Yearning.

By a Tools for Success Counseling Client

Yearning. That's what got me today. She asked me what I thought that I was yearning for during the times I feel the most depressed and lonely. I felt a sense of validation when she told me that her own yearning was for unconditional love, or something like it because growing up love was never exemplified. Not in a healthy and unconditional way.

I yearn to be cared for, for someone to care about me, to matter, for people to know the little things about me like my favorite foods or the places I like to sit and create art. I yearn for validation. I want to say, do and be the right thing, to be appreciated.

And as for what you'd see through my eyes during the times when I feel the most depressed? You'd see through the eyes of a little girl in a new classroom trying to make friends. But something must be wrong with her because nobody wants to be friends with her. "She's annoying", "She's unattractive", "She's not popular", "She's too quiet". Through that little girl's eyes, you'll see the world through a fog. Everything she's told to think about herself isn't what she believes, maybe it is? It's hard to see, to think through what others have projected onto her.

She never realized in the moment that the projections were artificial and beneath there was a blank canvas. She spent years trying to live as if the projections were who she was and would always be. But slowly she started to see that the canvas was never tainted, just overshadowed. But life never stopped for a moment to see her progress, Now she has to learn how to fill the canvas.