Healing Starts With Forgiveness
“In 2019, I fully surrendered to myself, my failures, and my mistakes. I looked in the mirror, only the find out that my greatest road block was staring back at me. I knelt down that day, and begged myself for forgiveness. To release the hurt, the heartbreak and the anger. To start over. To Heal”
No one has ever been harder on me, than I have been on myself. I’m guilty of that. I can’t pin point where it started, when I transitioned from an innocent girl, in love with life and all its wonders, to a harsh critic, scrutinizing my body, my grades, social status, everything and beyond. It’s as though, a light switch flickered off, and when it came back on, so did my insecurities.
I was never the popular girl, the best dressed, or most likely to be. My profile just never aligned. And for a good while, I had grown to accept that. My skin was darker than the pretty girls, my accent thicker, and my scars more visible it seemed. With age, came more doubt, and sense of hurry to catch up to all the others. I graduated high school, an average student, and in turn I felt like an average human being. Barely skirting through, neither smart nor dumb, neither pretty nor ugly, barely here, always there.
Then at the age of 23, I met him. Not to make this a reigning cliche, but, it seems this story timeline, is BeforeHim (BH) and AfterHim (AH). You see, when you live most of your life feeling like an afterthought, a second choice, a shadow of your own self, something mysterious happens, when someone shines a light on you, and in the midst of the noise, they hear you. He saw me. I couldn’t imagine how, or why, but he did. And it felt magical to be seen, finally.
With the weight of his gaze, I began to shrink even deeper to fit the image he had of me. In the beginning, he adored my witty humor, and shy demeanor. So i would give more of that. He’d describe me like angel, and sweet darling. And for the year that lasted, I felt like those things. I believed him when he said I was beautiful, even when I didn’t see that myself. So when he let, that space, I had reserved, that were usual fueled by his adoration, was left empty. And I couldn’t fill it, because I never felt it to begin with. When I had assumed I had become a confident, beautiful woman, I failed to realize that it was all dependent on him. You see, in my mind, if he said it, then it was real and I could believe it. So when he left, with him, he took that confidence. I fell back to square one. Anxiously begging God to return him back to me. Wondering why, I ‘let’ him go. If only, I knew then, what I know now, that I never needed an anchor in form of a man, I only needed me.
There’s a second part to this story. I’d love to share. Please bear with me. It’s the story of what happened ‘After Him’.
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