Bruise and Wounds Helped Me Choose

I was a scared needy kid. I would easily freak out if I knew someone despised me, or if any of my friends found a 'better' person to hang out with. Then, I would go frenzy. I would over-analyze ways I could keep them from walking away. People call someone like me as a people pleaser. Through losses, heartbreaks, and betrayals, I adapted newfound hatred towards myself. I would blame me for any sort of unfortunate events, thinking it was miscalculation on my part. I beated myself up and started to curse at my own direction every time I look in the mirror and wasn't able to find the face of the happy girl I used to be.

It was because I was bullied for several years for no reason. Apparently, that is what bullies do. Make you feel horribly about yourself, and most of the times, for no apparent reason whatsoever. But it got to me; a 12 year old, who thought she was making friends for her lifetime. Several years passed as I tortured myself emotionally. I lost friends everytime I formed newfound friendships. I hesitated everytime I walked in a room, portraying those eyes as judging and ready to tear me down. I secluded myself, not letting anyone in because I was afraid of having to face yet another betrayal. But then I always wondered why life never treated me nicely. I wondered why no matter how much I tried to be caring and loving to those around me, life had always successfully found ways to make me feel alienated.

Little did I know that being caring and loving to others will never be enough if I did not start loving myself.

That is the story of how through losses, heartbreaks, and betrayals, too, I found a new way of thanking myself. I learnt to really explore what it is I actually want in friendships, relationships, and life. Then, I finally found my worth despite everything. I chose to choose me first before anything else. And that does not mean in a selfish way, because self-care is never selfish. Hating yourself while expecting others to love you is selfish. Now, when I look back, life has consistently proved the phrase 'everything happens for a reason' to be true. Old me would bawl my eyes out, beg for people to stay, change to fit into any mold people hold against me. The new me is learning to accept that people grow and sometimes, that requires a little bit of shake to the boat. Eventually they start to drift apart into separate life jackets in order to stay afloat. And when it's time, the ocean will pull them up onto the shores. That's when they are ready to start anew, building yet another boat. All of that are freakishly normal. It happens to all of us because that is just how this whole thing works. From that, I learnt that it is okay and it was no one's fault. Things just happen to teach us certain values that will be redeemed useful for us in the future. So later on, I realized that as long as I keep punishing myself for things in the past, nothing good would ever show up in my life. No 'real friends' would magically appear with whom I can share my life stories with. No one from anywhere in the world would truly care about who I am, where I want to go, what I want to become, why I pursue certain things as my core value, and how I end up being the me I am now. In other words, nobody would put that much attention to me if I don't even care about it myself. It would be ridiculous. And toxic. That was the true answer to my constant doubts and search for happiness. And now that I finally found it, life has been nicer to me because (yes, you probably guessed it right) I am finally nicer to me. Believe it or not, as the famous proverb goes, you glow differently when you appreciate yourself to the fullest.

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Thank you for reading. Feel free to leave comment down below on how you relate to this post and also how I can do better :)