Can we get real for a minute? All this talk of men. The good ones, the bad ones, the ones who define our very being. Can we get off that for just a second? Can we talk about who we are without men? Who we become when we face ourselves in the mirror? Because we talk about all of these toxic men, and we don’t know why we let them in. We don’t know how we let them take so much from us. We don’t know why we make the same mistakes over and over again. But I do. It’s because we don’t like what we see when we look in the mirror. How we let people treat us is a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves. Regardless of how honestly we come by our shitty self-esteem, we have to overcome it. No matter how many times we’ve been brow-beaten, bullied or somehow made to feel we aren’t good enough, we have to believe that we are.
There is so much evidence out there to derail us; TV, magazines, Photoshop, and the freaking Internet telling us that we don’t live up to societal expectations. That what we look like isn’t right and we need to fix this or enhance that. That we need to have a certain thing and be a certain size to be good enough. We have pills, potions and panic rooms to save us from ourselves and the demons we create in our minds. All of the evidence points to our failings. And we can never keep up with the Joneses, no matter how hard we try.
We turn to alcohol, drugs, and reality TV to escape our own shitty realities… and that’s how they get in. The sociopaths and the narcissists and all of the toxic, life-draining, emotional vampires… they seep in through the cracks of our lowered self-esteem and numb us with their intoxicating presence. They reinforce the negative opinions we’ve been conditioned to have of ourselves and it is so hard to fight against your own negative self-talk.
What’s the solution? How do we avoid all of the everyday assholes who will drain us of our self-worth for sport? We fucking love ourselves. We look in the mirror and we challenge ourselves to absolutely and unconditionally LOVE what we see. We embrace our imperfections and refuse to be made to feel small because of them. We spend time with ourselves, figuring out who we are and what we like and we do those things. We make ourselves happy because we deserve to be happy. We devote ourselves to making sure that we are treated like queens, because we are queens. And when we do… anything less will be a joke. You have got to be able to tell a man, “If you want to be with me, you will have to treat me as well as or better than I treat myself and I hold me to a pretty high standard,” and mean it. Because if you don’t believe it, neither will they.
by Tia Grace
Read more of Tia’s articles on http://yoursassyblackfriend.com/