“I wonder when I love me is enough”
-”I Love Me” Demi Lovato
One of the greatest things I’ve struggled with in this life is loving myself. From a young age I struggled with depression and wanting to be here. It started young around eight years old and it was a daily struggle all through my teenage years and even as a young adult. Happiness felt like an unattainable dream that could never be achieved. I made friends with the darkness as it was way easier to be sad and hopeless than it was to be happy.
But I was fantastic at wearing a mask out in the public. My close friends and family knew how bad it was but people at school or at work had no idea because I was always so cheery and bubbly. I was great at deflecting any questions for all my missed absences by saying I was sick and since I was a good student no one ever looked too deeply. Then I would go home and lock myself in my room and cry... and cry... and cry. I had a hard time making friends and keeping them.There was this deep belief that since I don’t like myself no one could either. Why would someone ever want to be my friend when I didn’t like me? This bled into relationships too. Anytime a relationship would start to get serious I always questioned it: Why would you want to be with me?
People talk about you need to love yourself before you can love someone else. I believe there is truth in that statement. It is so much easier to give your love to someone else than it is to love yourself. We talk about soulmates and about finding your other half in the world. Needing to find your Prince Charming in order to have a Happy Ending in life. Am I not enough? Am I not already complete and whole? Why do I need someone else to save me? How can I save myself?
I’m the type of person who will do selfless acts to help the other person until it becomes destructive to me. It is so much easier for me to help and worry about other people than it is to take care of myself. And then I have an emotional burnout because I took on the role of caregiver to everyone in my life that I ignore my own needs. I have been doing this emotional behavior since I was a kid. I will love everyone else in my life but I won’t stop and love myself.
Then at 16 I started my journey of loving myself. During this time there were more bad days than good. Medication and therapy weren’t helping. I had the fantasy that I could just die in my sleep as that seemed painless. I didn’t like physical pain so suicide scared me even though I wanted to die. So I tried to sleep my life away because reality for me was too hard. And then my Mom saved my life with a healing modality called Life Activation. She found this school called the Modern Mystery School and learned this ancient activation that turns on the DNA. Now at the time I wanted nothing to do with anything spiritual or religious. I didn’t believe in God, the closest thing I believed in was the Greek Gods or the Universe. I was already having a hard time fitting in with peers and friends, I just wanted to be normal. But we had tried everything and I just couldn’t seem to want to live; so I said yes to the Life Activation.
I had a profound experience, I could feel what was happening even though my Mom wasn’t touching me. It was pretty freaky for me. It was the first spark for me on my spiritual journey and the first step in loving myself.
For ten years I have been a part of the Modern Mystery School and with each new class, healing, activation or meditation I did the more I was learning to love myself.Has it been easy? Hell no! It is never easy to look at the aspects of yourself that you don’t like and then heal them.I struggle with loving myself yet with all the tools I have received from the classes I have taken, it has made it easier.
My idea of success has never been about making a lot of money or buying a house or even getting married. My biggest goal in life is to just be happy, to find my own happy ever after.For a large part of my life that seemed unattainable. That’s all I want out of life is to be happy and to love who I am. I feel like that’s something everyone wants.
I want to change and save the world, and most of the time I have no idea how I’m going to do that. But I have to remind myself that I have changed the world, because each day I choose to stay alive. Each day I say “not today evil”. And everyday I say that is another day I say I love me.