Today is a long one, and a two parter but something very important to me and for people in general in their early 20s, It took a lot of courage, self reflection and time to write this one out so I hope you resonate with me and gain something from my experiences.
Part One: How I’ve Learned to Accept My Past
Often times people around you, mainly adults tell you in order to find love you must first love yourself. And yes that is true, but how do you learn to love yourself? You first have to learn to accept the past.
The past is the past, you can’t change it, but you can learn from it. Yes this is another cliché but I’m a big fan of quotes, and I definitely believe you can learn from your past.
Your experiences good and bad become memories, experiences, stories, and lessons we can come back to if we need a reminder of how far we’ve come. I used to wallow in self pity about it and say I wasn’t good enough because I was ashamed of where I had been but I have learned that if I wouldn’t have gone through those experiences I wouldn’t be where I am today.
People, family and friends, come to me for advice because I have become good at using my own experiences to foster my own growth and can help others do the same. It didn’t happen overnight, and sometimes I still have my bad days but if you don’t learn and grow from these experiences how can you become a better version of yourself?
Trial and error, and lots of ice cream and late nights crying myself to sleep taught me that its ok to have a past but not to be ashamed of it, but instead to use my past as a stepping stone for my future and I have learned a lot about myself while doing so.
One of my favorite quotes, and my current phone background is “Bloom dangerously, loudly, bloom softly, however you need just bloom – Rupi Kaur.” It’s a great daily reminder.
I hope this teaches you that it’s ok to move forward and learn from your past and pushes you to bloom into a better and stronger you.
Part Two: Knowing When to Move On
I have been on a long journey for the past few years to love myself and be proud of myself and I am finally starting to get to the place in my place where I can say I am proud of myself and I am learning to love myself.
In Part One I talked about learning to accept myself and now I want to talk about removing the toxic people from your life.
For the last almost 5 years I had been in a toxic, on-off relationship and while when we were “off” I had been in relationships with other people, I never truly felt single. Until now. It is amazing what that feels like, I am finally free.
Last night I was surfing Tumblr, and I came across this post:
and it all made sense. For 5 years I tried to make him love me and want me as much as I wanted and loved him but I have learned you can’t make people feel something that just isn’t there.
In high school I do believe he cared about me but as we grew up I think we both held on to what we thought we had and what could be. We drifted apart, lived in 2 different states and became involved in 2 different worlds and it took us 3 years to realize what we thought we had is gone and its time to move on. It was a tough blow for us and we tried one more time but this past December I realized he couldn’t handle that I had my own life now and just because he was finally ready to try to have an adult relationship didn’t mean I was. Too much had happened and been said by both of us to just forgive and forget.
He was toxic to me in the sense that while I didn’t realize it at the time, I had lost myself, and completely allowed him to rule my feelings and heart. And that is not healthy. Love is wonderful, and magical, and we all want to be in love and be loved but the most important thing to learn about love is that we must never lose ourselves or live for anyone else but us. The world should never revolve around someone other than you, please never lose sight of that.
I will always love him, he was my first love, and I will always care about him and wish him well but it is time I take a hold of my life and do what is best for me. Looking back things should have ended in high school but if we hadn’t continued this long, tiring charade we would never have grown up and realized that while we both still care about each other it was time to part ways.
Maturity is growing through your experiences and learning from them, and now that I have had time to reflect and write it all out I feel so much lighter and free. I hope that whoever reads this takes something out of it, is encouraged to make a change, is motivated to begin healing or whatever it is that you may be going through, that you learn to grow from it.
Life is a journey and our experiences make us who we are, everything happens for a reason and we just have to trust in His plan for us and go along for the ride.
If you ever need a shoulder to cry on or what some advice, please do not hesitate to reach out!
Thanks for reading!
xo Kayla