There it is. The machine that converts my self-worth into numbers. This particular one is at my gym. I step on it, a little apprehensive, because I know the flood of feelings that will come next. Still there is a glimmer of hope that it will be kind to me today. Then, as I read the number, my heart sinks and I get a sickening feeling in my stomach. I feel worthless, defeated, damaged, unlovable, desperate, angry and a whole flood of emotion washes over me. I didn’t lose any weight. FAIL!

I don’t know when I got it in my head that I have to weigh a certain amount or look a certain way to be of value or loved. Nor do I know if I reach said number I will actually feel any different. I suspect not as my unworthiness and low self-esteem are deeply rooted in my life, which is a long long story, but I will touch on some key factors.

I used to be very thin until I got pregnant with the first of my 4 children. I was 24 years old, 4 feet 11 inches tall, and 95-100 pounds. It was all downhill from there. I never lost all the weight I gained and then with each successive child I had I retained more of the pregnancy weight.

By the time I was in my 40’s I was horribly overweight and unhealthy. I smoked and ate as a way to cope with my stressful, unhappy life. I was raising 4 kids, one with a birth defect called spina bifida, pretty much on my own. My husband, a working alcoholic, spent most of his time at home avoiding me & sitting in the garage drinking.

I think the years of neglect by him and myself, compounded with the effects of growing up with an non-existent alcoholic father, surely played a part in my feelings of “no one can love me.”

I was a stay-at-home mom too, during a time when most mothers were working and raising their kids. I worked many part-time jobs but I know I disappointed my husband and myself because I couldn’t do it all like all the other women. FAIL!

We never had any money or anything nice and were always struggling, which was also my failure as I managed all the finances. Of course I didn’t know, until my husband was divorcing me (another FAIL), that part of the reason was his lottery addiction that had grown over the years to $400-500 a month. Of course discovering that reinforced the “fail” because I should have known.

When you have it in your head that you suck and no one can love you, no amount of facts can change that. It takes work on yourself and that is what I started 9 years ago.

I quit smoking and started to try to lose weight and get healthier. I remember trying to run home with my 2 youngest kids and not being able to get more than maybe 10 feet. What an eye opener.

I’m still not very good at running but I certainly can get way farther than 10 feet. I also transformed my body from being a weak pile of fat into a more muscular pile of pounds but that damn number on the scale doesn’t change. It has gone down some then up some and down again but it is never enough.

After 9 years of intense work on myself you would think I should feel better about myself and in many ways I do but that core feeling, the one way deep inside there, is just as stubborn as that number on the scale.

So every day, or pretty much every day, I keep working on myself, dieting, exercising, reading, meditating and trying everything I can to finally feel worthy and lovable. Every day I step on that machine and read that number of my self-worth and every day it stays the same or goes up a little.

I know that it really has nothing to do with what I weigh or how I look and everything to do with self-love and acceptance but if I could succeed in just one area of my life maybe I could get another little piece of self-esteem to grow on. Something to help combat the self-loathing, “I am not good enough” feeling. Ironically if I could accept myself and get rid of the toxic thoughts about myself I would probably drop 20 pounds.

So today I will go to the gym and step on the machine again. It will probably be the same number or maybe down a little, just a little, to fool me into thinking I can get it to where I want it. To keep me coming back to it time & time again. I hate that machine.

But today I will also exercise my inner self. I will also do repetitions of,

“You are good enough Linda.”

“Be the love you want.”

and this prayer I found on The Naked Mom

Then maybe I can divorce that machine and finally say Good Bye to it and to all the toxic thoughts & feelings that it brings up in me.