Never Underestimate a Cycle Breaker

I've been committed to breaking the cycle of generational trauma for sometime now. I came from a severely dysfunctional home. My mother was married to a narcisscist who ruined her life. I apparently keep getting into relationships where men ruin my life. My ex was so abusive that it drove me to a drinking problem. I fall in love with potential. I fall in love with the future of what I want them to be. I disregard the red flags. And because of that, I self-destruct.

I've been on self-healing journey for some time now. Once the self-healing starts, it doesn't stop. It's not stopping now. If you haven't started a self-healing journey, please start now. In recovery, I learned to love myself. Anybody who loves me is extra. I love myself too much to compromise my standards. I love myself too much to enable anybody. I love myself too much to give my emotional connection away for free. My emotional connection comes with a lot of perks. You get my time, my attention, my desire for you to succeed in life.

Because my father always chose other women over her, it destroyed her life. I'm choosing myself first and foremost. I may miss the men I've dated, fallen in love with, and married, but at the end of the day, I will miss my hopes, dreams, and sanity more.

My mother was severely bipolar with an addiction problem in a time when mental illness and addiction was not as understood as it is now. I don't fault her for her choices. As a country and a society, we didn't know what we didn't know. Her genes landed squarely in my DNA, and my addictions were inescapable it seems. I've lived in her shadow long enough. I put my addiction in remission with a recovery program, and now I can live my life to the fullest.

Once I quit drinking, my addictive personality didn't stop. It transferred to men and shopping. Through recovery, therapy, and focusing on my physical and mental health, my bipolarity, which I was trying to medicate with alcohol, has gone away. God help the next man I try to date. I will put up with no shit. Underestimate me - that will be fun. I can replace you with a book!

As they say, when you love yourself, everything changes. It's interesting the choices we make when our self-esteem is low. It affects who we date, what jobs we work at, and where we spend our social time. When our self-esteem is low, we make the worst possible choices. When our self-esteem is high, we make better choices. With my addictive personality, I've become addicted to improving myself. I'm becoming my own personal best. I'm leveling up as they say. This will mean I will outgrow a lot of people.

It takes years for mental health to stabilize, I've found out. I spent so much time in fight or flight mode, that my nerves were constantly on edge. I'm now working on mindfulness activities. I've taken up quilting as a habit and it has helped me tremendously in settling my nerves down. The opposite of flight or fight is freeze and fawn. I call this my indentured servant mode. I fawn over people who would replace me at the drop of a hat. I freeze and please as they say. I need to put myself first. You don't realize how bad you have neglected yourself until you make yourself a priority.

I hate when people say that people don't change or that they are stuck in their ways. I've changed to the point that I'm unrecognizable. I once did drugs for breakfast; I used to chase dope all day long. Now I'm chasing hope. I went from almost homeless to wildly successful. From almost homeless to published author.

As I said before, underestimate me, that will be fun!