Hello Lovelies!
The whole of July is marked as a self-care series and I couldn’t express more as to how happy I am to write these. If there is at least 1 reader who benefits from this, then there is no joy that can emulate the same.
So with that, let’s begin!
If you remember a couple of posts back, I emphasized the importance of self-love (be it in my affirmations or my gratitude posts)
And there is one common point that ties up everything and that’s “loving yourself”. If I am in this position to write this post today, it is because, I went through a lot of trauma to reach here.And I need to put it forth that this is easier said than done. Self-love is indeed a journey and transformation truly doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years and a huge amount of pain and turmoil to transform you into a new leaf.
I’ll tell you my story. So, back in school, I was this confident and poised girl, who believed in herself so much, that irrespective of the critiques, I was headstrong and the first one to get on stage at most competitions. Well, you know, when you’re in your teens, you’re already pumped up with enormous energy and to top it off with the icing of confidence, then you are an unstoppable force.
So 16 years went like this, and back then I only knew I was confident, but I was a stranger to a term known as “self-love”. So in my 17th year, I graduated high school with a high distinction and got into college. So, this is where life took a turn. In my freshman year, I was as confident as I was in school, the only difference was my college was more inclined towards Academics and I pursued a course which no one in my entire fraternity ever pursued. I took up Aeronautical engg against the will of my fam and went on ahead with it. I can say, as months passed by I became a naïve girl, and I found it difficult to gel with my classmates because of language and cultural barriers. I was the odd duckling and people would treat me indifferent and I didn’t give a damn then. Even the professors would find me weird, because I was outspoken and doing really well in my studies and my extra curriculars.I found It really hard to confide in people and loneliness started to creep in.Sooner,I had entered my second year and this was the time, when my classmate sort of proposed to me. In all fairness, I turned it down, but he of kept on trying. I wasn’t a tad interested in the relationship. Since I was alone most of the time, I never had a friend to confide to…and I became more and more vulnerable as each day passed by. I knew at that time, that I was evolving into something I never wished for. So precisely 10 months later, I accepted him because I felt that maybe this was the be all and end all. Little did I think about the trap I was set into? This was my first ever relationship and I never ever knew that from day 1 I was being cheated on. I used to listen and believe whatever he said, and slowly he started gaining control of my life and my happiness. I didn’t understand it then, but a couple of months later, when my Dad passed away, the mask shed off and the ugly side started to gain visibility.
I was demolished and my life was shattered into pieces through my Dad’s passing. I went into a quiet lull zone for over a year and I never even believed that I will ever come out of this shock. I did attend college, but I was like a corpse who was alive (I was dead altogether) and yet there wasn’t any helping hand from my mates in college. This is where I felt like I needed him to cry my heart out and as a girl expects, I wanted him to assure me that I’m gonna be okay.But,a sudden shift in his behavior was quite obvious. Long story short, I did my research and to my dismay, I found out that he was parallely in another relationship. I was gob smacked and admonished and to my unlucky stars, he tarnished my name as much as he could and left me right there.
So now, Dad has gone, the person whom I thought will be there for me cheated on me and I went straight into depression and I battled it for 2 years. I found it difficult to push myself and study, because I had to face him of the fact that we were in same class. It was ugly, and I started to hate myself more and more. I stopped looking at myself in the mirror and felt I wasn’t good enough.
It took me 1.5 years to accept the reality and when I knew that I was losing it all…I shifted my focus entirely into studying. I feared so much, that my body started shaking every time. And my classmates made fun of me so much that I wanted to quit. My family was extremely supportive and made sure that I was always surrounded by them. In retrospect, back then, I was fighting a battle with my mind and it was difficult to put into words as to how it actually felt.
And I didn’t see a therapist as you’’ll be guessing, as much as I wanted to do, I felt like I was being guarded by my fam and didn’t need to go to one.
So, somehow, I pushed the years and reached the final year of my studies. I tried so hard to accept the normality. This is when I started writing a diary. I poured in all my thoughts positive and negative and I wrote my heart out. I have a pile of books where I have wrote and wrote and wrote. And I started seeing a change within the final semester of my college. I started gaining courage to look at myself in the mirror and talk to myself. I was still suffering in silence, but this time around, I gave assurance to myself that after all that had happened I still got back up and fought it all alone without the so called confidante.
To everyone’s surprise in college, I worked so hard and I cleared all my semesters without a history of an arrear and got a high distinction as my high school. I got placed in the most prestigious organization within 3 months of graduating. (I was the first in my class to get placed)
Can I tell you one more thing? The same people who rejected me came back to me apologizing for what all they did and needed my help in getting them a good job. But this time, I made sure that I stayed away from them because, I knew that I wasn’t in a position to talk to them and turned them down instantly. It wasn’t because of arrogance, it was because I started respecting and loving myself too much that I stepped away from anything less than I deserve.
So my readers, this is my journey to self-love. And I truly hope that my story will help you to heal and to find the spark that you possess within. It’s time to let go of all that holds us back and truly live as freely and authentically as can be.
You deserve to see how wonderful and lovable you are. Please don’t believe otherwise.
Take care and stay safe!
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