Perfect Place of Peace

“Hey can you please look the other way, it is hard to sit here and look at your side profiled”. “What do you mean”? I mean your nose looks like the back of a dump truck, you lips look like two flat pancakes and your skin is just like a pepperoni pizza and I don’t want to have to look at it”.  Those words from a classmate over 20 years ago still ring in my head as if she said them three minutes ago. That’s how deep pain operates it sticks around hiding being false happiness and peeks around corners waiting to regurgitate when you are at your lowest. So anytime I question my beauty I would hear these words.

It never fails our mind seems to be in a war against our growth and development. And it was winning in a major way. But why is that? I had allow the negative to  be my way of life so instead of hearing the voices of all the people who complemented my smile or my warm heart I allowed the negative to remind me of the worse. Now my classmate didn’t leave home that day saying “today is the day that I am going to say something that is so hurtful to Dee that it will be with her for the rest of her life”. However that is exactly what she did. But why? Why did her words stick?

I know there were many negative and mean things that have been said to me in my life so why her words? The answer is VALUE!! Clearly I valued her opinion, meaning that the regards I gave her or I felt she held to deserve; the importance, the worth, or usefulness of her opinion meant so much to me that it remain with me for years. When I first figured this out I was so angry with myself. How could I value anyone that did not value me? But as a teenagers and some adults all we want is to be accepted so we go to extreme lengths for love and acceptance from others even if we hold no value in their lives.

And truth be total we have all at one point in our lives gave to someone that did not value us or really didn’t care if we were there or not. But wanted and desired their love and attention so we continued to reference them in hopes that the love we gave would be matched. I most amazing thing that I have come to learn on my journey of “Self Value, Self Worth, and Self love is that I must first love MY DAMN SELF all of me.. Flaws and all. 🙂