Core Value 9: I deserve every good thing that happens to me

This one may be considered more of an affirmation than a value, but it goes with the mindset and it is 100% true not just for me, but for all of us.

There were two reasons why I could not get out of my depression.

Reason 1. I was beating myself up for decisions that I had made and things that I had done in the past. I’m not talking about recent stuff. I’m talking about stuff 20+ years ago.

I carried them around like they were in a backpack with me everywhere I went.

I would constantly run through the scenarios like a movie with a bad ending, trying to change the outcome, knowing that it was going to be the same.

My mind would fail at rewriting it and I would spiral deeper into my depression.

After talking with my therapist one day, I realized that our past mistakes are guidelines for the future. We can’t change the past but we can change the future.

I also had to remember that I’m not that person anymore. Yeah, that was me physically but I have changed so much over the years in a good way and have made strides that it would be like carrying around stuff that I did when I was a toddler.

I had to let it go. We can’t let the past determine our future. We have a choice to carry it into the future or snap it off and leave it where it belongs, in the past.

Reason 2. I was not being my true self.

I would walk around and see all of these people all happy and enjoying their lives (later realizing that most of the people in the world have struggles that nobody on the outside knows about) and I would say to myself, “Why can’t I be like them? Why can’t I just be happy like them?”

I’ve known I was transgender pretty much my whole life. I was so jealous of every girl that I would meet because they were on the path in life in so many facets of their existence and that was something that in my mind I would never be able to do.

I was trapped and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. By living a forced alternate existence, I was not living up to my full potential. I could never catch my stride. I mean, how could I?

I felt like I didn’t deserve any good thing that happened to me because I was not brave enough to face my biggest fear and just be myself.

The world would never know Mikaela. Mikaela would never know the world.

At almost 8 years completely sober, I was at rock bottom emotionally and mentally. No matter what I did I couldn’t break it. I didn’t deserve any good thing that happened to me in my own mind.

And then I caught a whiff of freedom. My wife told me that she would still be there no matter what if I transitioned and I could tell when she told me that it was a genuine statement.

There was a chance that I could just come out with it and be free?

So with much reluctance and extremely nervous about it, I started calling the people that I loved the most and told them about my deepest, darkest battles.

Some showed empathy, some were shocked but still showed empathy, and some laughed me off the phone.

As I write this today after walking around as myself yesterday in a crowd of several thousand people and feeling 100% safe and secure in the most conservative part of the country, with a tear in my eye and hope radiating from my soul, I can now say that I deserve every good thing that happens to me, and I’m going for it.

My family and those closest in my circle have put up with so much that they deserve to see good things happen in my life. I deserve for good things to happen in my life.

I didn’t get this core value out of a book or an app. It didn’t come from some seminar that I paid thousands of dollars to attend.

This one came from my mom, who when I was going through my worst times in life and something good would finally happen after I felt like I was falling out of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down, would say the words exactly how they are written.

And that’s why Core Value number 9 is “I deserve every good thing that happens to me.”

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