You feel temporary because you were supposed to break. When circumstances were so overwhelming that survival seemed impossible, when you should not have made it through—you feel like any moment could be your last. Your existence feels fraudulent, like you are cheating fate by continuing, like disaster is coming to correct the error of your survival.
Living on borrowed time means waiting for the other shoe to drop, unable to relax into life because you know it could end, feeling like you are staving off inevitable collapse. You cannot make long-term plans because you do not expect to be here, cannot invest in future because you doubt you have one.
Living this way means holding back from living fully because life feels temporary, missing present because of anticipated end.
Claiming your time means accepting that you are here legitimately, that survival means you are meant to be here, that you can build on time that is yours not borrowed.
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Content informed by trauma research, polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges), somatic experiencing (Peter Levine), and nervous system regulation studies. For comprehensive citations and further reading, see Unfiltered Wisdom: The Book.
About the Author
Robert Greene is the author and founder of Unfiltered Wisdom, a US Navy veteran, and a trauma survivor with over 10 years of experience in nervous system regulation and somatic healing. He is certified in Yoga for Meditation from the Yogic School of Mystic Arts (Dharamsala, India, 2016) and affiliated with Holistic Veterans, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving veterans in Santa Cruz, California.