Self Worth Part 1

Am I worthy?

We all ask this question at least once during our lives, usually more than once.  I find myself asking this question a lot lately.  I decided I would commit to a short series of post exploring this question in my life.  Today I want to pose the question:

How do I measure my self worth?  What makes me feel worthy?

• clean house
• decorated house
• enough money to afford some luxury while not going into debt
• niceties like a favorite bath salt, fine china, quality books, and nice linens
• others' opinions of me: am I a nice person, loving, well dressed, pretty?
• self worth when it comes to my parents: money, am I worth spending money on {like for my wedding for instance}, do they brag to their friends about me, do I have a degree and a career?

Now, obviously, some of those ideas are not mine.  DH and I only have fine china because it was an heirloom wedding gift, but I was taught that having nice things was a sign of worth.  A lot of the items listed above do not reflect my opinion of self worth, so much as they reflect what I was taught to think of when I hear "self-worth".  I grew up being taught that if you had material things and people approved of you, you were worthy.  You can see how that is reflected in the above list.  If my parents thought I was worthy of their love and attention, they would spend money on me.  They had a budget of $10,000 for my wedding; however, when I became engaged to an atheist and planned to marry before I finished my college degree, they cut it back to $2,000.  Our wedding was last minute, in a college chapel (it was a compromise btw my parent's church and the garden DH and I wanted to wed in), with about 20 guests (mostly from DH's side of the family who drove over 500 miles, because my mom was too embarrassed to invite her friends who lived in the town where we married).  Our reception was at a restaurant in a back room that wasn't even sectioned off from the general public.  There were people seated at tables right next to our wedding cake (thankfully they weren't in the pictures).  Because I married someone who wasn't like my mother had planned and because I didn't already have my degree and a career, I was not worthy of their money to give me the nice wedding they had planned and saved for.

As you can see, my family has a very skewed view of worthiness that I plan to move away from.

How do you define "Self Worth"?  

What makes a person worthy of respect, love, friendship?

In my next post, I will think about and discuss how I would like to define self-worth in my own life now that I am an adult.

Emotions Evening Out

It's been a month since I stopped taking my birth control and I am feeling better.  My libido is definitely higher, not back to normal, but not completely frigid either.  I'm enjoying sex again and, on occasion, initiating it.

I am still having some low days.  DH and I had a big fight a couple nights back.  Well, we don't really fight actually.  We skip straight to the after fight where we are both angry and hurt.  It's kinda silly, but we tend to sit in our separate rooms on our computers in the evenings.  DH wanted to come and create a D&D character with me but I thought he was just playing his computer game so I was in here looking at blogs.  It turns out he was waiting for me to finish so he could come spend time with me.  You see, we were both passing the time waiting for the other to finish.  Silly right?  Well, of course we both felt ignored and hurt but neither one of us spoke up, so we missed the "fight" and went straight to the "I'm hurt and want to be alone now" stage.  It was pretty bad despite there not being any yelling or blowing up at each other.  We talked it over the next day and seem to be doing fine now.  We know to update each other if we want to spend time together now instead of assuming the other is doing something important.

My weight is going back down, but given that I gained back baby fat last week... I'm not really that happy.  I think I'll be more excited when I get back down below 220 and stay there.  You can read about it here, on my weight loss blog, if you want.

LB is about to crawl.  As in, any moment!  That is pretty exciting of course.  I'd say all in all, I'm just sorta blah.  At least blah is better than depressed though.  Oh and I have a cold.  It sucks, my throat hurts, but it's okay.  I really feel bad because LB has an ear infection and a molar breaking though.  The poor thing is so cranky all day long and can't nap well.

So anyway, I guess I'm just posting to update you and let you know that my emotions are still up and down, but more up than before so I think I am heading in the right direction at least.

Complete Breakdown

I am having a complete breakdown.  I was hungry, hot and tired.  I was trying hard to keep LB entertained so he wouldn't cry.  I wanted to try feeding him 4 bottles, instead of his normal 6, and a whole jar of baby food today.  Meanwhile, the puppy poops on the floor.  I put the baby on the floor, he screams.  I grab the puppy and spank him, even though I had told DH I didn't think we should do that, then I put him in his pen.  The puppy is crying, the baby is crying, I fight back the urge to cry.  I decide to just make the baby another bottle... no use in both of us starving.

Then I start crying.  I am starving despite eating two hot dogs and a cup of sweet peas for lunch.  It's still 2 hours until dinner.  I made two cheese sandwiches, crying hysterically the whole time, thinking I need to be hospitalized because I am crying over something so stupid as a cheese sandwich.  I felt like a failure for eating them despite my just saying I shouldn't so I can lose weight.  Now I just feel kinda stupid for feeling that way and posting it here... but I figured I should be honest.  *sigh*

Bad, Bad Night

I can't say what is so bad... but let me just say this is how I feel:

I feel like I’m in a huge black hole. I am reaching out for help and you turn your back on me and say something else is more important right now. So I curl back up in a corner. When you are ready to help me out, you reach down to me but I’m still hurt and huddled up crying in the corner. I can't get out of this hole alone, but it also doesn't matter how many times you reach down to help if I can't see you because I am still crying in the corner.

How do we make sure we're reaching out for each other at the same time?

I honestly don't know that answer.  I wish I could explain more... but I just can't.  There is a time and a place to talk about things involving my family... and on the internet is not one of them.

Why do I struggle over family?

Little Bit had his very first hair cut last night.  I wanted to take him to a barber and take lots of pictures but DH was determined to give his son his first cut.  I figured, it's supposed to be special, why not?  So we settled in the bathroom.  Video camera rolling, mommy soothing and snapping pictures.  Baby crying because he was hungry...  All in all it was a nice experience {he stopped crying after a minute}.

I made the first clip and put the hair in a baggie to scrapbook later, then DH took the barber clippers to the boy.  Today I saw the excess hair sitting in a different baggie and thought, should I really send locks of hair to my mom and mother in law?  I saved the extra hair for that reason.  We had plenty... the boy was born with a full head of hair and has had 8 months time to grow it out...

I just didn't know if I wanted to "be the nice girl" and send them a lock of his hair.  It's a special thing for our family.  Should I keep the hair just for us and keep it special?  Or should I be the good daughter (in-law) and share the experience?  Do they deserve it?  Why do I struggle with deciding?

I already keep a lot of our photos off the family site because to be honest, I don't want to share them.  I've posted some in my blog that aren't shared with my family.  Sometimes I think they don't do anything to deserve being a part of our new life... then I think, I should be above them and be the "nice one"... there's those words again.  I just don't know.  I guess I'll talk to the chaplain about it next time.