point that I can emotionally handle, and flourish in, a relationship.

I have wonderful friendships in which I have a sense of belonging and feel valued. Actually, this is probably the most significant change of all when it comes to birthdays. I can still remember the despair and humiliation of my 32nd birthday when only two people showed up for drinks. As I write this post, I’m preparing to meet 18 friends for my birthday celebrations. This blows my mind – 18 people like me enough to come and celebrate with me!

What all this amounts to is me having dropped my ideas of how my life should look – which is what was causing my birthday angst in the past. Instead I’ve arrived at something very close to acceptance of what is. I can recognise and celebrate the many blessings in my life and I don’t feel myself disappearing into the blistering chasm between the hand I imagined I would play, and the hand I’ve been dealt. In addition, I know how much power I have to bring about change, so I’ve dropped my self-pity I used to hold. 

Most crucially, I’ve stopped comparing myself to other people on the regular. On this point my resolve gets tested often (particularly on social media) but I’m better able to detach from comparisons, and jealousy. This is not easy when you’ve grown up in New Zealand, a country where your relationship status is prized above any personal attributes or achievements. But it’s in my choices, not my circumstances, that I measure my worth now.

This is the first year that I truly understand exactly how much I have to celebrate, and I have good reason to believe that will expand and deepen as I age. In a culture obsessed with time and deadlines, my anchoring principles are these: I am exactly where I am supposed to be, and the best is yet to come. 

I still hate that fucking office birthday singalong though.

Regrets? I've had a few. Nothing wrong with that

I’m always suspicious of people who declare that they have no regrets.

I bet you know someone who has stated, with a sense of pride: “If I had to do it all again, I wouldn’t change anything.”

Really? Sure about that? You wouldn’t decide to wear a different dress to your mate’s 21st so you didn’t turn up wearing the same thing as his girlfriend? You wouldn’t have avoided that pothole so you didn’t hit a tree and write off your car? You wouldn’t have ended your dead-end relationship sooner so you could have been happier earlier? You wouldn’t have applied sunscreen every single day so you didn’t end up with an alarming amount of wrinkles in your 30s? (That sunscreen song from the 90s was right about UV protection, you know).You wouldn’t change anything? 

I don’t believe you.

Let me tell you, there isn’t much I wouldn’t change if I could. 

I would back myself and aim higher in my career instead of opting to float in the achievement-free zone of freelancing, so that I would have something to show for the past five years, to name just one.

I totally understand that everything that has happened has shaped my life and my character for the better, and that I couldn’t have learned the lessons I’ve learned any other way. The suffering was necessary then, but it is not necessary now. I also understand that regret is unhealthy – not to mention unhelpful, considering we have no means of turning back time (still hanging out for that time-machine technology, Doc).

I know all this, and yet I still have regrets – but I don’t regard that as a bad thing. 

A lot of spiritual people bang on about embracing your past, warts and all, and how liberating this is. I’m sure it probably is, but I don’t think it’s realistic, or even necessary. 

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with acknowledging that things have not worked out the way you had hoped. I do agree, though, that holding on to pain around what’s happened will hold you back. 

So here’s my approach. Instead of embarking on a futile mission to embrace all that shitty stuff, I’m working on acceptance. I can’t change what I’ve done, or what’s been done to me, but I absolutely can change how much I let those things affect me now. I see acceptance as a middle ground between celebrating unsavoury events and languishing in regret. What this means is freedom from self-flagellation over my choices, without labouring under the delusion that I should* be happy about things that did not, and never will, make me happy. 

It’s possible to be grateful for the lessons while still wishing their circumstances had been different.

If something sucks, I’m not going to pretend otherwise. You can’t put glitter on a poo, as an old editor of mine used to say (he was talking about a poorly written story, but the same message applies here). This doesn’t mean playing the ‘if only’ game though. Everything is not awesome, but it is OK. Maybe we should just focus on that. 

*I hate the word ‘should’ – it’s loaded with so much expectation and a sense that you are failing at something – and I use it sparingly. In this case I think it was warranted.