Could you tell me a time you felt worthy?

Worthy. A word I grapple with. After 20 years of fighting for my worthiness through all the wrong means, with all the wrong people, I’m left, 30 years old, with a deep sense of worthlessness.

Emotional abuse is a weird thing. It goes far deeper than one would imagine. But it goes back deeper than my failed marriage.

I didn’t have many friends growing up. I was shy. Homeschooled for many years then tossed into high school (fed to the wolves more like). I hated it. I didn’t know how to talk to people, or how to build friendships, especially within already solid friend groups. I was the outsider, easily impressionable, a loner (ya’ll I ate lunch in the bathroom stall or in the empty classroom before class would start, IF the teacher left the door unlocked).

Fast forward a couple years. I met a cute boy. He gave me the attention I so craved. It was as if somehow my worthiness was tied to the approval of others. So I married him.

The years that fallowed were filled with emotional turmoil. Ups and downs, gaslighting, fighting, lies on lies. All this, somehow, came back to me not being “good enough”, and “doing enough”. There I was, again isolated in my worthlessness as a human, shrinking under the weight of someone else’s choices, unable to be vulnerable and share my story due to the shame of it all.

After the divorced, these feeling were only amplified. I shoved them way down, found the good, tried to pick up my broken life and move on. Not choices I make for myself, I wasn’t worthy of a full life, but for my kids.

I did it all! I got the perfect job, bought the house, gave my kids the American Dream I thought I was suppose to give them. Even met a guy. A wonderful man who knew my worthiness who didn’t feel the need to constantly remind me; it was a fact to him, he just knew. I seemed to be the only one who couldn’t see it.

I finished a 13 hour shift. Walked in the door, kissed my children, and went outside to mow the lawn. Keeping up with the life I had built for the approval of others. It all came crashing down as I made one pass after another, pushing the lawn mower back and forth in front of my house, wanting nothing more than to be inside, snuggling my kids and watching a movie with them.

I sold it all. Suddenly realizing that my life wasn’t my own. I quit the stable job I was so dedicated to, and worked so hard to fit in. I moved in with my mom. Gave up everything except my kids. But this time, I did it for me.

A small part of me is realizing my worth, after so many years of not feeling like I was enough. For the first time in my life, I have a chance to focus on re-learning who I am, what I believe, what I love. And through the process of discovering my oddities, I’m finding a glimpse of the worthiness in myself that I have for so long craved from others. Alone, I will walk, for a time to rediscover and ingrain in my soul, that I am worthy of the life I have always dreamed.

“If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging” -Brene Brown