A Journey to Self-Love

How it all started My name is Sylvia, I was born in a family of 3 children, where I was the first child of my parents. I had a younger sister and brother. I grew up having a very joyful time with my brother and sister. We lived in the rural areas and my parents had a beautiful large farm, where we could enjoy nature at its best. I loved wandering in nature, looking for singing birds and unique flowers. I could sit under a tree for hours and watch the branches dance on the rhythm of the wind. Whenever I felt unhappy or frustrated, I could escape into nature, followed by my loyal and best friends, my beloved dogs. I could talk with them for hours and they would always give me that innocent and loving look, as if they could really understand me and felt compassion for my situation. This would calm me down immediately in case I was upset. After my wilderness therapy, yes that is how I called it, I could go home again, feeling strong, centered and completely in harmony with my life and the people around me. But suddenly, there came a time when things at home started to change. My Parents could not get along with each other anymore, and fights between them were beginning to occur more frequently. It is hard for a child to digest fights between their parents, for most of the times they do not understand why this is happening and feel so powerless for not being able to solve this problem, frequently resulting in self blame. Children are also more open to feel love or fear, for they are like sponges, absorbing every energy that is around them. The best thing to do as a parent is not to fight in front of the kids and never ever involve the children in the dispute, for they do not have the maturity yet to be able to deal with this situation, it will only tear them apart. But in spite of all my ways to try to deal with this situation, I could not bear the horror at home anymore as a child. At the age of eight I attempted my first suicidal act. It was in the afternoon that my parents started fighting again. I ran to my room, locked it and pressed a pillow upon my head as hard as I could. But I could still hear their yelling, I could hear how objects were thrown at each other, glasses breaking, tables flying and falling on the ground. I cried hysterically, while getting completely paranoid about the fear of one of them getting badly injured or even die. Feeling desperate, hopeless, paranoid and completely powerless, I asked God to make them stop, I was scared that my father would hurt my mom, or even worse would kill her. But the fighting did not stop. Was my relationship really as perfect as I thought? As time passed by things got very rough between me and Lesley. I discovered over and over again how he was cheating on me and still I told myself to forgive him. Hoping that this was the last time he cheated. Now when I look back, I can acknowledge that I attracted this, because at some point I lost my feeling of self worth, I did not like myself and I hated the way I looked. I also hated the way I was, I was sensitive, honest, mature and a very loving person. And I blamed all the bad things that happened to me on my loving character. “If you are too loving, this is what happens, you feel too much!” I told myself. But still I did not change, I could not change who I was. Sometimes I wanted to punish Lesley so much, I wanted to cheat on him also to hurt him, I wanted him to feel the pain I was in and I wanted him to suffer slowly, but I could not do it. I had to much love and honesty in myself. In the midst of this tyranny, my higher self was still holding me on track, not to follow in the footsteps of Lesley, but to stay true to who I really was. At a given time, things got really ugly and bad, Lesley and I were at the same college and he was cheating on me with girls who I thought were my friends, with girls from our class, with acquaintances and even with his own niece. I did not have any friends to talk to and I was too proud to tell anyone what was happening in my life. I just wanted it to be gone, so I oppressed all the feelings of anger, shame and pain deeper in my stomach and I acted to the world as if I was the most happy girl on this planet and my life could not be much better. This pushing away of my feelings asked his toll on my body. My health totally went downward, I got permanent stomach problems, stomach ulcer, chronically headaches, chronicle fatigue, high blood pressure, I regularly lost eye side at my right eye, yes could regularly get blind at one eye, back problems, pain in my womb and much more things kept showing up. I was a total wreck at some point and the doctors could not help me, nobody knew what was wrong with me. The life started to flow out of me, I was ill and had no energy. I was consciously wishing to get ill also, I thought that this could be a way to encourage Lesley to stay home more often with me and to take care of me. All I wanted was to be loved. But it did not happen. One day I got so fed up with the behavior of Lesley and I lost myself in giving attention to another man.