“To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance”
– Oscar Wilde
HELLLOOO WORLD!
This is my intro to the blogging world, HELP! 🙂 I decided to bite the bullet and just start writing! I can feel the anxiety in my chest and my palms are sweaty. I super nervous to hit the publish button but whatever! I read a quote the other day that I posted to my instagram account and it inspired me to decide that today, I was going to do 1% extra for my life and hopefully this can also lead to helping others cope and know they are not alone! We all have struggles, some more than others, but that doesn’t discredit our issues in life at all. It is what connects us all in this world and if we can be nice to our fellow friends and aquiatnacdes, we owe it to ourselves to treat ourselves with the same respect. Ok, here goest world! My first ever post… 
SELF LOVE: Journey reflection starts now…
It took over 5 years and much heartbreak to learn to let go, forgive myself and to love myself unconditionally. It was always easy to divert attention and love someone else for who they were, but when it came time to figure out who would love me, I was left feeling alone and sad. I battled anxiety and finally decided it was time to change my personal destiny.
It didn’t happen over night, I was raised in a household were being praised for anything came few and far between. I had very low self esteem but I knew how to mask it well. After my third failed relationship, I sought out a healing journey that would take 5 years to finish. Why so long, one would wonder? Well, life, it gets in the way of everything. I hadn’t learned proper coping mechanisms, so it was time to learn while I was still getting knocked over by the waves of life. In 2014, I ended a serious relationship with someone because in my eyes they didn’t fulfill my needs. Although this obviously an important reason to breakup with someone, I later learned that I wasn’t fully healed from the hurt I had of an absent father. My defense mechanism was always to leave before I was hurt and disappointed. Immediately following this relationship, I feel deeply in love, I still believe it may have actually been the first time. But even this relationship wasn’t the healthiest because it began very hot and heavy but wasn’t strong enough to work through long distance. One month after I began to grieve the ending of my relationship, I lose the one person in the world who I believed really knew how to love me like I loved them. My grandmother, she was my everything. She passed in her sleep and that continued to send me spiraling from one bad relationship to another in order to mask all the hurt and pain I had inside of my heart. I knew something had to change, after years of being miserable in my job, terrible relationships with my parents and continuing to blame them for the scars that were left from childhood, numerous nervous breakdowns and even being prescribed Xanax, it was time to get in control of myself again.
I remember the exact moment I decided to take back my life; I had a conversation with a person who cared deeply for but the simple though of how bad that relationship had gotten caused me to go out and binge drink. The trigger was when they said “I love you.” Those words scared me because I knew I wasn’t loving myself anymore. It was enough to erupt the toxic person inside of me who was so stressed out and the anger surfaced. I called that person back over 40 times that evening; I couldn’t control my emotions anymore and I wanted them to hurt as much as I was hurting but that wasn’t fair to anyone, especially myself. The next morning I woke up extremely embarrassed and said enough, it’s my life! I write my story and I want it to be beautiful, and loving and respectful and full of life. I went back to my psychologist and was determined to end my cycle of sadness and toxic behavior. It took more than just my one-hour sessions, tons of tears, even more amounts of forgiving myself, moving and letting go of possessions, people and pain that no longer served me, yoga, meditation, being vulnerable and honest about how I was feeling with my friends and family, replacing my negative talk with positive affirmations to work on myself, and learning that loving yourself is O.K. but I don’t regret any part of my journey to self-awareness.
I wanted to share this intro story because I wanted to humanize the blogs that I would be writing, so that the reader knows that I am a real person and I have done a lot of crazy things too. This blog isn’t about highlighting the negative things that have happened to me, but about how to heal and tips on how to love, forgive and motivate the person we are the most hard on, ourselves! I promise you, if I can do it, you will too. I hope your today is better than your yesterday.
Love – Rita B.
ritabautista.wordpress.com 