A new attempt
It is easy to notice by the time gap in posts that I slipped. There are a lot of excuses I can write about, but no need... you probably already know them.
This time I’m coming with a completely different approach. The idea of self-love. When you love yourself, your body — you want to take care of it. And what is the best way to take care of your body?? Sleep, fresh air, exercise and FOOD! Yeah and staying mentally healthy and stable.
2021 was a revolutionary year for me, got rid of most of the toxic people in my life, spent a lot of hours in therapy and finally learned(may be still learning) to live as I want, not as others told me to or I thought I should live.
While digging all the info I could find on toxic and co-dependent relationships, which is a big problem in my life, I kept stumbling upon this concept of ‘loving yourself’ instead of being dependent of others. Which never worked for me. All these 2-5–10 quick and easy steps to start loving you, like buy something or treat yourself never helped me. And apparently it doesn’t work on people with childhood traumas or raised in narcissistic families ( = half of the people on this planet), because they don’t feel they are worthy of love.
One of the steps to recover from this is to try to catch your unconscious thoughts when you do something. You know what were my unconscious thoughts when I made fresh food for kids but would eat half spoiled leftovers myself? ‘ That is what you are worth’ And when I accidentally hit or scratch myself? ‘Yeah, you got what you deserved. I wish it was more painful, that’ll teach you’. When I read it - it seems actually scary to have something like this in your own mind. But during that milliseconds when these thoughts fly by in my brain it is actually a relief, like I’m taking someone place and don’t deserve all I have, and finally there is justice.
A lot of people would mention a feeling of emptiness or a black hole inside that they try to fill with food or alcohol or other people. I guess that’s the place reserved for self-love.
I felt it too and when I would eat junk food it will help to fill this hole, just for a few minutes. Then there will be regret and sadness and guilt. Therapy helped a lot, to take care of my inner child, to forgive myself and learn to recognize my own wants and feelings, to fill in my black hole.
So my 2022 resolution is ‘Learn to love yourself’. I was sitting alone, watching snow outside, on a first morning of January writing down my new goal and it hit me that it would be awesome to take care of my body. There was no effort, no pressure inside to do it, no need to call all mighty will power. I just thought I want my body to be healthy. So I got up and cut some bananas for breakfast. And decided I need to soak some seeds. And then realized I’m out of almond milk.
It was so fun not to push myself, though I knew once hunger arrives I would still need a lot of persuading. So this time I’m getting my motivation from food documentaries and boy they help a lot.