Reflections No.003 — Learning to Trust Myself Again
Sometimes I wonder how I used to treat myself.
But when I try to look back, it is not always easy. I cannot clearly separate who I was from who I am now. The person I was yesterday already belongs to the past, just as the person I was a week ago or a few years ago feels different from the person I am today. We are constantly changing, shaped by our experiences, our choices, and the quiet lessons life teaches us along the way. Perhaps we are always leaving behind old versions of ourselves while slowly becoming someone new.
And yet, there is one thing I can see more clearly now.
There was a time when I no longer trusted myself.
I have always been someone who feels things deeply. I usually know when something feels right and when it does not. If my words do not match what I truly believe, I feel it. If my actions move too far away from my values, something inside me becomes unsettled. I have never been very good at pretending. If something is not genuine, I struggle to force myself into it.
But life is not always simple.
There are moments when we choose what is necessary rather than what feels true. Moments when we move in a direction we never intended to go. Sometimes we do it for survival. Sometimes for peace. Sometimes for the people we care about. And sometimes simply because we do not know what else to do.
Little by little, I began convincing myself that it was fine. That this was just how life worked. That I would be okay.
And perhaps, at the time, those choices really were the best I could make.
But looking back now, I can see that each compromise carried a small cost. With every step away from myself, I became a little more disconnected from the person I truly was.
There was a time when I could not call white white.
And I could not call black black.
It may not have seemed like a significant thing from the outside, but those moments accumulated quietly over time. A gap began to grow between what I believed and how I lived. The wider that gap became, the harder it was to understand myself. Eventually, I could no longer clearly see why I felt the way I did, why I was so exhausted, or why certain parts of me felt lost.
Inside me, there was always a struggle between what I wanted and what I thought I should do, between courage and fear, between my conscience and the realities of life. And the more exhausted I became, the harder I was on myself. I believed that if I pushed myself enough, criticized myself enough, or demanded more from myself, I would eventually become stronger.
But it never worked that way.
It only left me feeling further away from myself.
These days, something feels different.
Not because I have become perfect. Not because I no longer make mistakes or experience difficult emotions. But because I have stopped treating myself as a problem that needs to be fixed.
Instead, I have become more curious.
Why did I react that way?
Why did that situation affect me so deeply?
What was I needing in that moment?
Rather than judging myself, I have been trying to understand myself.
And perhaps that is where trust begins.
Not in grand achievements or life-changing moments, but in small promises kept quietly over time.
Waking up when I said I would.
Going for a walk.
Writing in my journal.
Taking care of responsibilities that no one else sees.
These are small things, but each time I follow through, I remind myself that I can rely on me.
There are still days when I stumble. There are still moments when fear returns or old patterns resurface. But I no longer see those moments as failures. Falling is part of being human. Learning how to rise again is a skill, and like any skill, it grows stronger with practice.
Perhaps I am not learning how to become a better person after all.
Perhaps I am learning how to live a little more honestly, a little more courageously, and a little more in alignment with who I truly am.
And somewhere along the way, I think I have started finding something I once lost.
Not confidence.
But trust.
Trust in myself.
