30 Posts of Truth....Day 1

Just got back from shopping and finally found a jacket that fits me.  I know, living here in the city I should have NO problems finding clothes to fit me, and at one time of my life, I didn't, but I've grown older now and between the fibro and shortness of breath from years of smoking, I don't get around as I once did, but I am not complaining.  I'm not housebound; I still manage to get around...albeit not as fast and often as I once did...and I know that this can be improved some...if only I lost the extra weight.  Since I stopped smoking July 4th, 2009, I've put on 60 pounds....and since that time I have felt worse healthwise; hence, the need to lose.   So, when I say I just HAVE to lose weight, it's not from vanity as it once was, but from the wear and tear it puts on my body.   

I've decided to participate in the 30 Posts of Truth.   A number of my blogging friends have begun participating including  Linda at Ye Olde Crone's Gazette  and   Mother Moon  I am not quite sure where this began, but the list of topics  can be found at The Karma Project.  I think it is an interesting concept , one that offers us the opportunity to better know each other.  For me, writing has also been very healing, and I have always kept journals.  Just yesterday I found my journal from 1991, the year hubby and I first met.  I'd almost forgotten how needy I was, how low my self-esteem.

The first topic is to name something about yourself that you hate.  Hate is far too strong a  word.   Now, I bet you are all waiting for me to come out and say something like I hate being fat since I DID put the idea in your head.  Actually,   I am happy with myself today. I look in the mirror those wrinkles are telling me  that I have truly lived my life, and as uncomfortable I may feel with this extra weight, there was a time that I lay across the bed and slept because I had no food to eat.   I see someone in that mirror who is finally not afraid to be herself, a woman no longer afraid of accepted.  There is nothing I hate about myself today, but there was a time that I hated who I was and wished I was somebody, anybody, different.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans.  We have learned

to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands.  We have learned

to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being

accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.--Don Miguel Ruiz

Wise words from a wise man.  Just be yourself.  Yet, for some of us, an impossible feat.   In my case, being ridiculed in elementary school  damaged my self-esteem so badly that by the time I became a teenager, I had such fear of not being accepted that I did things--skipping school regularly, smoking, drinking, marijuana was just beginning to become a social drug-- just so I would be accepted by the 'cool' crowd.  Now,  I was raised in an alcoholic home; both parents smoked cigarettes, so aside from skipping school, I was just doing what I deemed normal.  To me, they WERE the cool crowd.  I do know better now, but try telling a 14 year old girl whose classmates had belittled and taunted her from the time she entered the 5th grade....the year my cousin moved to town and took great pride in making me the laughing stock of the class.

That was the gist of my high school years.  I skipped more school than I attended, but because I loved learning and had a bright mind, I was able to maintain passing grades...even getting some A's.   My bookkeeping teacher told me it was a shame that I didn't knuckle down to my studies because if I did, the sky would have been the limit.  Hey, but I was cool, and that's all that mattered at the time...that and the fact that I was a very pretty girl...and that would get me through anything.  At that time my hair was dark, and people were always telling my mother that  I looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor..while others thought it was  Audrey Hepburn. On first appearance, I had it all together, but underneath, I had no sense of worth.  I smiled prettily, kept every hair in place, held onto  my girlish figure, and ventured out into the world not as a secure young woman with the world at her feet, but as a beaten down shell who found it difficult to look anyone in the eye. Somewhere along the line I had lost my Self.

They say we draw to us what we think we deserve, so for the next  few years, no, almost three decades,  I found myself diving in and out of all kinds of crazy and  abusive relationships--alcoholic, gambler, sex addict who couldn't stop cheating, physical abuser.  I was in so much pain.  My saving grace was that I lost myself in my studies...the Rosicrucian Fellowship, A.R.E. studies....whatever studies were offered for free....and that was a good thing, for that gave me focus.  It took me away from the pain.

Somewhere along the line, the real ME showed up.  I found myself, what was meaningful and what I wanted out of life.  The person above, that sad little woman who once only cared that everyone liked her, now only cares that she likes herself.  In all honesty, I may not  like the person I was, but I can't say I hate her either.   She just didn't know any better. She never had that  upbringing that made her feel loved and wanted. Sometimes when I look at ME now and compare to the person above,  I hate not the person, but that I was once that person; sometimes I feel that I wasted much of my life looking in all the wrong places, but deep inside I know that we are always where we were meant to be.  

Today, I have  that love I was always searching for, but only because I learned that love of Self had to come first for you cannot love another if you can't love yourself.  I've forgiven that immature girl/woman that had control of most of my adult years; she wasn't at fault.  Life hadn't taught her how to simply be herself, to love herself, and then true love would find its way to her.  Somewhere along the line, I realized that it is what's inside that really counts; that is true beauty.

Accept everything about yourself--I mean everything, 

You are you and that is the beginning and the end--no apologies, no regrets.

Clark Moustakas