You can't be loved if you don't love yourself?

Well Spiritual Poet, you can go fuck yourself.  There are a ton of people out there, often mentally ill people, who struggle with their self worth.  And they find love.  It's harder for them and their partners sometimes as they figure out how not to make the other suffer for their own self loathing but it is more than possible to be loved when you don't love yourself.  Saying otherwise is harmful to so many people.  It's reckless to say these things.

What we are basically saying here is that if you are abused, verbally or physically, (or both), you deserve it if you don't love yourself.  If you have low self esteem then you are getting what you put out there.  The predator will see the self loathing and attack.  While that's not entirely untrue, they will find you, it does not mean you are at fault, or you deserved it.  It means they, the predator, the abuser, are a vulture.  

And anyone who says otherwise is being abusive to anyone and everyone with low self esteem.  "I wouldn't have to hit you if you just did the right thing".  I don't see the difference.  

Telling someone they deserve what they get when they are so obviously struggling with low self worth can lead to death. 

So....

I do believe what you put out there is what you get, but I believe that more in a "work hard, get results" kind of way.  If you don't eat right and exercise, you will not be healthy just because you want to be, you need to work for it.   Wanting money, will not make me rich.  Life doesn't work that way.  Working for money will make me wealthier. 

I am pretty confident that if someone is struggling with their self worth they can find someone who loves them for exactly who they are.  Perhaps someone else's love will encourage a person to love themselves.  And that, is a positive outcome.  I do not believe if you don't love yourself, and that's your "vibe", that you will never get love in return because the Universe doesn't work that way.  

Still, Universe or not, you must look in the right places for love, not the wrong.  Most people who do not love themselves pick horrible partners to re-affirm what they believe.  If you stop doing that, then you can be open to the right person.  Picking the right person is a matter of picking better than you think you deserve.  You do not actually have to be confident and self loving to do this, you just need to "make good choices".  You have to understand that if you are not getting love, the kind of love you've seen and heard of, maybe you don't even understand, then that is not the person for you.

I have seen a ton of confident, self loving people, get divorced.  

My husband Dan loves me more than I love myself, that is a fact.   His love is what made me decide to take on a  journey of self awareness.  I didn't do that for me, I did that for him.  And that's okay.  I still did it, I am doing it.  It doesn't matter how I got here.  The end result is me bettering myself and learning to love, myself, him, and everyone around us, more every day.  He saw this in me.  He saw what I was capable of before I even did.  And that my Universe people, that's a positive from a negative.  

In short, fuck you Universe and all those that say I didn't deserve this because of my vibe.  My vibe is struggling but she's pretty darn lucky all the same.  Some would say I deserve happiness even.    

Mother's Day

I couldn’t understand why they wanted me to take a Grief counselling class when I stayed at The Homewood Health Center in 2014.  I hadn’t lost anyone recently.  I lost a friend in 2007, surely that wasn't still affecting me.  At the very least, I thought I had accepted it. 

“Why am I taking this class”, I asked? 

“Because Nicolle you need to mourn your entire childhood.  You need to grieve it and accept the loss of it.  You cannot get it back, no one is capable of doing that for you.” 

For weeks I wrote about my childhood bringing myself and those around me to tears.  Things were remembered that I had long since thought I’d forgotten or blocked from my memory.  It was both horrific and cleansing all at the same time. 

So that said, if one more person, just one more person says to me, “be grateful your mother is still alive, celebrate her this Mother’s Day”, I am going to lose my shit.

I spent two months in a mental health facility in large part because of my parents.  Our parents mould us, then it's up to us.  Sometimes those moulds are damaged and need to be rebuilt.  My mould is being rebuilt because of the time I spent alone with my mother.  After my parents split my father took off for awhile to get his head back on straight.  While he was looking to straighten his, my mother was losing hers.  And I was alone with her. 

I have forgiven.  I will never forget.  I lost my childhood.  I mourn that like anyone mourns losing someone in death.  Some days are better than others when we mourn.  Triggers can appear out of nowhere and sometimes, we can see them coming in the calendar.

Often times the people who tell me to be grateful for having a mother have lost their own in death.  I understand completely the loss you feel.  I feel that for my childhood.  

Do you remember hiding as a child?  When you hid, did you need to chose places where you could brace yourself against the door?

Do you ever remember falling down a flight of stairs?  Can you remember how you fell?  Or at least have you heard the story of how you fell?

Do you remember having a broken bone and a cast?  Remember how cool casts were?  Do you remember how you broke your bones? 

Until you've walked in someone else's shoes, please stop telling them to celebrate having shoes.   

Mother’s Day is one of the hardest days of the year for me.   Every year on Mother's Day I feel horrible guilt for not reaching out to my mother.  I feel this overwhelming need to beg her forgiveness for not being a good enough daughter.  I feel ashamed because I know better.  I feel sad because I miss my mom while at the same time I know I miss what she never really was.  My mother was an actress.  In the presence of others she was a great mother and then when we were alone, it all disappeared.  I feel hurt because I truly believe my mother doesn't love me.  Perhaps she doesn't know how to.  That fact doesn't make it hurt any less.  I am jealous of every one of you that truly get to celebrate Mother's Day.  I am incredibly envious that your mothers love you unconditionally.  And I am angry when you don’t know well enough not to say to me, “be grateful for what you have".  Twice a year, her birthday and Mother’s Day, I struggle greatly with all of that.  

I know my mother was, correct that, she is sick.  She suffers like me, from mental illness.  My mother refuses to admit anything in our relationship was in any way difficult.  She has said, "her childhood was perfectly happy".  Many, doctors, family, friends have said that my mother simply does not accept the reality around her as being true.  She manipulates the truth to suit her needs at any given time.  What she sees and others see are two completely different things.  I sympathize with all of this, because it means she is actually ill.  As you know, I am a big supporter of people suffering with mental illness BUT, I was a helpless, lost, child.  Her child.  I needed her.  I’ve always wanted her in my life, and even needed her there.  She has never been there, not without a cost to me.  And that hurts.  She did the best she was capable of and that is a fact.  A fact that doesn't make it less hard on me but it does remove my anger.  It is what it is, no matter how it came to be.  

I forgive her.  

I don’t live in the past.  I try not to worry about the future.  I live right here.  Here however was moulded and created by influences that were harmful.  I can do nothing about what was, but I can do something about right now.  I can work to make my life today different and easier on me.  I no longer act out all the time based on what was.  I need to think hard about every reaction I have to ensure the reaction is based on what is, instead of what was.  That’s in itself, is hard enough without you confusing your mother with mine.    

I wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there who I am so proud of, my friends who are wonderful mothers. 

I wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there who love freely and unconditionally.

I wish a Happy Mother's Day to all the great step Moms out there who've chosen to love unconditionally.

I wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all those who’ve lost wonderful Mother’s.  I hope you are celebrating the unconditional love you received from them.  I hope you are able to celebrate that on this day more than sorrowfully mourning the loss of their presence.  Sadly I know it might be the latter and that today is very hard for you as well.  

I especially wish for a peaceful and Happy Mother’s Day to all the kids out there who spend the day wishing and longing for what never was, and may never be.  Please know, you are still perfection.   

Borderline Personality Disorder

I have copied this from a post I found online by "M.H. 1/10/16".  I have made some edits of my own but I wanted to make sure credit goes to whom it's due for much of this because it summed this disease up so well.

Borderline Personality Disorder

This disorder, this disease, is difficult.  Everyday is a battle inside the mind of a person suffering with Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD for short.  They fight with their emotions, constantly.  They have to remind themselves continually that they are good enough and that people, their friends and family, and sometimes even strangers, don't hate them.

One wrong word, one look, anything that feels even remotely like rejection, IS REJECTION to a person with BPD.  Then they obsess about that rejection constantly.  They pick everything apart over and over, and over again. It is a war zone inside their own minds.  Trying to take back control of everything going on in their mind is pain staking, it's exhausting. 

People with BPD want to be alone, it's safer that way, but they don't want to be lonely.  They push people away because they are scared they will be rejected.  When they find themselves alone they wonder why nobody loves them.  

When a person with BPD does make a connection, they attach themselves and they obsess because it is what they do.  No calls, no messages, no dates = rejection.  It doesn't matter the reason.  They often become overbearing.  So much so, they push people away and end up alone again.  Exactly where they dreaded being the most.  Alone and obsessing over why nobody loves them.

It's a vicious cycle of their own making.  They can see it but often times they cannot stop it because of the obsessive nature of it all.  The bridges of their lives are burnt and full of people they left standing there.  

Some days it seems like people with BPD have no heart.  They seem ice cold.  Completely unfeeling.  Unaffected by anything going on around them.  They have turned their emotions off just to survive.  

Other days their hearts feel like they will explode out of their chests.  They are so over emotional they are inconsolable.  Even something unrelated to them can take them spiralling into empathetic agony.  Once they get through that, if they get through that, they use all their strength to shut down again because that has to be easier.  Until something sets them off again.  Rinse, repeat.  

There is no balance of feelings with someone with BPD.  They are either on fire, or they are shut off.  And you never know who you might face.  They never know who they might face themselves.  

This is why most people with BPD are addicts.  They will do anything to shut themselves off.  Drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, shopping.  Anything to slow down their obsessive minds, to numb them to their own feelings, to shut them down.  

Like most people, some days suck and some days are great. Unlike most people, those with BPD never know what each day holds when they wake up.  They don't know what will trigger them.  They never know who they will be when they wake up or who they will be when they go to bed.  

BPD sufferers are always exhausted but they never get a good nights rest.  They obsess even in their dreams.  Often they have night terrors.  There is no end. 

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, derived from Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, teaches people the skills needed to ensure that their behaviour as a result of the BPD (and the emotional dysregulation that comes with), do not cause harm.  That a change in their feelings and thoughts may not actually be feasible so give them the much needed skills to manage living with them.  

Cognitive behaviour therapy is based more on how to change thoughts and feelings.  

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is more the acceptance of, and the skills to live with, thoughts and feelings without causing harm to oneself or others.  

This disease is a prison of the mind.  Learning to live with that is the only way to survive it. 

If I've left you on that bridge I hope you will wander back sometime because while it might be difficult I like to think I am worth it.  Or so the skills are teaching me.  

Thank you M.H., whoever you are, because your words in combination with my words, explain Borderline Personality Disorder perfectly.