Is it possible to love someone else when you hate yourself? I thought so.
Life is funny. After more than 20 years of always being "the other half" of someone else, I found myself alone with two young teenage boys in a strange new home, a stack of unbearable credit card bills and an empty shell of a soul. My life had been devistated by a 7-month break-up from the man I thought I'd grow old with. I was lost.
I was 35 then. I should have known better. I should have been prepared. I should have.....
Life is funny how it teaches its lessons. I blamed God, blamed myself, blamed what I did and didn't say, blamed myself for not being skinny and beautiful. If only I had said and done those things and looked a certain way, none of this would have happened.
For three months I stayed in this mode of self-pity and hatred. I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw. I cut myself down. How stupid I was...I couldn't do anything right...No one liked me.
You see, there is that funny little saying that states, "You can't love someone else until you love yourself". And it's so very true. Self-love and self-esteem should be the base you build everything else around. Being in a relationship without it is like building a house with no foundation. It won't be safe or last very long.
Hard as it was, those seven month were the best months of my life, although I didn't know it at the time. That much time alone forces a person to soul search, cry and come to terms with feelings and regrets from the past. I took baby steps everywhere from being able to express my feelings to changing my whole outlook on life and how I fit in to the scope of things.
Through a long hard look "in my own backyard", I realized I had interests, dreams, desires, wants, needs and hope. I realized that even though my "other half" was absent, I didn't leave with him. It was time to make myself better...be a person someone else could love. Be responsible, accountable, loving. Be a person with interests, goals and hobbies. Through loving myself I was able to re-enter our relationship and be a whole person. A whole DIFFERENT peson. I realized finally that I didn't NEED a man in my life to make me a whole person, but I WANTED one to share my life with.
This soul-searching "trip" I went on was undoubtedly the best experience of my life, from every emotional point of view.
Emily is the owner of two online companies www.BetaTherapy.com (selling the herbal diabetes remedy ELEOTIN seen in Kevin Trudeau's 'Natural Cures' best-sellers) and www.MallMaggot.com (a collection of the internet's best shopping sites).