The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was deciding that I was not a lovable person.
But I don't think I am the only one who has ever made that mistake.
We all have an image in our heads of what we should be, and when we don't reach those expectations we feel as if we have failed. Who sets these impossibly high standards of perfection? It is literally impossible for any of us as humans to become perfect creatures and yet we beat ourselves up when we can't do exactly that. It's sad, really, and I am guilty of doing it.
I am guilty of having so much self pity and self loathing (which is an incredibly difficult combination to deal with) that I decided that my current circumstances, which I had no control over, were going to define me and define my worth to other people. There were some who made a decision about our relationship for me, yes. But there were others who I decided would not receive a choice. No, I was not deserving of the love of my friends. I did not deserve friendship. My world was falling apart and I was scarred, battered, and bruised. I was exhausted.
No one should be forced to love someone whose soul is shattered, whose life feels dark. That kind of darkness engulfs your entire being and in turn seems to begin to engulf those around you as well. It's a crazy cycle, and I believed that by deeming myself "unlovable" I was saving those who were trying to rally around me.
I was trying to convince people that I was not deserving of their love, and that just simply wasn't true.
It took me 2 long years to figure out that, yes, I was lovable. I was not defined by my situation. I was letting my struggle define me when in reality I should have been the one defining my struggle. I could have lassoed those problems and formed them to my advantage. But instead I fell into the trap of acting like a victim.
Sure, I had people pointing out my good qualities often to make me feel like I was worth something to society. Though it was much appreciated, I didn't realize how much I needed to start loving and accepting myself to believe anything other people were saying to me.
I would receive compliments and in my head would think "that's not true" "I'm not good at anything" and a lot of other comments that would make my heart sore because I truly believed I was none of the good things that were pointed out.
I finally decided I needed something to change. I started making lists of all of the positive things I had going for me. What were the good things about me? What were the bad? Pretty soon the 'good' list started to far outweigh the 'bad'. I focused on the bad in a new way. I decided that if I deemed it 'bad' then what I needed to do was cease beating myself up over it, and change it instead.
When I started telling myself that I was of some worth, I could start believing it from other people. I stopped needing to hear it so much from other people. My worth and whether or not I deserve to be loved are not decisions that can be made by another. In fact, I don't think any of us can be fully accepting of love and friendship until we can accept and embrace our own self worth.
It's amazing, too, that once you start recognizing how great you are (and I'm not saying become conceited and go around telling people how wonderful you are, I'm saying be happy with who you are and allow yourself to see the positive) you easily begin to recognize the greatness of others. Qualities of some of my friends I never would have noticed when I was being swallowed by self pity, but once I attempted to dig out of that pit I discovered that I have met some incredible people with incredible gifts.
I guess what I'm saying is, start loving yourself. We are all lovable. No one in the world is unlovable. And I think we should all start acting like it.
