Love

This is something I posted on a new blog, unsure if I wanted to share it here, but here it is. It's now 4 days until Christmas and I am up 10 pounds from my LIW from my last round.....the round that was pointless as it was a struggle from day one. I plan to begin another round on the 1st of Jan. I hope to try sublingual from the get go this time.....anyway, here are some thoughts on Love...

I'd so desperately hoped that my weight loss journey would change my behavior, but the reality of it is much different. No diet can fix the reasons that I am overweight to begin with. No diet and no matter how thin I get, will ever make me "happy." I have never been happy, I've always complained about how I look. I've always loathed myself, even since I was a child. THAT is where this starts.

It starts as a small chid born to a 16 year-old Mother who had a lot of life to live herself, a child without a Father in the picture, a child who had zero stability, a child who's only "Father figure" died suddenly when she was 9. This child was lonely. This child didn't learn what love was except for the brief time she'd spent with her Grandfather before he died. She grew up in survival mode, protecting her heart as best as she could from the pain of feeling emotionally abandoned. A child who was clearly guided by God in the right direction, but none-the-less, still felt very empty and lonely and hurt. She felt like she had to hide herself away and protect that person so that she could get through each day. She spent a lot of time home sick from school, sometimes physically sick because worry and sadness plagued her heart, but sometimes because she didn't even feel loved at school and felt like she wasn't pretty enough, smart enough, popular enough, or worthy enough. This young girl missed at least one day per month of school, sometimes more.

The loneliness spread in to every facet of her young life. Loneliness that started at home. Loneliness from having an empty relationship with her Mother, a child who was angry when men would appear to take her place of importance. Loneliness found when left in a strangers living room as her Mother spent time in a locked bedroom with what would be only one of many boyfriends, and a song playing that night that would trigger those emotions for the rest of her life each time it played. Loneliness caused by missing the one piece of glue that held her emotions together for so long, Grandpa. Loneliness found in moving from school to school, moving a total of 7 schools by the time she graduated from High School. A life full of instability, insecurity, and never having learned the value of love at the deepest level. The level that it takes to build a healthy self-esteem, the level that teaches a child to value themselves, the level that shows young ones that they can have confidence and that they can achieve their dreams. This young me never thought she was good enough for dreams. She had BIG dreams. Dreams of acting, dreams of Marine Biology. She hid those dreams because she didn't value who she was. Because she didn't value herself, she learned to comfort with food. It could've been worse, she could've resorted to sex, drugs, or suicide, but she chose food.....which can be a drug AND suicide depending on what a person allows it to be.

I found comfort in the love of God at a young age, and thank goodness for Him. Thank goodness I had someone holding my hand along the way. The one thing I missed was His lesson of loving myself, learning to value me because He does. Learning that self-destructive behavior is the last thing that is good for me. So, here I am, almost 33 years later and I've at least nailed down the behaviors. It started as a child, the patterns, the choices to use food. There weren't consequences as a child, because I was active. The consequences came later.

Now that I've moved beyond a lot of my past, learning to forgive my Mom for not being who I needed her to be and realizing she probably did the best she knew how. Learning to forgive the details that sent me to choose food as my drug of choice. Though I've been moving forward from the emotional pain, the scars still remain. The scar of feeding my emotions. My emotions today vary, they aren't the same emotions that plagued me then. They are every day hassles, every day stresses, but my coping mechanism has stayed the same and my value of myself has stayed the same. I still aspire to act, and over the years when I'd dream about it, I'd tell myself that I wasn't pretty enough, not skinny enough, nobody would like me, I'd be horrible about it. Self-destructive negative thinking. So, now the conquest begins. I have to find out how to love myself. I am not entirely sure how to go about doing that, but I think the first step to all of this is admitting where the problem lies.

So, 2010 IS going to be a new year for the new me. New plans, and a conquest to realize that I, too, can have dreams even if they are big. That I deserve them, to a happy, healthy Mom full of spunk and life. The Mom who will give her own children the tools to value themselves, love themselves, and follow their dreams whatever they may be. That they can succeed and not spend 33 years trapped in a shell, hiding who they really are because nobody taught them that they are valuable.