Tag: forgiveness

As a child, my parents would say hurtful things about my weight. They never flat-out said that I wasn’t beautiful or that I wasn’t worthy of love, but I took the words they did say and basically felt as if I heard them say I wasn’t beautiful and that I wasn’t worthy of love because of my size.

This became part of my identity at a very early age.

My entire identity wrapped itself around these false statements that I gave power to.

I imagine growing around these false statements like your body tissue forms and grows around a breast implant, or a bullet fragment, or a donated organ, or an injury.

They became a living, breathing, part of me.

They became true for me.

But, I was wrong.

So fucking wrong.

They were, and are, false statements.

There is no way that I am worth less than the person standing to my left and to my right anywhere on this earth. There is no way that I am not beautiful.

Today, I choose to give different statements power as I unwrap my identity around these false ideas I have carried about myself for over two decades.

I imagine the tissues dying off as their blood source is taken away.

Today, I made myself breakfast.

I packed my lunch for work. I did an entire skin-care routine.

I made my bed. I am going to go workout after a closing shift.

All this time I thought that I didn’t love myself, but I did.

I was just showing it with unhealthy coping mechanisms that didn’t look too much like love, but I think they did look like someone who was desperately trying to move forward while believing that they were less than.

It looked like a losing fight.

I did these things today as a healthy form of self-care and self-love.

I’m only able to do these things because I actively love myself and want to care for myself.

I am reinventing myself. I am leveling up.

Like a 2.0 version of myself.

I’m taking apart all of the false ideas and negative thoughts that I had about myself to find out who I really am.

I’m coming for all of the energies taken from me.

I’m focusing on turning all of the losses I took into wins.

I’m coming for all of the love I wasn’t given and giving it to myself.

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As for weight-loss – I’m going with what feels good.

The idea of an ideal weight, I’m scrapping it.

When I was 16, 170 pounds was my happy space.

I have no fucking idea what my happy space is at 28.

I snatched my weight-loss board off of my closet door.

I ripped up the reward system that I wrote out for every 7.5 pounds down.

I’ll know my happy weight when I fucking get there.

I’m not rewarding myself for weight lost because I’m not going to tell myself that that’s the only reason I deserve to be rewarded.

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I gave so much power to so many things that were so wrong.

I was so wrong about everything.

I realize that it is totally okay for an idea you had about yourself to not be true. It is okay for you to realize that it was total and utter bullshit. It’s okay to say you were wrong.

I feel

naked,

afraid,

nervous,

excited.

I’m having to step into who I really am now and it’s terrifying and it’s beautiful.

I could never truly be me because I was always carrying around the dead weight of the dead tissue with me. It weighed me down.

So much of me was wrapped up in lies.

Today, I am more me, than I ever was before.

Like – WILL THE REAL S PLEASE STAND UP?

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I don’t know why the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Probably because you’re the only physical – living and breathing – entity on this earth who knows who you really are – you’re the only person who knows who you are at your core. You know every nook and cranny of your mind, heart, and spirit.

So, when you’ve let yourself down, it is like a million hearts breaking.

But the first step to get to the point of forgiving yourself – is to acknowledge the wrongdoing.

Cheryl Strayed wrote in the book Wild –

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”

This quote always stuck with me and I finally figured out why.

Because I was so very fucking wrong, but I could still be forgiven.

I did what I did out of survival.

Emotionally eating. Being hyper-critical of myself. The men I dated. The friends I kept. The money I spent.

I did what I did because it was the only thing I knew.

But I can still be forgiven.

So, I forgive myself today.

Because I didn’t know better than, but I do now.

I always loved myself, just not in the way that was best for me.

But it was the only way I knew how to love then.

Today, I know better.

Today, I am forgiven.

I imagine that flowers are now growing in the places where the tissue died off.

–S.