Your dad should be the first man in your life. Your hero when you’re a child. Your provider, your protector, the one that makes you feel secure and that you can always trust him. The one that puts no conditions for you to be loved.

I remember when I was around 7 years old. My dad would tell repeatedly to the lady that was raising me, that I was too fat, and that I needed to lose weight. I look back at my pictures when I was that age, my cheeks were a bit too full, and my neck a little fat. Other than that I was perfectly fine. I wasn’t a fat kid, I really wasn’t. My dad would tell “my mom” to put me on a diet. And there I was sitting for supper, eating fruits while the other kids in the house ate something else, because I was fat and needed to lose weight.

I don’t know to this day the depths of the negative effects of my dad’s rejection, but that along with my mom’s abandonment took a toll on me…a profound one.

When I was a teenager and started liking guys, it’s so hard to explain because I was a pretty girl, now that I look back, but the handsome boys that I was attracted to, they didn’t seem to like me back….or I wonder if they did, but since I always felt fat and not good enough, I never realized I was being corresponded. I was always on a new diet…thinking that when I lost the weight I was going to get that guy. I never lost the weight…not until I was 20, and it only lasted for a couple months. When I was slim and beautiful I accepted my first boyfriend….the one my family would know about. But weeks after I started dating him, I started binging on food and gaining all the weight back.

It’s complex to explain. It was too many things rumbling inside my soul at that time.

I had been molested by one of my half brothers when I was probably 6, and by other men when I was 3 and 7. I always felt I was the object of sexual attraction for men when I was a child. Subconsciously I needed to find ways to hide my beauty, to this day even my mother’s husband wishes he laid a finger on me. I don’t know how to be a normal woman. And to make things worse I always felt that my dad and my older brothers would say I looked like a slut if I tried to dress nicely and look pretty.

Aside from all those traumas, the fact that I was being verbally and mentally abused and that I was a helpless orphan who couldn’t cry out for help, drove me to the only pain reliever that as a Christian girl I could have…comfort food.

That being said, later in life I was always fat. At least until I was in my early thirties. In my twenties I would go down to 141-145 lbs. which was still high for my 5’1” height.

And leave alone my fatness…my mental state and my self-worth were down to the floor. It’s sad when nobody builds your self-esteem as a child. You become an adult and now you’re responsible for making sure you fix all the impossible-to-fix-damage caused by all the abuse you went through as a child. Every time in my life when I have been in very difficult circumstances or when I have had this horrible crisis’ I stop and think, how in the world am I to fix all this baggage…all the wounds that life has left behind in my heart.

Let me make clear that in the paragraph above when I say “impossible-to-fix-damage”, I almost mean it. If it wasn’t because I truly believe on a power higher then myself that can literally heal anything, and that there is no impossibles for Him, I would absolutely mean it. There is no way a human being can fix all that damage, and heal himself from all those wounds. But anyways, this is to be discussed on a different post. Today let’s keep the –Not One Man In My Life- point on focus.

So I am 39 now. And up to this point I keep falling for the wrong men. The last two, being one an alcoholic/drug addict and the other one being married…and by the way, I’m still in the process of forgetting the married one.

If you asked me why I have loved these last two men…I could probably give at least two reasons:

First, they would fall for any woman, and I could be that “any woman”, since I probably still feel worthless. I mean….the drug addict is “hopeless”, he wouldn’t be a hard to get man for me. The married one, well married men can be easy preys, because they are trapped in a relationship that they wouldn’t be able to escape from easily… and well, I am here to comfort them, and subconsciously I am willing to risk my dignity and give him all he wants for nothing in return.

Second, they are easy for me to get. It’s hard for them to get a high value woman, so I can pursue them and let them pursue me. Yes, it’s that bad (I don’t think of myself as I high value woman…at least not subconsciously). And it’s not like I planned to be in love with an alcoholic/drug addict and a married man. The addict I met him when he was trying to stay sober, and I fell for him. By the time I found out that he had lied to me about his high education, job and excellent finances, I was already in love with him, but even though it was difficult, I finally walked out on him. The married guy, I didn’t know he was married at first and by the time I found out I was already in deep. I still have strong feelings for him. It’s sad, why would I feel this way, we were never able to even have a private conversation. I was his favorite customer service rep. when he’d come to my workplace, his restaurant of choice. I always made him feel amazing…to be honest that’s what he was to me. A handsome prince who escaped a fairy tale and came to my life to stay. I never gave him my phone number, I was scared that all he wanted was sex, and I had two other strong reasons to not give it to him. Or four….The first one, I was so fat at the time, I could not let such a handsome gentleman, see me that horrible (if he was single, you would probably say to me, “yup, there you’re missing your chances”); secondly, I am a Christian (who hates her religion, yes…but who somehow loves God and don’t want to lose His blessings…or that’s at least how I feel.), third, what if I had sex with him and got pregnant. So here I would have been penniless, in my new country (The U.S.), no car, no home, not even a real job (at that time I was holding a volunteer position that earned me very little money), with OCD’s and PTSD in the healing process….and pregnant from a married man!!!!!!!!!! …are you kidding me!…No!. And lastly …and I guess the most important one…I didn’t want to spoil what we had, or what we could have had. I wanted him to stay, I wanted him to continue driving until he reached my desired destination. Although, thankfully now, I don’t want him to drive no more, and it’s so funny because I don’t think he was ever driving towards my same destination! :-/

I don’t think I can conclude this topic in a single post. Like I said before… it’s complex.

One thing you can know about me, I have never had a lover…I don’t know what it means to love someone and to be loved back.

I don’t want to fall in love now, in my current state, I feel that I have nothing to offer. You know how beautiful women are just there sitting waiting for a wonderful man to come along and take care of them…like in the 1800’s or the 1900’s….lol. Well, if I didn’t have the brain I have, and I wasn’t so conscious of the seriousness of my mental state, I would probably be one of those beautiful women waiting for that prince charming to come along. And I would let him love me and cherish me…I would give him the opportunity to show me what it means to be loved…for the first time in my life.

But not just yet.

I don’t want my man to marry this caterpillar…I want him to marry the butterfly.

I want to feel secure when I am with him, I want my dignity to finish taking ground, I want to wait just one more bit of time…when I can see the world of possibilities I have with men, and I finally stop choosing just the garbage that comes along…and start looking up, towards what I truly deserve: My promised prince, my so long awaited partner, my best friend, my lover, My Man……My Victory!