@kathelizmac “Self-acceptance has been hard for me.
For a really, really long time, I (stupidly) allowed myself to be used emotionally and physically by a boy (man is too good a noun for him, even though we’re now both in our late twenties), with whom I thought I was in love. I was young. I was blinded by my feelings. I kept thinking that he kept coming back because there had to be something there, he had to feel something for me, too. I also didn’t think I deserved or could ever do any better. When he moved across the country five years ago, I poured my heart out to him and told him I was in love with him and always had been.
He did not feel the same. Nor had he ever.
I was devastated. I never thought I would ever recover. I was also embarrassed that I had been so blind. I was ashamed that I had let this boy treat me like an absolute doormat and get away with it for so long.
The next few years were rough. I thought about him a lot, and wondered how I could change myself to make him want me. I placed a lot of my perceived self-worth in the fact that he had never loved me back. And this went on for a long time. Compounded by the fact that I was working at a job that I hated, for a company that didn’t give a damn about me (or it’s other employees) and twisted everything that went wrong to be my fault. My self-confidence was shot, to say the least.
I’m not sure when it happened, exactly, but eventually I stopped thinking about the boy. I decided I had been wrong – I never was in love with him. And as for the job? I found the courage to apply elsewhere, and landed a job that made almost twice as much, in an environment that couldn’t be more nurturing and positive. (And helped me meet a very sweet, very nice [very handsome] gentleman, who, even if nothing happens with, has shown me how a man should treat a woman.)
So what came next?
Me. (story continues in comments)
#me #iamworthit #embraceyourself #findthestrength