The Shell That Protected a Painful Secret

Have you ever felt as though you could not find yourself?

As though you looked into a mirror and no longer knew who was looking back?

We often ask questions and search for answers.

Recently I asked myself one very important question:

“Who am I?”

Two years ago, because of an autoimmune disease, my spleen was removed.

Ever since then I have struggled to find myself again, as though something inside me had broken.

In March 2017, I volunteered as a sign-language interpreter for deaf participants at a conference.

After that conference, I had the persistent feeling that I was not where I belonged.

At the time, I did not yet know what that meant.

Because I had no idea what to do with the feeling of “I am not in the right place”, I began searching for myself.

I went to career counselling.

Worked on personal development.

Completed self-awareness tests.

Anything that might help me discover who I really was.

The career counsellors did not seem to know what to do with me.

I received no practical advice that could move me out of the feeling of being stuck.

I did learn one thing:

Around the age of forty, many people begin to experience a similar sense that they want to do something different and start searching for themselves.

That may have played a role in my case too.

But the real source of my paralysis was a secret I had carried for twenty years.

For two decades, I lived closed away from the world.

I call it living inside a shell.

What was that shell really?

A pit.

And I was living at the bottom of it.

I hid from everyone.

From everything.

I kept myself constantly busy because then I did not have to face myself or my emotional pain.

But it was a vicious circle.

Because I isolated myself, I also tortured myself from within.

The situation created new circles of self-destruction.

I rewarded myself with good food.

Because I ate for comfort, I gained weight.

Then I saw myself as ugly.

In that state, nobody befriended me.

Nobody looked at me.

Men did not find me attractive.

In fact, they barely noticed me.

I explained everything by saying:

I am fat.

I am ugly.

But the real problem was my relationship with myself.

Still, the shell protected me.

No new emotional pain could reach me because I had closed myself away.

I told myself I was comfortable like that.

In reality, I was suffering.

In 2017, I finally began recognising the pattern and facing myself.

It was painful.

When I decided to leave the shell, I collapsed.

I could not find my place in the real world.

I cried constantly.

I desperately wanted to marry.

But while I lived inside that shell, nobody even looked at me.

Nobody courted me.

And when I finally stepped outside, I had to face something that caused the same kind of collapse I had experienced in my twenties.

Abuse.

I realised that the reason I had hidden inside the shell was simple:

If I shut the world out, nobody could hurt me.

I was twenty when someone sexually abused me.

I was completely unable to process it.

I told nobody.

I lived with the secret for twenty years.

Now I decided it was finally time to face it.

What had the secret brought into my life?

Not only emotional collapse.

It had also contributed to illnesses I experienced as connected to my emotional state.

Obesity became another form of protection from men.

Of course, none of this was conscious.

If I was overweight and unattractive, then it made sense that nobody looked at me.

But carrying excess weight also made my soul suffer.

An autoimmune reaction became part of that story too.

In my own way, I was slowly destroying myself.

Eventually, I chose to face all of it.

There is no real way to prepare for that pain.

Still, I tried.

First, I agreed to have my spleen removed so I could stop taking steroids.

Then came a year-long process of recovery while my body gradually freed itself from the effects of the medication.

I slowly began exercising.

First a little physiotherapy at home.

Then box aerobics.

Eventually I gathered enough courage to walk into a gym and join a harder box-aerobics class.

Even entering a gym required enormous courage from me.

Thanks to the more intense exercise, I have already lost twenty kilograms.

Because I also began working on self-awareness and personal development, I slowly started to see who I actually am.

I became calmer.

I faced my emotional wounds too.

My inner strength continues to grow.

I have begun moving toward self-realisation.

I am less unstable.

More goal-oriented.

More balanced.

We often see ourselves through the feedback of the people around us.

Our environment becomes a mirror.

People around me noticed this enormous change.

They began encouraging me.

That gave me even more strength and momentum.

Positive feedback arrived about both the changes in my personality and behaviour and the weight loss.

My confidence began to grow.

My inner world changed.

My appearance changed.

And together, those changes put me on the road toward becoming myself.

Perhaps you are living through something similar.

Dare to face yourself.

Your pain.

Your emotional wounds.

I made the decision to leave the shell.

In one sense, I had to die so I could be reborn into a better life.

Perhaps the shell protected my painful secret.

But in reality, it also kept me away from almost everything that mattered to me.

You have to decide for yourself whether you want to change.

You have to want the change with all your strength.

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You have to be honest with yourself.

It is often painful and difficult.

But something much better may be waiting on the other side.

Do not give up.

Decide.

Change.

Believe me:

It is worth it.

(The cover image is only an illustration.)

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