A Simple Truth

After many, many years of torturing myself based on fabricated evidence presented to me by people in my life, I have finally found a place of peace within. For many years, more than half of my life, I have questioned my worth as a person. I believed it when the drunk told me I would never amount to anything. I believed it when the evil one told me I had few redeeming qualities. I collected the evidence of spending years being emotionally and intimately neglected by someone whom I cared for a great deal.

For so long I took all of these events, each comment, each roll over, every self worth destroying comment to be the absolute truth about me and who I am. I allowed for other people to define my own self worth and in that I lost who I was and who I am supposed to be. Having realized all of this, I became very conflicted.

The conflict within me came from my own tendency to self loathe. I thought, "How weak must I be to allow other people to control how I feel about me?". I hit myself at that point with a proverbial punch to the face. How silly is it that when I finally came to a place of understanding, I tried to drag myself right back there.

It does say something about the power that people can hold over you, if you let them. I write this passage not so much to lament my past, but to celebrate what is to come. I am liberated by the knowledge that all this time I had the choice to be me, that all I had to do was realize that the only opinion of me that matters, is mine.

I know there are very few who read what I write, for once, I do hope that one of you takes something from this and can find a greater feeling of comfort within who you are. I can tell you first hand, it is an amazing feeling.