#10 FORGIVEN, SO YOU CAN FORGIVE

   If you can relate to my story, then we both have at least one thing in common: you do not care, like, love, cherish, treasure, or even think about yourself.
   I want to let all of you know that I completely understand why you put yourself through so much pain to try and find the right comfort. The pain that you feel from either a relationship, a family member's opinions or decisions, friends, co-workers, or even childhood friends is a REAL and ugly pain.  It's so real that it consumes your mind to make you fully believe that you cannot handle it.  Drugs put it in the "Later" box, but to only come right back to it after the high wares off. When you come back it's as if you didn't do the drugs and it feels ten times worse then how you felt before you did them.
   The pain makes you want to hurt yourself more so that you psych yourself out that the pain you feel is less than what you can inflict upon yourself, so you still feel in control.  When you do the drugs, you are giving a substance the authority to approve all of your darkest thoughts and feelings, to where you feel it is okay to feel this about yourself.  It is a spiraling downward fall that makes you lose your right to know who you are and what you deserve.
   Drugs steer your pain to whatever is "closest, sooner, faster...etc"  that can take it away because we all want to be saved from the pain that we are in.  It's very hard to get yourself to find the beauty in the simplest things like: the morning sunrise, a meal, friends, a family, and just people for that matter.
   You tell yourself that there is nothing in this world that can get you out of this life pit that you allowed yourself to jump into. If you were on a game show, you would be on your way to win because that is correct. There is NOTHING in this world that will get you out of the pit until you realize that you have to be willing to care about yourself enough to actually want to get out of it.
   The first step to start climbing out is to forgive yourself for the pain you allowed yourself to feel towards yourself.  It is a hard decision to put into action. You have felt for so long that you are ugly, stupid, not worthy of anything good, and unloved. Forgiving yourself is a very revealing step. You have to take all the pain that you felt over the past years, months, days and forgive it all.  It is the toughest thing to do other than forgiving the person that hurt you. You have to forgive yourself for everything you have put yourself through and then you will be able to forgive them for hurting you.
   If you stay in your resentment towards yourself and the other person or people, you are only making yourself suffer in your pit as you start to let it fill up with hate, sadness, loneliness, and disdainful feelings towards yourself and it WILL show through your actions.  If you don't care or love yourself, then how do you know what love feels like from someone else?
   If you dissect the word, resentment:

• Re- (repeat)
• Sentiment- (feeling)

  Resentment is a word that means to feel a feeling over and over again.  That can get so tiring that it becomes apart of you, but good news, it is detachable. You can let it go.  There is only one antidote for resentment and it's called forgiveness.  If you break up the word forgiving, it's FOR GIVING.  It's as simple as that. It's literally what you do with it. If you do not forgive yourself, (which is what you are supposed to do with it) you will, and I promise, you will go straight into resentment and that is a very dark place to go...especially towards yourself.
   By all means I am not saying what hurt you, or how you continually hurt yourself was right. By forgiving yourself and what you specifically put yourself through is an acceptance NOT an approval.  You have to fully know that it happened, accept that it happened, and then forgive what happened.  It is very hard to know that you have to do this for yourself because you think you have already been trying to comfort yourself through so much, but in reality you are in major debt to yourself.  You owe this to yourself.  When you do it, it feels AMAZING to have the ability to rip off the Velcro-like feeling of resentment.  Nothing and nobody has the ability to take that away from you.  Drugs, nor a person can rescue you from resentment. It all depends on you.
   You can do this for yourself.  This is the first and best positive thing you can do right now. Once you let it all go, there is so much more room for positive people, encounters, experiences, feelings and most of all there is so much more room for love to grow within you and change you! I promise!

Take this jump FOR YOURSELF!

Britt Nicole- "The Lost Get Found"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZacdiLazFks&feature=related