When you begin to see YOU!

At this point in my life, I am realizing that there is always a calm before the storm that surges as a warning. As women, we tend to look for reasons to stay in a relationship in the hope that things will get better and we will finally get to experience the sweetness of love and patience we so desire. Only, it doesn’t happen. At least it didn’t happen to me.

There are a lot of criteria that determine why women stick to a bad relationship. I know that I would find myself defending the guys that I have liked in the past that treated me badly. I would almost excuse their behavior, much to the dismay of my friends and family. I have had men in the past picturing the “ugly” side of me and almost mutilating my physical features to accentuate the worse they see in me. The problem is, at that time I believed them. I saw myself in the lenses that stain of ugliness and repellence. The burden you have to carry for being who you are, and looking the way you do, can definitely take you to dark places, like it did to me. For years in my life, I have had a low self-esteem and I valued myself the way every toxic man in my life would value me.

About three years ago, I was so sick and tired of feeling sorry for myself, that I decided to pick up the pieces and live with myself the way I am. It was a long, hard journey. It required a lot of looking into the mirror and resisting with every fiber of my body to talk myself into negativity. It required analyzing and accepting the flaws that no one else was willing to accept. It also required dark nights, after dark nights, of crying myself to sleep. Come to think about one thing that I did to break the pattern of negativity and depression, I can honestly not name anything in particular. All I know that I had resilience to figure it all out, because I was so tired of being a victim. I had a drive in me to feel alive, happy and normal, just like the rest of the world.

My journey started from taking online courses, to enrolling into self-development programs, that cost me a fortune, but I was willing to go to any length to feel better. Also, on the side, I would habitually read and enroll into relationship programs. It all came down to how I was feeling on the inside. If on the inside you’re able to accept yourself and be kind to yourself, eventually, it will show on your outer self. This way, you’re showing the world how they should respect you. A major setback about this method is that your acceptance of yourself doesn’t show fast enough on the outside for people around you to notice any big difference. To them, you’re the same person you were yesterday, and they would treat you the same way they have done in the past. That trend continues until, when you’re strong enough to know who you are, and what you accept to be your reality, you no longer entertain people’s evaluation of you. That’s the time those close to you would complain about you being difficult, or stubborn.

There would also be the discomfort of identifying how much a person has been disrespecting you, but because they trust that you’re okay with their treatment of you, they do not agree when you argue and you take a stand for yourself. Their behavior towards you subconsciously makes your heart detach of any feelings you have had for them. It becomes easier to see a person’s real worth in your own eyes as meager, and non-existent. That is the calm before the storm. This is the moment where life gives you a chance to save yourself from pending doom. That is when you have to fully accept a life of being alone with yourself, rather than being alone with someone. Being alone does not equal to loneliness. When you know who you are, and what values you have for yourself, seeing others for who they really are, becomes second nature.

You begin to unlove the person who has repeatedly taken you for granted, disrespected you, and treated you like an option. Your heart begins to feel numb to their charm and for the first time, you start to analyze others around you. You gain wisdom from observing their life choices, and you begin to appreciate your own gifts. You become so much grander than the way you look, talk or dress. Maybe this is what real queens are made of. Simple, real women, who have had to emerge from the gutter and polish their character and heart, rid their mind from preconceived notions of what beauty really is and what society dictates to be beautiful, and reclaim their rightful place on the throne. So next time you doubt yourself, queen, just remember that this storm will pass too, and you will shine bright again. You will make the world go blind.