2nd 30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 24 - My Hard-Learned Lesson

Day 24: "Write about a lesson you’ve learned the hard way."

Oh, I have learned so many lessons in my time on the planet and most of them have been learned through pain. I certainly have learned not to take anything out of the oven without using potholders/oven mitts. Another painful lesson is to not trust anyone. Of course, never give your heart away is the hardest one that I learned.  But here's one that I never thought that I would need to learn:

Be a little more selfish

Okay, hear me out about this lesson. I know it sounds weird to actually learn what seems to be a negative thing, but I have a point. I have always put everyone else's needs above my own and by everyone, I mean EVERYONE! Family, friends, pets, students, strangers, stray animals, wild animals, the world, and goodness knows what else always take precedence over me. I learned this lesson at a very young age by living in a household filled with narcissists. You either join them or be the opposite. I chose to focus my life on not being a selfish person. For those who claim that I was selfish with the October 2010 event, I beg to differ. That specific event was about saving family, friends and the world from something that was unnecessary and expendable. It was, in my opinion, the most selfless thing I had ever attempted.

Putting others ahead of myself isn't a bad thing per se, but it does tend to create issues for me. I'm talking about medically and emotionally. Due to my belief that everyone and everything is more important than I am, I never really have taken good care of my health. My checkups are hit and miss and usually only go to the doctor when things have reached critical mass - example: endometrial cancer which could have been detected and perhaps not spread if I had bothered to actually take care of myself. I won't even discuss my terrible eating and exercise habits. And the couple of times that I actually did do something about taking care of myself through eating right and exercise, it was only because I was doing it at the behest of other people - not because of any personal desire.

The same issues arise when looking at my emotional needs -- which are rarely met. I'm too busy making sure that everyone else is doing okay that I don't stop to think about my own emotional welfare until that too reaches critical mass and I'm in an emotional meltdown. This problem is due to the fact that I don't reach out to others, because again, I'm not important enough for my needs to be met. I just push through and hope that the emotional issues will go away eventually.  <shug> C'est la vie!

Therefore, it occurred to me that if I had perhaps put myself first occasionally (not all the time, just once in awhile), I probably wouldn't have as many problems as I do. You see, I suspect that in addition to the Stage IV metastatic cancer, I have a couple of other medical things going on that I'm just choosing to ignore because it's just not important enough, which just goes to show: you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. While I have learned the lesson to be a little more selfish, I probably will never adhere to it.

Tomorrow is Day 25 which means: "inspiration through Google images".