Now The Person I'm Going To Betray Last Is Me

​In a recent podcast interview, Steve Bartlett asked Brené Brown, “Have you ever overcome anything?”

She answered, “Yes, I have overcome the belief that I will ever overcome anything.”

Those were timely and powerful words.

I am in the process of writing the final words of my book - the ending. And to be honest with you, I thought this would be the easiest part to write. After this long and often arduous process of digging up and writing the story of my life, I imagined that the words on the other side of all that digging would come easily.

They have not.

Why?

Because I’ve felt pressure - an internal pressure - to find some beautiful way to say look at all I’ve overcome while knowing, deep inside, that in many ways, I’ve overcome nothing.

I’ve wanted so badly to tell the readers who may find themselves in my story, readers who carry demons much like mine, here is how you overcome them.

Yet as I write this ending, here they sit. My demons. As present as they have ever been.

But as Brené Brown seemed to suggest, the story - our story - isn’t about exiling demons as much as it is about getting to know them.

Brown went on to say:

“I have overcome the belief that I will ever arrive. I am grateful for the skills that I have that keep me more aligned with the person, the mom, the partner, the leader I want to be. But I try to stay very mindful that I am scary when I’m scared. That I catastrophize very easily, and that’s painful for everyone around me. And that I don’t need to be liked—because now, the person I’m going to betray last is me. Now the person I’m going to betray last is me.”

And it hit me, what’s the point of writing the most honest version of your life you’ve ever written, only to finish it by hiding again? Why introduce the world to your ugliest and most haunting demons, only to end by giving birth to a few more?

We live in a world that wants every story to have a happy ending.
But does it? Should it?

What if life has nothing to do with arriving and everything to do with learning on the way to never arriving?

What if healing isn’t about getting rid of our demons, but about getting to know them - about becoming, somehow, more human to our demons than they are to us?

And what if the greatest pain a demon can bring is not in haunting us, but in pressuring us to pretend they’re not there, to keep betraying ourselves?

I really have overcome the belief that I will ever overcome anything. That no longer feels like defeat. Because the more I think and write about it, the more I realize - there is no happier ending to a story.

"Now the person I'm going to betray last is me."