Chapter 16: Now... Loving myself

I need to work on falling back in love with myself.

It seems that over the years I have completely and absolutely fallen out of love with myself...

The hard part about living yourself is,  as with any relationship, it takes a lot of work.

These days the answer to everything is to give up, if it doesn't work trade it in for a new one! Well,  you can't trade yourself in for a new model.

The thing you have to realize is that the grass isn't always greener on the other side,  it's green where you water it. And this goes for any relationship... with your husband, with your boyfriend, with your girlfriend, with your job, with your dog, and especially with yourself. 

It takes work. 

It takes time. 

It takes patience, care, and dedication.

But try as we might... it really doesn't matter what relationship you have... if you don't have a strong relationship with yourself how can you possibly think that you could ever be happy?

I took the first steps into loving myself again... into being happy. 

I stopped drinking... 

That was definitely the part of myself that I hated. When you hate something you need to change it. When somebody hates something about you, you need to decide if they're worth changing for... Obviously I need to change if I hate myself.

Last night Seth and I went to a friend's Christmas party.
I grabbed two bottles of cranberry juice to give myself a decoy so people wouldn't ask why I wasn't drinking.
I didn't want to deal with the typical glance to my belly and whispers.

It worked. And I had fun.

It was actually funny to watch everyone else get blitzed. 

Stumbling drunk everywhere. 

And it was nice to wake up the next morning without a terrible hangover.

I actually didn't think I'd be able to stick to my cranberry juice, but I did.

I was proud of myself.  It's been a while since I've been able to say that.