Loving Yourself

Now this is what I call a vacation. Did some shopping yesterday.  No jacket, nothing that I wanted.  All they jackets they had in the store were so similar to the ones I have, it would have felt like I was wearing the old one.  Got a couple pair of shoes and low boots...two for one sale.  I can NEVER turn that down. Besides, I have such bad feet, when I find something that feels good, I stock up on it.

Today I plan on staying in.  Hubby went to work today, and my son is still in Michigan....due back Wednesday eve.   And when I look at it, this will probably be the first and only 'me' day of my vacation.  A 'me' day is a day that I am totally alone...from morning til night...a day that I can strip naked and run through the house if I wish (not a pretty sight, but fun anyway)...a day when I am  free to be totally 'me'. 

Loving Yourself is Healing the World!--Jayme Gerard

Wasn't always this way. There was a time that I hated these alone days, a time when I just couldn't stand to be with myself. I always had to be with someone...doing something.  Being alone was cause to think...and thinking wasn't allowed.  It got to the point where I clung so to my loved ones...my boys...hubby.  Wherever he went, I had to go.  At first, well, you know how it is in the beginning of a relationship, you can never see enough of each other...but, then the time comes round when you need some space from each other; no, I wasn't ready for that.  Not being with hubby meant being by myself, and talk about tantrums.  It's no lie when I say I acted like a spoiled little child...storming around, slamming doors, crying, accusing.  Why, it got so bad that I almost drove him out of my life; I was suffocating him.

And then one day came the clincher; he turned to me and said, "I have to leave.  I can't take this anymore."  I pleaded, I cried, "I'll change, I promise I will."  By now, tears were flowing freely down my cheeks...and they just weren't working anymore. "I love you, but you're clinging so that you are pushing me away." he replied.  This was the first relationship I'd ever had where someone cared about me, about what made ME happy...someone who encouraged ME to be the best that I could be instead of focusing on what I could do for them,...and here I was, I was throwing it all away because of my crazy insecurities. I knew what I had to do.  "I'll get help," I whispered...and that day back in 1992, I made a decision that was going to change my life.

I grew up, an only child, in a family where children were to be seen and not heard; hence, I had  never felt valued as a child. It was a lonely life, and one in which I never felt I could live up to everyone's expectations of me.  As a result, I had spent most of my adult life searching for some type of emotional connections. Trouble was, time after time again , I drew those Me First, emotionally unavailable people into my life.  Loving myself? What the heck was that? I was too busy doing for everyone else, so busy that there was no room for loving myself. 

Well, it took some time in counseling and a lot of digging around in the past...bringing up a lot of crap I'd buried long ago, and surprisingly, as it all began to come out, I started feeling better about my self...and eventually, saw myself coming out of the darkness as I began to see the light...not that I am cured.  There's still stuff buried in there that hasn't come forward yet, may never come forward, but I have no fear; I know I can handle it if and when it does.  And part of healing, is learning to spend time with yourself, learning how to be with yourself, to love yourself.

And so look where I am...right back where I started from...Me Time. I have a tendency to go off in tangents, so you will have to forgive me. I no longer get lonely or bored. In fact, I need my solitude, I absolutely love and savor that quiet, downtime when no one is around, that rare chance to be alone, to sleep whenever I feel like sleeping, to eat whatever I want and when I want, to catch up with a good book or a film, or just to rest my body and mind so that I can again join the world, refreshed and with a new outlook on things.

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.  I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.  I was naïve.  I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.  It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with:  that I am nobody but myself."  ~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"