Learn/accept/grow/love

In the end I've learned / found four things that have led me to learning how to love myself.

Learn, accept, grow, and love

Learn - I avoided learning from things the way I should've most of my life. It wasn't until later down the line, when the pain I'd seen, and the scars it caused had added up. I think that's just what learning took for me. It wasn't until I had all the lessons in front of me I'd missed, that I finally figured it out. Our pain, our darkness, and our demons in life are for nothing if we don't learn from each experience that presented them to us. If I hadn't learned why I'm so damaged, I'd never had learned to accept how to live with it, and not let it define me.

Accept - It's been a hard life, but as I mature, I see the sense in it all. I'm able to find something, anything inside of all the insanity in myself, and my world. even the worst of it gives me the ability to not only understand why it happened (as it has shaped me into who I am today, which is someone I am fond of for the first time in my life) but to also accept the things that came with it because of what came from it. Acceptance is so important in life. It makes us see the world half full. With it in my world, I've finally began to love myself for the first time in my life. It's shown me how important it is that we build and grow in situations, and how to do so as well.

Grow - We all are handed cards in life that aren't easy. Some of us are even handed ones that hold coldness, and cruelty that we never should have had to handle in the first place. But it's up to us what we take from a situation. And it's taken me a long time to see, that the most important thing, if not the only important thing in any situation is if we grow from it. I've learned as an adult that even in the worst of my life, it's been worth it. Because (even if it took 10 years to finally hit me) I have grown from those horrible things that I've been through and seen. It's made me grow to see the beauty inside of it all. It's easy to when you gain even something small from something so completely terrible. I really respect myself for that. It's a lot of what's helped lead / is leading me to love myself.

Love - There is no other emotion in the world we should waste time feeling for ourselves, or our past, or what we have been through. Because bottom line is even the worst thing that has ever happened to us, has been a piece of what's made us the person we are today. It's more than just that, it's about loving what built our strength. What built our awareness. What built our honor. Our morals. Our Beliefs. Our truth. And our past, and present plays a role in so much of that. I could hate so much of the things I've been through. Or the scars I'm riddled with that I've carved into my skin because of those things. But instead I see the beauty in each and every one of them. Because they made me stronger, smarter, and in the long run they made me who I am. And the scars? Well they're my battle wounds. Just my little reminders of what I've survived. And I'm beautiful because of it. So are you wether you wear your scars on the inside or outside.

Just remember to learn from each thing you go through, accept the things that you cannot change, grow from every situation you find yourself in, and love yourself for every single inch of who you are through it all.

----