I am important respect me because I am.
All my life respect was a foreign concept to me, my parents did not respect me, hence I did not respect them and I never learned to respect myself.
Initially I sought respect by working hard at school, this along with the old fashioned box earring aid I wore and my lack of social skills resulted in me becoming a social pariah. In addition it failed to get me the respect of my parents, whatever I did fell short of what was needed, they constantly told me how I could have improved anything I did. Maybe this was meant to help but to me it felt like belittling my efforts that nothing I ever did was quite good enough. Which deep inside I translated to I was not good enough.
So I sought respect from the out-group by becoming a rebel. Becoming sexually active, shoplifting, you name it I did it. But even the outgroup didn't accept me, I was named slut, whore, weirdo. With no self-respect I failed to gain the respect of others.
Even the men I married did not respect me, they needed me for a while, maybe in a childish way they loved me, but they did not respect me, Yet still I knew respect existed and I wanted to find it, to feel it.
And one day I realised that respect would have to come from within. I went back to studying, slowly becoming a stronger person. I gained formal qualifications, a degree, a post graduate qualification, I started building a business. Other people began to respect me but still I felt a fraud, felt that any moment now people would see beyond the mask, to the failure inside.
It took 2 newsgroups to help me start to open my eyes. One for recovering offenders which I visit to try and understand why and how both my daughter and I became victims and by understanding offenders better be in a better position to protect my other children. And the other for survivors of abuse.
The insights I gained over the months from these groups helped me to see that I felt like a failure, a fraud, because I was being fake, being dishonest to myself. That I had followed the path that I believed would be valued by my parents rather than the one that I desired to follow.
Slowly I got stronger, dropped the business all the trappings that prevented me from being true to me, and became what I wanted to be, a stay at home mum. spending far more time discovering and expressing my creative side. Slowly discovering that I have dreams of my own. That I deserve respect not because of who or what I am. But simply because I am.
I lose sight of that often, but I always get it back, I struggle with self respect but as I nurture this fragile plant it grows daily. But only when I give myself the freedom to be me. Staying true to myself and my dreams.
I always find it easier to work on any aspect of myself when I can give it a visual symbol. Thanks to the strange combination of colour and concept for this project I can now visualise my self esteem metaphorically as a young tangerine tree, If I deny it food, or bind it's limbs by denying or refusing expression to my creativity then it will wither or grow malformed. whereas if I continue to nourish it with the food it desires and expose it to the sunlight it will continue to grow and will produce sweet fruit.
