What I taught myself in 2025

 What I taught myself in 2025:

 

My journey has taken me to learn this and to write it to myself so that I can remember where I come from and to roughly guess the direction in which the wind blows me.

 

A real apology isn't just a list of words; it’s the quiet sound of behaviour changing. If the change never comes with the chime of reparations, words are just a way to avoid the truth. You deserve people around you who don't require you to provide a manual on how to say “I'm sorry.”

A real apology is more than a sentence; it is a bridge being built back toward you.

It doesn't just name the mistake; it honours the ache it caused. It doesn't ask for a tidy room without first picking up the broom.

If someone says they’re sorry but leaves the mess for you to clean, they are only looking for an exit, not a way back in. Love doesn't just say, “I'm sorry”; love asks, “How can I make this right?” and then stays long enough to do the work. Remember: the loudest apology is the one that lives every day through a change of heart.

 

 When we speak our pain, we are offering an invitation.

Sometimes, we offer it to someone whose doors are currently locked, perhaps by fear or exhaustion or the heavy weight of their own life. To them, our vulnerability might feel like an intrusion or a threat to their safety. They aren't trying to be cruel; they are simply standing behind a shield they built long ago to survive. They cannot hear us because the noise of their own self-protection is too loud. In that moment, we need to listen to them being unavailable.

Other times, we offer our pain to someone who has learned to feel safe in the open air. They are no longer at war with themselves and they don't see our feelings as a battlefield, for whoever is at war with themselves can only fall defeated. They see our heart as a companion. They ask, “Can you help me understand?” not because they are saints among warriors, but because they have found the courage to put their shields down.

We are all both people. We have all been the one who hides, and we have all been the one who listens. We are every other single human being in a different body and a different set of circumstances.

And we need to honour when another person locks their doors; we need to walk different paths and write different stories.

The divergence and convergence of two souls feel like the universe exhaling and inhaling: whatever the movement is, it is sacred.

 

Sometimes, people hide their hearts because they were taught that being “strong” (a fancy word for small) was the only way to be loved. When they see you shining and open, it hurts them—not because of who you are, but because you are the freedom they haven't allowed themselves to have yet. Observe and feel the walls they built to survive, but don't let those walls become your prison, too. Your openness is not a burden; it is your gift. Remember that you were small too when you gave generously in order to be loved out of fear; instead, please give generously and be loved. Your walls are crumbling and becoming ruins.

 

 Sometimes we get closer to a version of someone that is actually just a mirror of our own unhealed parts. We look at them and see the potential we wish we had or the innocence we think we lost. That is not a mistake—it’s just a way our hearts try to find their way home. You don't need to feel ashamed of whom you got close to or why. Every person we are drawn to might be a pointer, showing us where we are still waiting to grow. There is wisdom everywhere, waiting for us to create it. Be kind to the version of you that didn't know the things you know now. Be compassionate and attentive; you learned that lesson years ago, but it’s still a good one.

 

 Judgement is a small room with a locked door. It only lets in the people who act the way we think they should. It asks, “What would I do if I were the other person?” or "What would I feel if I were the other person" which unfortunately translates into, “Why aren't they more like me?” You cannot go down that path; many bad things are justifiable or dismissible that way.

Empathy is the vast, open sky. It doesn't need to agree with the weather to acknowledge that it’s raining. It doesn't ask, "What would I do?” It asks, "What is it like to be you?”, “Where does what makes you you come from?” The key is compassionate curiosity, and you have too many questions.

When you walk with empathy in your heart, you realise no one is beneath you. When you walk with boundaries in your gut, you realise no one is above you. In that middle space, we are finally just human. We are finally equal.

 

 And now I will stop talking to myself and pretend I’m sane for a bit.

 

For a long time, I thought that understanding the “why” was the same as being free. I built towers of logic and rules about apologies and maturity (backed by psychology, to have a fortress to hide in), hoping that if I could just explain the truth clearly enough, the pain would have no choice but to leave. But I realise now that I was trying to teach others how to love me when my only real job was to learn how to love myself and to be surrounded by people who already love me, and that way, I teach people to treat me well or go away just by being myself. The potential I saw in others was always just my own light reflected back at me; I don't need to project it anymore: there’s a beautiful light in every person anyway. I am letting go of the need to be the teacher, the judge, or the mirror; I am letting go of that fear. I am choosing instead to be the peace that follows me everywhere. My trauma ended, my mask is cracked and falling apart, and this strange play called life is starting just now. I am not a tragedy to be solved; I am finally looking at myself in the eye, having this weird sensation of being the universe experiencing itself as a person.

 

I want to put off every defence mechanism I can find in myself; it will take time, but I won't build anything on top. I want to end all the hierarchies I can see in myself, even those that taste like cheating and make me feel good. Actually, especially those that make me feel good; the hierarchies that make me feel bad are the easiest ones to spot.

This is the opposite of self-improvement, this is the opposite of self-destruction. This is undressing and nakedness. Light will pass through the cracks where my fears nested. The silence of awareness will remain in interdependence, while empathy is seen as our true nature.

In truth, that is what protecting ourselves really means: growing. 

Our shields were like a shell that protected us but, at some point, we outgrew; we leave them on the path because we don’t need them anymore.

This is how masks fall apart, with a compassionate bow before who we were.

 

My New Year propositions are the following:

 

I will put off all the defence mechanisms I can see in myself because I will vanquish all the fear I manage to see within me.

I will stop blowing my nose like an elephant (at least when you’re around, yes, you, and you know who you are).

 

 

    What I taught myself in 2025  © 2025 by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/