First. Love. Yourself.

To tell myself to LOVE ME is like asking a fish to breathe out of water. It just does not happen naturally. I feel like I was somehow engineered incapable of loving myself. However, I love others and when I love them, I love them HARD. I pour every ounce of what I have in me, into them. This is not the story, more or else self-reflecting right now as I try to figure out how and where to start my story on how I ended up with this, now looking at it, mediocre tattoo.

I'll give you the back story but in a very small nutshell. Maybe one day I'll get it all down on paper... or here.

I married at the ripe young age of 22. I swore he was the man of my dreams and my forever. Fast forward 3 years… MAKE NOTE, during these 3 years, in 2016, I was in a car accident. I was rear ended while driving over a bridge. No serious trauma, I was just in shock. At first, I was ok, then I wasn't...this is a whole other story.

Now fast forward to 2018, 3 months before my 25th birthday, I pack up almost everything I own, buy a new car and find a place to move into and I leave him. SIDE NOTE, he's working away while I do all this and when he comes home, I tell him I'm leaving and there's nothing he can do about it.

Now as you are probably thinking, imagining, assuming...I'm a pretty shitty person. Which YES, what I did was shitty and wrong and so many other ugly words that people have used to describe my actions. I take full responsibility for what I did. HOWEVER, and this is where my "self-love" and being a work in progress comes into play... I AM NOT A BAD PERSON.

Why did I do what I did, you ask? I had a handful of reasons but none of them valid enough to do what I did...honestly, I DON'T KNOW. This has been the hardest thing to tell my family and friends, they just didn't and couldn't understand and what was even more agonizing is that also I, at the time, didn't and couldn't.

Ok, I feel like I'm making this back story longer than the small nutshell I intended it to be. I'll get to the point now...

For simplicity let us call leaving my husband my "break down".

I'm 28 now. So, for the past three years to say my life has been a roller coaster would be an understatement. Post "break down" I lost almost all of the people I loved the most. I lost my best friend who was more like my sister and my relationship with my entire family went down the drain. To this day I still don't speak to my cousins. My parents set me up with as many doctors as they could find in hopes that someone would get through to me and I would go back to my husband and beg for forgiveness. I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, told I'm on the Bi-polar spectrum, paired with anxiety, depression and some PTSD to top it all off (I'll maybe talk about the PTSD at another time). A lovely cocktail of f***ed up... I don't know can we swear here? I have had one tumultuous and somewhat traumatic relationship over the past three years but along the way I have also met a small handful of individuals who have kept me going, given me hope and may I say, kept me alive at some points...

It's May 2018. I was in a phase... maybe it was a manic episode when I decided that I would fight and not stop fighting until I was one day happy again. I felt empowered, like I could take on the world. I am born in May and ironically May is Borderline Personality Disorder awareness month. The ribbon for B.P.D is grey, so I thought what could be more appropriate than getting a grey ribbon tattooed on my wrist. The words FIRST LOVE YOURSELF, F.L.Y, came to me one sleepless night and I realized that YES, to love myself again was now my life's mission...like I've mentioned, this is still a work in progress. So just in time, on May 31st, 2018 I got my tattoo done.

I figured it would be my daily reminder to keep going and not stop until I get where I want to be no matter how long it takes. Since I got it done however, I have failed at my loving myself A LOT. I am still a work in progress.

OH! And, in October 2018, just a few months after getting the tattoo a best friend I still have in my life is diagnosed with brain cancer...guess what colour the ribbon is for brain cancer awareness is...it's grey. What are the odds.

In regard to my car accident...I have suffered with chronic pain for more than 4 years now. Where I live in British Columbia Canada our car insurance provider I.C.B.C fought me tooth and nail claiming that due to my "mental illnesses" they did not believe I was in pain and how dealing with my injuries had been so debilitating in my way to enjoy life was all in my head. After over a year of waiting, 10 days ago I finally met with a pain specialist. Within 10 minutes of listening to my symptoms right after the accident and over the past four years, he told me he believes me. I CRIED. For the first time in 4 years someone listened, and I felt heard and seen. He believes I have Post-Concussion Syndrome. He told me chronic pain changes people and I am no exception. Symptoms of Post-Concussion Syndrome go beyond headaches, migraines, vertigo, blurry vision etc. They include cognitive, neurological and mental health issues including anxiety, depression, PTSD, change in personality and behaviour...ringing any bells here? Connecting the dots maybe?

I need to wrap this up...there’s so much more though. So much more that would give more substance and explanation to all of this. Meeting this doctor a few days ago opened up a huge can of worms. In a way I am relieved in other ways I am angry. Is this discovery, this revelation the true beginning of my healing process? Not just from the accident but from the "break down"? Is the concussion I suffered in the accident, which no doctor checked me for, the reason, my explanation for the series of decisions I made 3 years ago that changed my entire life? And was that change for better or for worse?

If you've read this far, thanks for sticking with it. I feel like this is a diary entry. A whole lot of emotion and thoughts I keep bottled up deep down inside of me. It's terrifying yet freeing to put it into words. To anyone else out there lost, scared, alone... do not stop. Do not stop until you. love. yourself.