Truth

*Note: this post was created last week. After talking with the Mr. and Mrs., I'm posting it up.

This probably has been 29 years in the making, so I'm going to try to make this count. Since I'm not very good at expressing what I want to say through words until taking the time to write my thoughts down, I'm going in and laying everything out right now in terms of what holds me back.

Each day, I try to believe that I'm a good person, worthy and deserving of love. Each day, I try to forgive myself for all the mistakes I've made in my life. Let's get this straight: I just want to be forgiven. That doesn't mean that I will make the same mistakes again, that doesn't mean I pretend that I never did anything wrong and affected others by my actions...no. Not at all. I acknowledge that the decisions I've made were bad ones, ones that I carry a lot of guilt for. The guilt is holding me back from letting go.

It is hard for me to let things go because of the guilt I feel that I allowed the action in question to happen. Everything I've done and allowed to happen to me in the past is the result of not loving myself enough and believing that I have value. I allowed myself to be around people who had no respect for others, much less to me. But I blinded myself, in an attempt to see the best of situations and hope that things would work out for the best. This is why I've allowed people to take advantage of my kindness and generosity, and to treat me like shit. Though things were done that made me upset, angry, and uncomfortable, because I didn't feel that I deserved more than what I had, I let things slide and allowed people to get away with treating me badly. I basically became accustomed to eating shit from everyone: family, so-called friends, and ex lovers, thinking that I was doing the right thing by allowing others to be themselves.

Now...in regards to loving yourself....is this something that is supposed to be instilled in you from childhood? Is there supposed to be constant reminders that you are a person of value and that you shouldn't settle for less than being loved, appreciated, and respected? I don't remember any of that happening in my childhood, and in my teenage years. I remember becoming very cynical about my peers and erecting shields around myself so that their petty judgments and whatever else didn't affect me, but it did. To this day, I have the hardest time allowing people to really know me, even love me. At times, it would feel that there's obviously something wrong with the real me that is best kept away from the world...like my true feelings and emotions. I was a pretty thin-skinned child; quick to anger and getting my feelings hurt. I HATED that about myself, so I would make it a point to just keep parts of myself locked away from people. And, like other children born in the 1980s and were teens in the 1990s, we were raised in the Age of 'No'( a beautiful name created by a beautiful man). Basically, there was no real nurturing, just "no" to drugs, "no" to sex, and "no" to alcohol. No discussions or teachings on how to be a woman; just judgments because I played video games and hung out in arcades until late. No discussions about sex and sexuality; you know, how it's done, what I should and shouldn't do, just "you're gonna do what you want to do anyway, so just be careful", and helping to raise younger siblings in a way to keep me under the thumb.

Now, a part of me doesn't resent ALL of that, because focusing on finishing high school on time and going to college wasn't a bad thing. It's the instilling of FEAR in me that I deeply resent. It's not having a true feminine presence in my life. One that was NURTURING, KIND, and could advise me and uplift me with real guidance, not try to dictate to me how I should live my life, and feel that "Older ALWAYS means WISER", especially since YOUR personal life wasn't even that great of an example to go by, yet in the end, I succumbed to the same traps of allowing my self-esteem, pride and self-respect to be dictated and eroded by others.

So. Here it is. I believe that I've pretty much laid out the big, dark secret of my heart. Because of all of the events mentioned, I don't know what being a woman, a person who loves themselves, OR what a good lover/girlfriend is, and try as I might, I still had issues with being emotionally available. My ignorance in all these affairs continue to cause problems in my personal life, and I feel like I detract value from the relationships I have with people than actually ADD value. And that's because at times I feel that I don't have value. So, the question is, how do I go about changing that? How does one begin to see good within themselves, and on a DAILY basis? Do I have to start small, take it step by step? What does a REAL woman do to acknowledge within herself that she is a fabulous creature, all powerful, and all deserving of nothing but the best?

Hmm. Maybe I could start by continuing to forgive myself every day, but to ACTUALLY do it, no matter how harsh words will sound to me (and they will). I can't let that erode the hope that someday, I will have totally forgiven myself, and those I've hurt will, too. So, here goes:

"Just because I'm choosing to forgive myself for past actions doesn't mean that I believe those decisions I made were good ones. They were what I was, no longer what I AM...or more appropriately, what I am BECOMING. I can and will learn from those choices, and each day, I will try to let go of the the guilt I am accustomed to punishing myself for. Each day, I will give myself permission to forgive myself, and to realize that I am allowed to forgive myself."

"I will forgive myself for believing that I'm not worthy of love. I will have the courage to believe that I'm worthy of love, and that I can learn the right way to accept that love and allow myself to be loved by others."