Finding Yourself

Self-worth. It's something we all have to discover on our own, and something I am beginning to gain again in my life.

I was always the girl that loved everyone. I didn't judge people and I made friends easily. I was also easily loved, but, at the same time, I was easily taken advantage of. I wasn't naive, exactly, but I just have a heart that wanted to see the good in everyone, and believed that everyone was inherently good, even if they didn't know how to show it sometimes. I liked to consider myself an eternal optimist about people, rather than naive. Maybe I was wrong.

Over the course of the past two and a half years, I became a shell of myself. I became insecure and felt worthless, simply because I was told constantly that I was unattractive and unintelligent. I went from being told that for a year, to being treated that way for another year. I was told I would amount to nothing and that I was going no where in life; that I had no real skills and that I made bad decisions with my life to get me to where I was at that point. I was constantly reminded that I had no true worth and that all the things that had happened to me in the past were my fault. Then, in the midst of it all, I was abandoned, only to move on to someone else who made me feel insignificant and and small. I somehow lost my voice.

I spent a lot of time over the last 2.5 years angry with God.  I didn't recognize that He was only trying to grab my hand and pull me through the darkness that this world had placed me in. You see, we don't battle against flesh and blood, but we battle against the forces of darkness in this world. I spent so many nights in Louisiana crying, quite literally, until I either threw up or passed out. But I spent most of my days praying and talking with a dear friend on the phone. On the worst night, when I didn't think I could take it anymore, I was laying on the couch, falling to pieces, wanting it to be over somehow, and then Kenobi walked over, climbed on the couch, and began to lick my tears away. He snuggled with me and placed his head on my shoulder, eyes intently on me. And, though I didn't feel I had anything in my life at that point, I remembered I had Kenobi, and that I couldn't imagine him waiting for me to wake up, and it never happening. God saved my life a year and a half before I knew it needed saving.

Then one day I woke up and I took a step forward. One step lead to another, until I eventually began to like what I saw in the mirror again. I began to realize that I have so much to offer this world, and I have such a good heart. I love people, beyond their mistakes and beyond the exterior. I don't judge people, and I give my all to everyone I come into contact with. This world tried to isolate me and make me feel as though I had nothing, but God wouldn't let that happen. He placed so many people in my life that would constantly remind me how loved and missed I was; they reminded me how valued and wanted I was.

What I have grown to understand, though, is that my happiness isn't based on others. It isn't based on a relationship, or on any child or friend. My happiness starts with me and how I choose to live my life and what I choose to let in. I refuse to ever be mistreated again or told that I don't matter. I refuse to ever let anyone pull me away from my family or my friends. I refuse to let anyone talk down to me and make me feel inferior or small. I know who I am, just as I always have, I just lost sight of it along the way.

You see, I'm simply me. I love people, and I love them hard. I give my heart away and I do so willingly. I love to serve and help others, and my happiness is in doing that. I want to help kids, and just about anyone that comes into my life. I may not completely understand everyone's specific situations, but I can say that I have known darkness and I have known pain, and there is always a way out; there is always a hand outstretched, waiting to pull you through the darkness and into the light again, we just have to be willing to take it, and to hold on. The journey to recovery is not easy and it isn't pretty, it tends to get worse before it gets better, as cliche as it sounds, but it does get better. One day you simply wake up, and though the world may be the exact same place, you are somehow happier in it. You begin to see yourself again, and not who the world has painted you to be. You see past the scars and past the pain, you look beyond the memories and beyond the hurt, and you remember who you were, and what you have to offer. And it is in finding yourself again, that you are able to find real purpose and value in this world.