How to Love (or Feel Loved), in a Seemingly Unlovable World

This year I have been working on so many areas of myself. Anxiety, self love, depression, self hate, anger, and suicidal thoughts. I have lowered my anxiety from last year, even though it still needs work, my suicidal thoughts are still there but not as frequently, and my self love is slowly getting better.

What I’ve figured out though, my depression, self hate, and anger are still frequent in my life, and I want to change those areas of myself. I also know I need to, but I’m trying to figure out how…

I think these fester from trouble letting go, forgiving, and feeling unlovable and unwilling to trust. Most of my family has emotionally abused me (my mother also physically abused me), my past relationships emotionally abused or used me, and with all of my family/friends/relationships trust had been broken. In all of these instances I would try to forgive these people and move on… My biggest issue is I would go to those people and try to talk to them, or let them know I forgave them, and none of them ever remembered hurting me. Some people also think their hurting was just, (I have PTSD, and get triggered which also makes people distant from me and them think they can leave or abandon me justly after a trigger.) Not one of them remembers doing wrong to me, hurting me, or not treating me right, which infuriates me. How could these people that I love forget breaking my trust? How could these people forget my crying screams? How could these people forget abandoning me?

If I’m so beautiful, so lovable, so kind, so fun, so freakin’ great, so strong, how could you forget making me feel ugly, unloved, evil, mean, bad, stupid, weak?! The person they say I am, compared to the person they treat me as is totally unrelated! So how do I know who I am? How do I know what I deserve when everyone treats me the same? Forgets me? How can I love myself if they can’t love me, all these people that think I’m so incredible?

All these people forgetting they hurt me breaks me. It makes me want to kill myself to try to get to God and His love faster (I know that isn’t how it works, but that’s what my mind tries to convince me. Kill myself so I can finally feel love.) Talking to my mother, looking her in the eyes, as she says she never abused me, she never hurt me, she couldn’t understand why I left her/moved out of the house (she kicked me out); her eyes blank with pure loss of these memories. How can I even forgive when the person I’m forgiving doesn’t even remember? It makes me think I’m crazy, maybe I was wrong all along, what is there to forgive?

The only person/being I trust, or try to trust, is God. I know his opinion is all that should matter, but I struggle with believing what he tells me. He tells me I’m beautiful, He tells me I’m strong, but does me being strong mean I need to be alone? That to survive it is me and God versus this sinful world? That I’m only to trust Him alone with my heart? I just feel like it’s hard to believe who God says I am when the people of this world treat me as someone else.

When people treat me as a monster, who should I believe? I finally understand, truly, what Frankenstein’s monster would have felt. If everyone treats you as a monster, how do you know your worth or who to be? If everyone treats you badly, how do you learn how to treat others? How do you continue trying to be good, when everyone continues treating you badly.

I am trying to look to Jesus. I wonder if this is all a learning experience. That Jesus was crucified even when He was wholly good, and that I should be grateful that I’m not being wrongly crucified, just simply wrongly hurt emotionally.

Any advice, thoughts, etc would be incredibly helpful. I just want to feel lovable. I want to not be angry at myself, at others, at this sinful world. I want to feel like I can love someone, without breaking myself in the process. I want to know I don’t have to be alone to be safe, happy, and loved.

Thank you for sharing and I’m sorry your going through all this. I think you hit on a huge aspect of human nature, which people often hurt those close to them the most. And I totally see where those same people don’t acknowledge the hurt they caused which is like salt in the already there wound.

Obviously I don’t know your life so I’m in no place to say who you should include and who you should exclude in your life. You seem to have a good read on the level of negativity each relationship has on you which seems like a great starting point at evades how relationship.

It’s cool to hear you’re a believer. It can be hard to find specific situations to guide us through each situation in life but it’s great at giving us strength through all situations that arise.

When you mentioned it’s hard to believe how God sees you, that’s so powerful and something I can relate to and struggle with. I try to remind myself that he sees me better then I see myself even if I don’t understand, as something to lean on and try to search for more understanding of.

I think your faith is strong and it will be cool to see how God works in your life and maybe pushes some relationships out while bring others in or rejuvenating broken ones. It’s just always hard waiting on those moments as I can say for myself I struggle with Gods timing vs that timing I want to see.

Sorry if that was all super rambly and confusing

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Thank you so much, that was not rambling. I truly appreciate your kind words and guidance.

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