LEARNING TO LOVE
MYSELF: Building a Ladder
by
Anthonystjoseph
Becoming a person who knew how to love his
self wasn’t easy for me. Growing up with
a father who wasn’t there and didn’t even care or want to be there. Growing up with that very same father
eventually telling me he never wanted to be there. Growing up with a father who didn’t love me
and a mother who tried her best to believe that she loved me was clearly not a
formula for a child to be secure or even believe that he as a child was worthy
of love.
As that child, I wondered what I was even
born for and more importantly, why was I born?
There were numerous times when I shouted at my distant mother, “I didn’t tell you to have me!”
But as that child I was blessed with that
ever present quality of hope…
Even though my mother rarely touched me as
a child due to her own issues of having an unwanted child out of wedlock in her
puritanical mind… Even though her
subconscious mind seemed to hate that child and manifest that hate in a
multitude of ways… Even though she faced
these multiple hurdles in her effort to love me… Even though, she still managed to say words
that I heard through her pain and her sorrow…
She still managed to say certain words that I heard.
Those words that seeped through her
obvious torture were like ladders of hope that my soul heard down deep. I grew up not liking myself and not feeling
like anyone themselves could even like me and my environment continually
supported that belief. As an adult I was
still that same unlikeable child in my mind…
Still that same unlikeable person.
I was not liked. I was not loved.
I could not be loved.
Yet, my soul still held onto those ladders
of words that crept out of my mother’s mouth on certain occasions. I decided to search for ladders of hope on my
own. I decided to read. I decided to listen. I decided to find my own ladders and I
did. I did finally, and I have finally,
come to a person who is able to and actually does love myself.
I will say this, it is at the cost of a
lot of broken ladders throughout my life that I learned that the only ladder of
love you can trust is your own. There is
no person, no spirit, no friend, no love, or no God that can give you a ladder
to learn to love yourself other than yourself when you were born with broken
ladders from the very beginning. You
have to chop down the wood and build the ladder yourself and I have learned and
did learn to do that difficult task and for that I thank myself, my soul, and my
spirit.
I learned to love myself… The real truth though; I’ve always loved
myself. It took that love of myself to
yearn, crave, and desire to build my very own ladder. I just had to build that ladder back to me myself
in order to enjoy the truth of loving myself again.
By
Anthonystjoseph
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