Family story - fini

There is a family story told about me, I was little maybe three or four, I had just come home from visiting my grandmother and dad.

I was in my bedroom.
My mother and her friends were downstairs having a party.

A friend came upstairs to check on me, and found me crying. He sat with me and asked me what was wrong.

Later, he went downstairs to rejoin the party. Mom says he was crying. He told her and everyone in the room what an unbelievably special little person I was.

Apparently I had been crying because I believed I had failed. Failed? Failed at what you are just a baby? I failed at my job. My job is to be loved, that's why I am here, and nobody loves me, I failed.

This story was told over and over and over again during my life. My mom loved it, she thought it was so cute. One day I asked her to really think about what that story meant.

It meant, as little girl I was suffering from depression and despair over the fact I did not believe any one person in the world loved me. Worse, the stress of being under the impression (how? I couldn't say) that my only job on this planet was to be loved, added the crippling knowledge to my little psyche that I was ALREADY a failure at the age of four. Now, how is that cute?

Well here I am 30 years later, laying in bed feeling the exact same way wondering when this curse of living will be lifted off of me, when it hit me, I've been having this same bedridden conversation for the past 3 decades.

My job here very well may be to be loved, but by who and dictated by what? What is the greatest love there is? Love of self. My job in life is to discover that I am worthy of love, my own love.

By that measure, I have already succeeded in one main life goal.

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