What’s a Queen Without a King?

Historically speaking, MORE POWERFUL.
BOOM that quote sends chills down my spine every time. Let’s dive right in…

Reclaiming your self-worth

Self-worth is defined as the opinion you have about yourself and the value you place on yourself. “Your value doesn’t decrease, based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” Honestly, I have tried and tried to have the perfect segway into this story, but I just don’t have one. This is just the RAW AND REAL story about one of those “life defining” moments when you realize your self-worth, so here we go.

As someone who would identify as being a mostly confident person throughout my life, I became involved in a romantic relationship where I lost my sense of self-worth.

**Disclaimer** I am not placing blame, nor do I want anyone else to blame this person. I take ownership for my role, I am merely telling my story and sharing the lessons I learned on my quest to finding my self-worth and happiness.
Moving along…

“No relationship is ever a waste of your time. If it didn’t bring you what you want, it taught you what you don’t want.”
— Unknown

During this relationship, I allowed myself to become a shell of the woman I once was. Nothing I could do was enough to make him happy, and in return I bent over backwards while sacrificing my own happiness. A once “whole person”, I was now looking at a complete stranger in the mirror, I was BROKEN. Slowly I noticed that my confidence in myself was dwindling and I became a person I didn’t like. I was giving, giving and giving some more, with little in return. This altered my view on myself, and no matter how much I gave, it would never be enough. You know why? Because the sole responsibility of one’s happiness lies within themselves. I was trying to put that responsibility on me, and I was failing. Failing not only them but failing MYSELF. I was with someone who time after time chose his needs above MINE. Instead of give and take, it was TAKE, TAKE, TAKE, TAKE some more, partially GIVE, TAKE.

My life became unmanageable. My anxiety was debilitating, and my mind was spinning. I couldn’t sleep. I was gaining weight, having one too many weekday glasses of wine to numb the pain, and completely unhappy and unconfident in all areas of my life and future. I was on edge, and let every little thing bother me. I was ready to attack at any time and for any reason.

How to Take Back Control of Your Happiness

It took me a lot of self-growth in order to get to this place, but my hope is that if you’re putting the work into yourself, you won’t ever compromise your self-worth. As my life was spinning out of control, I decided I wanted to find my happiness again. I joined a gym and took up running. I would set daily, weekly and monthly running goals for myself which helped me keep focused and be proud of my accomplishments achieved along the way.

As dumb as it may sound, I was learning how to be proud of myself again, and to realize that I too had the strength to do anything I placed my mind to. I started slowly meditating either in the morning for a few minutes or at night, or both. On days off from running, I would do yoga tapes, and took up a love for reading inspirational books. Lastly, I began journaling everything to feel a sense of control, and to process my emotions and feelings. There is something really powerful about reading your own truths, and then realizing you need to take back the narrative.

I continued to work on myself each and every day, and my subconscious was working overtime. As I was getting stronger and stronger mentally and re-discovering my self-worth, the physical signs my subconscious were showing me could no longer be ignored. I had re-connected with my “Inner Soul.” In the last month, leading up to the end of my long-term relationship, I began having a recurring dream, or what felt like a “nightmare”, where I would wake up sweating and breathing heavily. The dream was this…

I was on the Brooklyn Bridge trying to walk to the other side. As I would walk, I kept falling into the Hudson Water. I vividly remember the water was moving very quickly and was extremely contaminated. I would then wake up in sheer panic for about a month.

While people may not believe in, or be skeptical of dreams, I decided to google the meaning, and this is what it came up with.

Directly from the website…

Crossing a Bridge: To dream that you are crossing a bridge signifies an important decision or a critical junction in your life.
Falling into the Water: If you fall off the bridge and into the water, then the dream indicates that you are letting your emotions hold you back and prevent you from moving forward. “Emotional Limbo” so to speak.
Dirty water: Indicates that you have some negative emotions bottled up in you. If you were drowning in dirty water, then you feel overwhelmed by many problems you have in life, and you don’t know how to resolve them.

Pretty powerful right?
Once I read this, I knew exactly what I needed to do. It took everything in the world for me to find the inner strength and courage to be able to walk away but I DID IT and SO CAN YOU.

I remember shortly after, my brother called me up and said; “I know you may not see it now, but it takes a really strong person to be able to make the hard decisions now, that will ultimately set them up for success and happiness in life.” I always think of that.

While this may be a hard pill to swallow, because many of us want to play the blame game, it is extremely irresponsible—maybe the most irresponsible thing in the world—to place the responsibility of YOUR OWN happiness on someone else. PERIOD. End of story.

You will never be happy if you cannot make yourself happy first. No one else can, or should, be left with this job. Take ownership of how you allow yourself to be treated. By not changing a situation, it now becomes a CHOICE. Practice understanding your WORTH, set your STANDARDS, and NEVER SETTLE. Life’s too short to not be HAPPY.