…Well, for me…they were and at the same time they weren’t since I’d already thought/realized them to myself etc., but never voiced or really thought of it this way.
Just how Love is Hate upside down so it is with Grief and Happiness…Happiness is Grief upside down and Grief and Happiness are fundamental parts/emotions in this life. It all boils down to love/hate, grief/happiness and sadness/joy…all the other emotions or words we use to describe emotions come from the roots of sadness/joy and love/hate etc.
When people ask how long does it take to “get over this, that or the other”…it all depends on the individual and well, let’s be realistic here, shall we…no one ever “gets over” placing a child for adoption, getting divorced, being abused, surviving cancer…etc…etc…because they are not things/experiences etc. that are meant to be gotten over. They are part of you forever after you live them/experience and/or keep living and experiencing them…they are part of what defines you, teaches you and helps you to grow.
So, while no one really completely “gets over” those things, people do learn how to cope and deal with them on a daily basis and move forward with their life with these experiences/emotions as part of them. And everyone that experiences life and their different trials etc. has to learn how to cope with these things otherwise they can’t move forward as well.
And if these parts of life aren’t always faced up to or coped/dealt with and they are denied…then it’s like denying yourself and ignoring/discounting an important part of yourself and your make up that makes you who you are. To avoid dealing with the grief etc. from life changing experiences is to avoid dealing with yourself/an important/essential part of yourself that shouldn’t be discounted or denied no matter how painful or hard it may be to face and learn how to cope/deal with for yourself.
When a person can accept and love themselves, which means loving and accepting all of themselves and what has made them the person they are, I think…then is when a person can completely and totally let go of things. It’s a never-ending life cycle for the most part really – learning how to love and accept yourself and let go of things because that means facing, coping and dealing with a lot of things about yourself past, present and future, which are not usually that easy to accept and love about yourself/learn how to cope and deal with for the rest of your life and forever. Which is why, for me, personally and individually I know and am grateful that I have the Lord and all my family/friends etc. that I do that help me to work through these things and be able to keep working through things so I can love and accept myself and let things go the best I can when I need to throughout life.
And really…when I think about everything to this point in my life and what it boils down to…what all my life changing experiences and issues that I continually have to keep working through to be able to keep working on loving and accepting myself and everything about myself past, present and future come down to…what the real issue is at the root of most, if not all of the issues and so forth are my self esteem issues that started when I was a child because of the intentional/unintentional messages and things I experienced being raised as I was with the kind of mother I had that led me to believe/feel and have as my perceived reality for quite a bit of my life that I was not lovable. That there was something wrong with me and that love was conditional not unconditional because of how my mother was and still is, but now I’ve experienced and still experience and know that there is unconditional love and I’ve broken out of that perceived reality of not being lovable…but there are times that I still have that view/feeling come back that I continually have to deal with of wondering if I’m not lovable or what I did wrong that I didn’t have a mother who loved me more or so forth…but it wasn’t and isn’t my fault that my mother couldn’t love me the way I wanted/needed because she doesn’t even really know how to love herself and hasn’t figured out things about unconditional love or experienced or rather allowed herself to experience the way that I have.
But really, when I look at all the different choices that I’ve made that caused me to have life changing/life altering experiences and sometimes wonder/question or regret things here and there about my life, my past and so forth…it all comes down to the fact that those choices which weren’t always the best were made when I wasn’t dealing with my self esteem issues, when I hadn’t yet realized them and I was searching to fill the hole and heal myself…to be loved like I hadn’t felt loved a lot of my life growing up and what not.
I chose and married my ex-husband because I was searching to be loved and accepted and was with the less than desirable guys I was at different times in my life because I wanted to be loved and accepted and hadn’t learned how to be myself and separate myself from those issues yet. Counseling, life and time along with the Lord has taught and continues to teach me a lot about these things that are an essential part of me, whether I want them to be or not.
What it really comes down to with all these thoughts and things I’ve written down and been thinking about is that you have to love and accept yourself completely, which means loving and accepting every part of yourself and your life and letting yourself experience, face up to and learn how to cope and deal with all these experiences that make up important parts of yourself because you can’t run, hide or bury these parts of yourself and still be able to love and accept yourself not when you are denying and shunning important and essential parts of yourself that have come to be because of your choices and your life. You have to embrace yourself and everything that comes with yourself from life etc…the good, the bad and the ugly because denying yourself or any part of yourself only holds you back and hurts yourself and your progress in life.
All About a Girl 