i hate like love me

a friend reminded me today of what a leap in time i have made over the past twenty-five years. a leap between hating myself to liking myself to loving myself. i give the biggest share of the credit for this to my loving husband. he saw a goodness and a beauty and a spirit in me from the beginning that i could never see and nurtured it into the woman i am today.

in the beginning, a compliment would send me spinning into a beet-red tunnel of confusion. i would shake my head and think "what? are you nuts?" and words slid into my mind from voices long ago "stupid" "liar" "ugly". how could anyone think otherwise?

as time went on i began to see that i wasn't as bad as they said i was, but a compliment was still difficult to handle. i would begin to think that they wouldn't be saying those things if they really knew me. i was an imposter. they would find out soon enough and be gone. it happened enough times i could believe it.

finally, my husband convinced me that it wasn't me, but them. i wasn't the problem, they were. they were the ones with the misconceptions. they were the ones that beat me down day after day, year after year, word after word. whoever said "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" was never a verbally abused kid. the pain from the beating with a fist always lasted less time than the carefully aimed word.

it's been a long time coming, but i'm almost there. i can value myself as a human being from the viewpoint of my husband, my children, and even my animals. i hope in time my friend will feel that value, too. she should. she truly is a beautiful human being.