“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.
I decided that it was time for me to love myself, and embrace the positive changes that were going on in my life.
Like RuPaul says: “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”
She’s right.
It hasn’t been easy. There have been days where I have felt down, and I don’t like myself very much, if at all. Slowly but surely, though, those days are being outnumbered by the days that I know I’m amazing and I’m a boss and I’m flawless and fabulous and fierce and anyone that has the pleasure of knowing me is a damn lucky person.
Now that I wear my Self Love ring, it’s so much easier on downer days to remind myself of that. I just need to glance at it to remind myself that I’m worth it, and remember the promise I made to myself when I put it on.
I am worth it.
I am not my past.
I am not my mistakes.
I will not base my self-worth on those things.
The future is bright. Sometimes you just need a little spark to remind you of that. And sometimes, when the light catches my ring, it’s almost like an encouraging wink, reminding me: “You got this, babe. And you’re damn sure worth it."
- Kate
Connect with her on Instagram! @kathelizmac