Blog entry for:

that love or not; i can start paying attention to my own needs. interesting where my mind goes some days. anyhow, where it went this morning was to the question of whether or not self-esteem is the same as loving myself. before i go too far this trail, i think i will stop and do a shout-out:

Congrats Derek R,
9 years, yes you heard it correctly!
9 years of clean days in a row
Good job my friend
KEEP COMING BACK

moving forward. the idea that got me rolling on the jump between self-esteem and loving myself was that i hold many people in high esteem. most of them i do not even know personally, so whether or not i love them does not even come into play, so this morning i am a bit confused when i hear that self-esteem somehow equates to loving myself. a bit of dictionary work is in order here, perhaps that can clear up my confusion:
esteem: To regard something as valuable; to prize.
well that certainly makes things clear as mud. what is starting to come through now, is that self-esteem is part of loving myself. a prerequisite as it was. after all, there is nothing or no one in my life that i love, that i see as having no value. even the most recalcitrant of the chronic relapsers, has value in my eyes, hence i can love them. so finding self-esteem, is essential for me to learn how to love myself. sort of like the surrender -> tolerance -> acceptance chain, that drives me freaking nutz from time to time. in order to love myself, i need to find that i have value in my own eyes.
the reading, therefore, needs to be looked at from a different angle. now that i am getting down i can see, it is all about behaving my way into better thinking. even if i could not love myself, i can behave as if i saw value in myself and start to do good things for myself, like i was courting a lover. by treating myself better, i will come to see that i have value. if i see that i have value, i can learn to love myself and as a result truly love others, not just mouth the words to the first warm body that happens to jump into my bed, for a few nights in a row. i can now see that when i was doing the whole scene back in the day, i sought out the weakest and most feeble for sexual conquests, because i felt so bad about myself, that i need to boost my value in my own eyes. those women were pathetic in my opinion, and yet i could not get enough of them, because i felt in control, powerful and yes that i had value, after all i have someone in my life that i have made love me, warts and all. definitely a now take on what i see around me today. i sought serial partners because i felt worthless and fearful about being showed up for how weak and needy i really was.
well that was an interesting little tidbit of garbage from my past, but it does put a lot of things into perspective. today, i am dependent on those in the fellowship to mirror what i cannot readily see. that is the gift the POWER that fuels my recovery gives me on a daily basis. i have value, because day after day, i do good things for myself, like being a member of the “no matter what club.” today i work, i live and yes i love, because i have those abilities and doing all of that shows me i have value and yes i am worth loving. so in the end, i guess the reading was not all that divergent and tangential at all. it is a good day to be clean and it is time to get some bills paid and head off to work. yes even that ia an act of love today.

∞ DT ∞