Day 14: When Awareness Becomes “Who I Am”

It would be easy to write this post about my father.

He’s who I was thinking about when I wrote today’s social slides. He has struggled with anger his entire life, and it has grown more extreme as he’s gotten older. He knows it’s a problem. My mother and I name it often. And every time, his response is the same, “It’s just who I am.”

This series has been an invitation for me to reflect on the space between awareness and embodiment, to soften into it, to accept it, and maybe, quietly, to notice where I still want to change. So I need to be honest here. Vulnerable. Because I am more like my father than I want to admit.

Not in the obvious way.

I have a very long fuse. I don’t explode easily. But when I do reach the end of it, it’s intense and final. Where I resemble him most is not in anger, but in how I end things.

When I’m hurt by someone, they’re removed from my life cleanly, decisively, like an eye cut from a potato. Gone. Forever.

This has always been something I carried with pride. I warned people early. You don’t get a second chance with me. For years, that line felt like strength. Integrity. Self respect. Even small betrayals, white lies, withheld truths, were enough. I would block someone and move on without much grief at all.

What I didn’t see then was how much anger I was carrying, how each betrayal stacked another layer onto that wall of extraction. How easily “boundaries” became avoidance.

A lot of this traces back to trust, something I’ve written about again and again in this series. I grew up not trusting people or myself. And that showed up in my romantic relationships too. Almost every one of them ended in betrayal. Cheating. Dishonesty. The people closest to me proving, again, that I couldn’t trust them.

Each experience reinforced the same belief. You’re safer alone. You can’t trust anyone. Especially not the ones you love.

So yes, this is part of me. It is, in many ways, just how I am.

And here’s the part that surprised me most as I wrote this. I’m not sure I want to change all of it.

That’s not entirely true. I do want to soften in some places. I want to give my friends more room to be human. To talk instead of disappearing. To name when I feel unsupported. To accept that not everyone wants or knows how to share everything, and that their privacy doesn’t automatically mean betrayal.

But when it comes to romantic relationships, I don’t feel the same flexibility. I want an equal. I want honesty. Vulnerability. Transparency. And I don’t think that expectation is something I want to negotiate.

So here I am, noticing where this pattern has become identity. Where awareness has settled into something I simply call “me.” And for the most part, I’ve made peace with that.

But the question that’s starting to stir now is quieter, and more unsettling.

What if I wasn’t okay with it.

What if I didn’t want change, not because it’s impossible, but because it would require letting go of something that has kept me safe.

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately. I’m just learning to notice the difference.

We’ll talk more about this next week as we close out the series.

As always, take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and trust your own timing.

Today’s prompt:
Where do you find yourself saying, "That's just who I am" or "That's just how I am?"

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to notice what’s there.