My Journey Towards Self-Love

The mind is a glorious thing, but it is also very fragile. Events in a person’s life can get imprinted like stains and these events and experiences, if bad, can often lead to mental disorders if the experience isn't resolved straight away. This is what happened with me - My personal growth had been moulded from many of the bad experiences I had in my childhood, and therefore my mind was affected. Because my mind was affected, I not only engaged in spiritually harmful activities like staying indoors too much but I also engaged in physically harmful activities like self-harming and episodes of under and over-eating - Which in turn affected my physical self. The over-eating made me big, the self-harming left scars... And since the events that made me this way were in the past, the only thing that I could change was me. I realised that acceptance was the only thing that was going to help me with what happened - "Yes, it did happen." I'd say to myself in my head "That is right."... And there was nothing else to say. There was nothing else I COULD say. I couldn't say to myself "Oh, you just have to get over it Bethany." Because the feelings inside obviously established that I couldn't, no matter how much I lectured myself. Instead, the one thing that helped me grow up and out of the pain was that simple acceptance of knowing that what happened, happened, and knowing that it was bad and that it hurt, but also knowing that I was in a new stage of my life as each second passed and that the past doesn't follow you unless you consciously, in your mind, bring it with you. Accepting my childhood experiences never made me okay with them, but It made me mentally put those memories into a little box, gently packing them away on a little shelf in my mind, as I thought to myself "Well that's that sorted."

Since I "sorted" the SOURCE of my mental issues, I had a clear route that now took me down the road of sorting out each mental issue, one by one. There was low self-esteem. Panic attacks. Agoraphobia. Monophobia. Depression. Depersonalisation. Anxiety. Self-hate. Carelessness, and so much more that all contributed to where I was now... But even with all that in my head, the source was no longer a problem, and that made getting over my issues a hell of a lot easier.

The day I looked at myself in the mirror and said to myself, "What the **** is so wrong with me? I'm pretty!!!" Was a day that I'll never forget. The day after was even better, because my self-acceptance was still there. And on the next. And on the next! I loved myself! I couldn't believe it! Well, I could, because I did. I did! What a wonderful thing!!!

All those years feeling unloved and unwanted... Even from myself.. It shocked me to know how different I felt now. Now there was somebody who loved me, and it was me. My self-love was the start of a pleasant stroll through a life that I fuelled, not one that everybody else fuelled. I believed in myself. I praised myself. I was hardly ever negative. This, to me, was the start of my life. This was when I was "born".