My Self Esteem Story

4 January

Life can be so difficult at times, but fighting through the pain is so worth it. It's better to feel every kind of emotion than not feel at all.

- Demi Lovato

We are all humans and all of us have feelings, no matter how perfect our lives are. I watched my first Disney movie when I was five years old, Mama would read bed time stories to me. And I love how my bed time stories always end with the happily ever after. 

As I grew up, I came to know that happily ever after don't just come by like how they are often being written in fairytales and in my bed time stories. Happily ever after comes with a roller coaster of emotions. 

On this rocky road to recovery, I was not only dealing with depression, anxiety issues, eating disorders and self harming, in fact, I liked a boy. And he never knew about all of this, that I'm about to write. Things started to get exciting and I was so obsessed with almost everything he did, and I completely forgot about myself. I was anxious to tell him how I actually felt and I was always overthinking about how he would never accept a person like me, because nobody will ever love a self harmed, broken girl, like me.

 I started making statements that wasn't even true, and I started to loathe myself even more. I kept telling myself, ' You will never be good enough for him,' and I always compared myself to him, because I constantly felt so awful around him. My self esteem would drastically fall to rock bottom and I would end up losing myself, completely, when I was around him. I would push myself to my limits because I wanted to be good enough for him. And sometimes, when I could no longer conceal the feelings within me, I'll take it out on myself.

Sometimes I would think to myself, 'Why am I doing all of this? Why am I always the one suffering? Why does he not feel my pain? When will he ever notice how broken I am?' and all kind of negativity would start to grow in the darkest part of my mind when I'm alone. My heart, it hurts so badly everytime I see him because after that confession, it just totally killed me. And that was the time, I shut everybody out. I was on such a roller coaster of emotions, I would restrict, or find any way possible to avoid the immense pain, I was in.

Now, things are different. I realised people often choose to numb their pain with substances, but honestly, it's more courageous to walk through the fire with your eyes open. Instead of numbing my pain, I let myself feel all of the emotions that came to me. It was one of the most horrible, and difficult time in my life, but allowing myself to feel sadness and despair, made my fighting, through the pain, so worth it. It allowed me to begin healing in a healthy and honest fashion.

This recovery was made possible, partly because of him. Thanks for accepting me wholeheartedly as a person and for never losing faith in me, instead, you believed in me.