I am a woman of a certain age. I will be fifty years old in September, and that just does not seem possible! I do know that fifty is not nearly as old as I used to think it was. In fact, my mother is 71, and she really doesn't seem anywhere near Old, as I remember it. But what is the point of this? The point is that as women, we really aren't taught that it is OK to love ourselves. We were raised to be wives and mothers, to be caregivers to our families, and that was the extent of it.
If you were like me, you were expected to go to college and major in something sensible, like nursing or education. According to my father, I lost my mind upon entering college. I began my college career as a theatre arts and vocal performance major. I was going to be the next hot thing to hit Broadway! To my Dad, this translated into being poor, starving artist, with no hopes of surviving. I was strongly encouraged to change my major to something more practical. Besides, I was going to marry my college sweetheart, and being an actress just wasn't done in our family. Well, I caved to the pressure and changed my major to education.
To tell you the truth, I hated every minute of my time learning how to be a teacher, and by the time I graduated, I knew that I would never teach for a minute. Children all over the country deserved better than being taught by someone who was miserable. I married that college sweetheart, just like a good southern girl was expected to and was miserable in her marriage. But that didn't matter. I was a good wife, who took care of an abusive husband, worked hard, and put herself dead last. Luckily, about 2 years into the marriage, my ex husband realized that he was gay, and that was the end of that.
Well, if I didn't believe no one could love me before that, I certainly believed it after that! Let's see, my biological father abandoned me, my step father/adoptive father and I never really formed that close "daddy's little girl" bond that he had with my sister, and my husband decided he would rather sleep with Tim than Kim. Yep, that pretty much did it! If no one else could really love me, I didn't deserve to be loved.
Once I met and married Dale, I knew that I had to take care of him so well, that he would never want to walk out. For a long time, it didn't dawn on me that could really love me just because I was me. We had three beautiful little boys, and I threw myself into being the best mother possible. Then, Dale became ill, and I made it my mission to take care of him. Once I started to develop my health problems, I ignored them until it became impossible to ignore them any more. I went to work everyday in more pain than most people ever have. But the sole support of our family was on my shoulders. It was my job to take care of everybody, and I was darned good at it!
When I had my back surgery, I was supposed to be off work for 6 to 8 weeks. Now, I had a foot long scar running down my back, and I was in a metal brace from my armpits to my hips. Just standing up took more effort than I thought possible. I was even being paid through disability at work, and my boss understood the severity of the surgery and my need to be off work for this amount of time. But my guilty conscience and that ingrained need to take care of everyone but myself kicked in with a vengeance. And two weeks after my surgery, I was begging my doctor to let me return to work. Thank God he refused! But at six weeks, he reluctantly let me go back.
Now, between my back problems, my bad knees, and my fibromyalgia, my body has forced my to stop. I have to take care of myself now, and it is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I have a husband in a wheelchair, and three teenage boys who need all of my time and attention. Who am I to lay down and take a nap in the middle of the day? What right do I have to tell my boys that I don't feel like taking them somewhere? I deal with guilt over my condition day in and day out. But my body has finally forced me to stop and take care of myself. And a lot of therapy has started to make me think that maybe, just maybe, I deserve to love myself.
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