Some real raw truth.
It’s a hard pill to swallow when you learn that you didn't love yourself.
I went around placing the value and life of others over my own until one day I learned this was a conditional belief bestowed upon me, "to receive love, you have to freely give it away." BUT, then, what happens when the love you give to others, the value you place on them actually returns to you void of anything that resembles love. All the love, all you have given in the name of love and selflessness has abandoned you, given up on you, shut you out and shut you down. The exact Self-LESS-ness was exactly what I was giving out and therefore what was returning to me--there was no void. The Universe was responding!
During a coaching session, I was given what I thought was a simple task, "write a love letter to yourself." I thought, "this will be easy," I pulled out my journal, got my favorite pen, and sat there. Sat there and I sat THERE.
Blank.
Nothing.
Then, I heard myself whisper back to me, “You don't love yourself."
I cried. What ended up on that paper, were tears, tears of heartache and struggle, pain and suffering, disbelief, discontent, hatred, depression, jealousy, envy, sorrow, abandonment, distrust, fear, and anger.
There was a reason, but hell, I didn’t even know it. I didn't even know love or what it was supposed be like, feel like, or look like. My ideas of love were so warped and tainted by giving it away freely that it was entangled in misalignment and disillusion and yet, “to be loved” was the one thing I wanted more than anything. Still do.
Contrary to what relatives, friends, people that really think they know me think of me... they are wrong because I didn’t know me. How can you know someone when you never take the time to get to know them?
Needless to say, when you come to an awareness about yourself, that you have been living a lie caused by an illusion of falsehood, there is more weight of disgust that enters you. You choose your surroundings, look at those around you differently, start to judge them because now you look at them as "fake" because they don't even know that you are not even being real with yourself. However, you cannot blame them because all they’ve been doing is buying into what you've been selling.
It’s all so complicated, but then not so complicated at all... I found that by giving so much of myself away to others, I had relinquished my control and they had this power over me - then when I shifted, they became angry, frustrated, and disappointed in my decisions and choices as if my living was for them. THAT was the AHA for me... I WAS living for them. So, there was this confusion "how dare I change course on them?" And"how dare they not support me in MY choices?" There is no compromise when two levels of thinking are unparalleled. In other words, I was changing, they were not and this interrupted the power seat they once sat in at my table. So I began to distance myself in order to do the work that required me to learn me, my authentic self. Those same people fell off because "you have changed," without regard to wondering, caring, or questioning "why," "what has happened," "are you okay?" Distance. Silence. Frustration.
How was I looking for love to return to me when I wasn’t living in my own truth? I have yet to write that love letter to myself. I still give of myself and love, but I have learned that it cannot be given without a price of loving me first.
I am learning to be grateful for the experiences because now I know that my ideas surrounding love have to be recreated and nurtured in health. I am a whole person, with dents, but each moment that I breathe deeply in and exhale deeply out... I am increasing the hollowness that resides there.
I have learned that in returning back to me, I would need to forgive myself, trust myself, show myself compassion and empathy. I am happy. I am whole. I am complete. I am love. And with that knowing... my love letter to myself is yet to be unwritten.
