Loving myself

Today I am focused on learning to love myself, give love to myself. To many people, I am one of the most loving people they know. I give lots of love and support and before I got so far into my addiction that I started to isolate from everything and everyone ... I was the most considerate and kind person I know. I have always done for others, put others first. I learned this in my family ... make other people's happiness your number one priority and that makes you a good person.

I am only now beginning to realize how badly I have hurt myself and others by doing this. Since I've been in therapy and in recovery ... I've heard many times, "You've got to learn to love yourself." Every self-help book you read says we must love ourselves. I would say, yeah, yeah, I know. I know it's about me not loving myself. But lately I am finally, after all these years beginning to "get it."

I will go out of my way to give other people, whether close to me or not, a lot of love, put them first, make sure their needs are met. I will call them when they are sick, check on them when they are having a hard time, speak kind and loving words to them. I will always take the smaller, less messed up version of the meal, take the smaller cookie, all so the other people can have the very best. When my husband says you need to be my secretary, my social agent, and stop crying ... I do all of it, because that is what he needs, even though it makes me feel less than. When my stepfather would call me into his bedroom while my mom was away shopping, I went, because that's what good little girls do, even though I dreaded going. When my husband hints at sex, even though I don't want to be with him and having sex with him feels like what the sexual exchanges with my stepfather felt like ... I still just grin and bear it and go on, because that's what good wives do.

It's only in recovery that I have began to give myself the good things of life -- to go to meetings when I need to, to listen to my body and my mind, to pray for strength, to say no when I need to. I am FAR from where I need to be, but I am thankful for the conciousness.