My 3 broken hearts

I have learned that we become what we think we are.

I believe we become what we think by our experiences that we have, because that’s how we learn what to think and how to think.

So if I am thinking that I am not good enough and worthless…. Where are those thoughts coming from? How did I believe those?

Someone might come up to me and tell me something really nice like, “you are such a cool person.” Will I believe them if my belief is that I am not enough and worthless? NO, I will not. I will acknowledge what they said and say “thank you,” and thats it.

Beliefs are rooted in us until we learn that those beliefs are not serving us and we do the work to re-learn.

It takes awareness.

Well, I am in the process of relearning some thoughts. In my subconscious, I have learned to believe that I am truly not good enough and that I am worthless. Where did these horrible awful thoughts come from and how have they affected my life?

I can think of 3 major core experiences that pushed me to believe this way. I personally believe that the first experience we have is the seed planted. The next experience is proving that its right and it catches root, and the 3rd experience is now sprouting a plant and its grounded.

As I was growing up, my siblings and I were brutal to each other. I witnessed it and experienced it. As this may seem like a normal experience in growing up with other siblings, it did affect my self worth a lot.

Because of those experiences, and as I moved on into teenage years, I craved to feel loved and accepted for who I was. I was learning at home that I wasn’t good enough the way I was. If I was good enough, then maybe there wouldn’t be so much fighting.

I met a boy in high school who loved me for me. He saw something in me. And I felt it. I blossomed, and wanted to continue to be around him. He held my hand one night in a corn maze, and after that we started dating. I was 16 and 17 years old. He was my best friend. We had inside jokes that nobody else understood. We laughed a lot. We had super fun adventures, like getting a sheet on a windy day and wrapping it around us like a sail and riding in a wagon down the sidewalk. We spoiled each other on our birthdays and I got my first ever Valentine. He called me when it was raining and told me to meet him to dance in the rain and dressed as an elf to ask me to the Christmas dance. I loved his family and often visited. We were inseparable.

I felt loved, wanted, needed, accepted and my heart was exploding.

It all ended one summer evening when I was playing soccer in the back yard. He called me and asked if I wanted to go get ice cream. So we picked up blizzards from Dairy Queen and headed to the park. It was dark. We sat facing each other while we ate our ice cream. He told me that he had one more year of high school and shared what his dreams were after high school. He then told me his mom told him that he needs to break up with me because we were pretty serious and we were young. We no longer could be together. And he never called me again. And I haven’t talked to him since.

I am worthless. I am not good enough. Nobody wants me.

What happened after that night was the most heart broken I have ever been. My body and mind didn’t know how to cope. Nobody talked me through my pain nor understood what was happening to me. I was lonely invisible and depressed. Very depressed.

I started my Jr year after that. I couldn’t focus in class. I quit the sport I was passionate about. I quit playing the violin after I had been playing for 6 years. I didn’t go to lunch with my friends anymore and hung out in the library or went home and slept. I had 14 sluffs in that school year. But it honestly could’ve been in one trimester alone, but I dunno why I wasn’t called to the office for it. I got a job and worked, worked, worked. I was only existing.

Because I never talked about that pain with anyone, and nobody asked or noticed, I was never able to process it, which means it stayed in my body. And honestly, first loves are never forgotten in my opinion.

When I was a SR in high school, my longest crush came home from his LDS mission to Korea. He was 3 years older than I was. I always had a secret crush on him and stayed in touch with him while he was gone. Our families were really close through my childhood. We starting dating and it healed a apart of me that was broken. We shared half gallon tubs of ice cream, went bowling, skiing/snowboarding, watched movies, stayed up late talking, learned country dancing together and often went, played games and laughed a lot. That Summer after high school on August 12th, we were engaged.

Happy story, right?

Let me back up. When we started dating it was evident that his parents did not approve. He even got in trouble for kissing me for the first time. He was so shamed for this that he left the dinner table and chucked his phone across the yard and went for a long, hard run.

What message is this giving me?

My alarms are going off. I am worthless. I am not good enough.

After high school I immediately moved out to the BYU-I campus. He and I happened to be in the same church congregation every Sunday. There was one Sunday that he didn’t show up. I called and called and called and called and he never answered. Finally, later that EVENING…. he called and told me to meet him at the campus gardens. When he showed up, he did not look good. What had happened was, he was getting ready for church and his mom came downstairs to talk to him. She told him that he needed to date other girls, that I was too young, that he just got back from his mission and to really think about things.

Sound familiar?

I was devastated.

It could be good advice.

But what is this message sending me?

I wasn’t good enough. I am worthless.

Well, we got married. He chose me. And to say our marriage was rocky, is an understatement.

When I have these thoughts about myself through relationships AND life, it sabotages everything good in my life.

And when my soul truly knows that these aren’t true but they are proved over and over, it causes conflict and confusion and a constant raging war inside of me. It starts looking for ways that these thoughts are true which drives even deeper depression and self hate and anxiety. And sometimes it feels like I don’t even have to look for the proof, my surroundings are all screaming at me that I am worthless, and not good enough. It becomes my LITERAL reality.

Well, this way of thinking sure hasn’t served me.

But it has taken me awhile to know this.

A few months ago I was talking to an old teacher who reached out. He received my Christmas card. He’s a major positive part in my childhood. He was telling me that he wanted to be like me when he grew up. That I could change the world with my confidence and boldness.

Could any of these he said actually be true. Was he just trying to be nice?

I cried that night as I grieved the little girl and the teenage girl and the woman that I once was. I knew what he was saying was true. My heart and soul new it! He saw something in me. He sees something in me.

Not too long before that, I heard from another teacher who told me that I was one of a kind, that her “kind” isn’t for everyone, but I was her kind.

These were little blessings, hearing from my old teachers. After all, they really got to know my soul and who I was. These little sparks of love got my wheels turning. What they were saying gave me hope as I knew that if I could believe them, my life would change.

Now as I have been deep diving in remembering who I am and who I can be, there is peace, wonder and excitement ahead.

I know my worth doesn’t come from anyone else. I have to come to know it for myself. No matter how I am treated or whatever things are said to me, good OR bad, my worth MUST come from me. I believed the negative things and ignored the good things all my life.

Sad!

“It doesn’t matter as to what happens to you, its what are you going to do about it now?” -Voice over on YouTube

“What you are looking for? It’s right in front of you. You are looking for your soul.” -Cathy Heller

Yes, I am looking for my soul, and I am starting to see it.