I am an abuse survivor. Writing that is not hard. In fact, it is completely numb. Abuse can do that to you. Numb you, deplete you, reduce you and erase you. It can take colour out of the world and it can leave you empty. My abuse was continual, is continual. And so it picks away at me each and every day, little by little, until one day, you wake up and a stranger is staring back at you in the mirror and you are left wondering how it happened and how you got here. 

I say my abuse is continual because I have come to the difficult but true conclusion that abuse is comfortable to me and that I attract it and welcome it into my life. 

Not consciously or willingly, of course, but then again, can I be certain of that?

For me, and for so many women (and people) my abuse started at the hands of my parents. An alcoholic father and a passive, infantile mother who allowed it to happen - and not just once, but for decades of my small life.

The results are that I have cripplingly low self-esteem even after 15 years of weekly (sometimes twice weekly) therapy, spiritual conselling, hypnotherapy, spiritual pilgrammages, and trying every single "coveted" healing modality there is. I remain, to this day, unable to see who I am, believe in myself or know I am good enough for anyone else. 

I say that not from a point of victimhood where I am crying out and suffering. Actually, it is almost a relief to say it because I know I do have enough belief in myself to keep healing, to keep believing in myself enough to heal, to feel bigger and greater love and to hold that pedestal for myself. I actually have a strong sense of knowing that we are all Love. That love is all there is and that I deserve love.

But I don't have it.

A series of terrible boyfriends and relationships, each one worse than the former has made me realise just how difficult it is to overrule the foundations and teachings of your parents. I know that my parents didn't love me how I know a greater love exists in the world, and I know that it isn't their fault and I have no blame, remorse, anger or resentment towards them on that point - I cannot blame someone for not loving me when they themselves weren't loved, respected or valued. I understand both from my heart and my head that this is cyclical and I have so much compassion and understanding for my parents. But I am human too, so I do struggle with the resentment that they are my parents and this is my path of healing, espeically when I get deep into the places of my body where my worthlessness is stored. 

I get tired of this neverending story and the seemingly endless ways in which my worthlessness shows up in my life. Just when I feel like I've turned a corner, for example, done something extremely hard, challenging, brave or life changing, there is the invasive thought that questions whether I have done it wrong, why I have taken on a project that I will fail or any number of variations of these falsities that plague me.

I have learned in time to ignore them. But it takes energy. 

I have learned in time to find the root of them, find that memory, that event, that interaction, whatever happened and bring healing, love and kindness to it, reset it and in that specific scenario I won't feel it again. 

But a variation, or a deeper layer will emerge and there I am back again doing more work on allowing myself to feel a joyful and peaceful existence. 

It is tiring. It is time consuming.

I am so bored of my worthlessness. It has nothing interesting to tell me or teach me or inform me about. If it were a person, I would block them and defriend them. Say goodbye to the whole damn saga. 

So can I? 

The perpetual healing cycle we are all told to be on might be part of the problem, right? If I need to heal from my unworthiness, then I agree that I am unworthy. I am bought into that story and that construct. I am complicit and therefore I allow it to exist and to be slave to it.

So am I? Am I unworthy? 

My heart knows I am not. My body laughs at this question even being asked. My mind - well it has an intellectual response of conflict. I have read and heard and taught that I am not. But the answer of where I am unworthy lies in, and only in, my mind - its immediate response of "yes reveals the source of the issue."

Part of my issue is that I don't live a life where my belief that I am worthy is upheld, on display and valued as the most important belief I have. So, it is easy for me to keep believing that I am unworthy and unloved because the evidence I see daily reinforces this belief. 

I maintain abusive relationships. I allow people to talk to me aggressively and with slander. I allow my nervous system to remain in overdrive, in total fear and anguish and I allow myself to be cut over and over and over again. I allow my soul to flee for saftey, leaving my body as a shell to simply cop the abuse. 

I allow it. 

It doesn't feel good to admit this. This is not an artistic piece where I am simply saying this for my art and to conjure feelings within you. I am not even emotional to write it because it is true. It is liberating. I allow it. 

It is liberating because if I allow it, then I can also disallow it. 

Fear to disallowing abuse is the part holding me back. 

I have never been truly loved by another phsycial adult person. The fear of what that would be for me and the uncertainty that holds is powerful. We get these insights into our humanness that seems so funny when we finally discover it. The uncertainty of being loved, the unknown in that feels less familiar to me than the safety of being completely, unconditionally and truly loved by others. We so often choose familiar over better. Comfortable over extended. Known over unknown. 

Even if that means we choose fear over love.

I have felt the love of a god, or source, or a higher power - whatever you want to name it. That floods me with unbelievable love that immediately ascends me from that dark hole I can choose to live in. It wants for me more than I want for myself. That makes me so sad. A higher Love will never let me stay in fear, but it is so uncomfortable to me that I continuously choose fear over love. 

Not consciously, not deliberately and definitely not in an active way. But that is the result. I need to own that. 

When an amorphous "Love" wants more for me than I want for myself, I don't have answers as to why.

But I could start to trust it. Follow it and allow it. 

Maybe that is enough for now? To just trust, follow and allow love. Even when I don't know how. Even when I don't know what love truly is. Even if I don't have love in any of my relationships. Maybe I can trust that Love will be the answer and I just keep following it.

It all feels so familiar. I have been here, saying this thousands of times before. Why can't I do it?

Why do I keep choosing pain, suffering, anguish and fear? I don't want to. I want more. I am more.

But I live like I am not. 

Please, help me almighty Love to follow you and allow you to be me. Love me more than I can love myself right now and teach me to love me as much as you love me and as much as is true. Unconditional self love. Radical self love. A self Love that changes the world and shakes up the unloving nature present on this earth at this time. 

Allow the love that I feel for me to ripple through all of humanity and make irreversible changes and deliver a positive, loving future for all of humanity. 

Allow me to only answer to Love. To truth. To me.

Rid me of any enslavement to fear, powerlessness and abuse. I no longer choose that and I no longer consent or allow it. May this be true for all women, people, everywhere. May the frequency of slavery be eradicated from the planet through our collective dream to be free beings of love. 

May it be for us all.