What would someone who loves themselves do

What would someone who loves themselves do?

For quite some time now I've struggled with a feeling of being out of my alignment. 

After I had my first kid, a baby with high needs, almost a decade ago, and me not being really good with my own boundaries, I've been in a downwards spiral. I never wanted to acknowledge the fact that when I gave my all to by babies, I pushed away something else. 

Now I suffer from it, and the time has come to stare into the depths of this knowledge and do something to get out of this circle of self neglect.

 

Giving my absolute best and my all to my babies is one of, maybe THE biggest accomplishments of my life. I'm proud of it, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. 

My babies never needed to scream or struggle to be heard or given attention. They never needed to wait for anything. They never needed to feel unsafe or abandoned. I were there, listening, touching, caring, loving them. Seeing all of them.

They were happy and funny little babies that would attract everyones attention. It seemed that the people of the world wanted to see and interact with the little ones. Even my pets tended to their needs. My cats were self-appointed guardians. My doberman cleaned up their scraps and their little hands and faces were invasive cleaned. My horses have carried them and learned them soft touches and kind puffs on their cheeks. My chihuahua is their fairy guide, providing attentive presence by warm fur and wet noses at nighttime.

 These kids' inner light has reached far and wide. 

I'm grateful that I was able to not hinder their light to reach out into the world, I take that to my heart as an recognition of baby mission accomplished. This has been one of my most surprising, but best experience of my own abilities; I'm actually really, really good with babies. I never would have known that without them.

But now, them not being toddlers or small kids anymore, I struggle. 

I chose to give up everything important to me to be present with them and giving them the best of me. This has now turned back on me, what once were my chosen mission has become my prison. 

The prisoner is suffering, starving, and withering. Screaming voiceless wanting to get out. The prisoner lacks love.

The prison guard is non-attentive, showing no empathy, no interests, and do not meet needs in order to punish the needs away. The guard is also lacking love.

 

This is a poisonous environment for my selves, and it will in the end lead to the death of both of them.

The death of one imply the death of the other, it's a given that both will suffer from the consequences the other will meet.

 

I've known this for some time. 

My physical body is giving me ailment to try to push me into change. My psyche is giving me depression to try to force me to make the change. 

But the prison is contained and sealed only giving information out, blocking me from communicating back into the prison. 

I can't reach any of them, nor the prisoner nor the guard have heard my promises to change facilities after the babies have grown independent.

They never got the note I sent. So I stopped listening.

Therefore I never heard their message that my babies had become toddlers. I never heard their threats about rebellion. 

I never got to read the note that I do not have small kids any more. The block is me, I'm the prison, containing this fight between my own needs.

I.... I need to listen. But how?

I do not know how it happened. But it shattered. 

Something from outside of myself intervened. It smashed everything like a gunshot, suddenly, forceful, almost fatal. My partner of two decades became unexpectedly and fatally ill. One moment he was there, the next he was laying on the floor calling for help with a doomed look in his eyes. 

It gave me a slap in the face so hard that it broke the prison inside me into a thousand pieces. The prisoner got away and the guard vanished. The pieces that flung, cut into my heart. Broke the fight open and I bled. 

 

I bled a vision of my future. 

 

My future. Not any, not even the tiniest bit of me was changed from me some twenty years ago. I saw me stuck in concrete, without my partner. 

The shock of him gone, and me being alone with the responsibility of everything. 

Every shitty piece of the responsibility that I do not want.

I saw myself, not taking action. Not utilizing the gift of ease I've been given now by my partner for 20 years. I felt like an idiot. I felt ungrateful. Spoiled. I had been given a gift that I never understood the true worth of, until now. I was ashamed of me.

He did not die. 

I did not die.

 

And to move forward I needed to ask; what would a person that loves themselves do?

My answer were that she would do the things she did before. 

She would do the things that makes her heart blush, and her soul swirl. 

She would follow the path laid before her tingling heart. A path that leads to the future. A path only seen by the heart, a path designed to feed the soul along its way. She would do the things that I once in time chose to push away, and continued to push away until the push almost became fatal.

I need to go forward and love myself. And follow my heart. Now my heart tingles. I see the path now.

This is the path, alongside the horses. On board a huge, safe horse with the softest muzzle, and the kindest heart. He promises to help me keep loving myself, and to carry me when I can't walk by myself, and to guide me when I'm lost. 

What would you do, if you loved yourself?