I love the Facebook page Humans of New York. So often there are people and posts on there that inspire something within me. Today I read a post that did just that, it said:

“I came to New York to forget about him. We did everything together. We cooked together and studied together and we even had our own song: ‘Toi and Moi’ by Guillaume Grand. He didn’t like birthdays, so I was the only one he told and I’d bake him a little cake. On Valentine’s Day, we spent the whole day walking around Paris together. It seemed like so many times he was about to kiss me but he’d always pull back. It made me wonder what was wrong with me. I’ve had scoliosis since I was a baby, and I’m fine with it now, except when it comes to guys. Because I always end up thinking that if maybe I was taller, they would like me. So if I had known he was gay from the very beginning, it would have hurt so much less, because I wouldn’t have spent so much time thinking about what was wrong with me.”

Your self esteem becomes eroded when you are with a person who doesn’t want to be with you. It doesn’t matter why they don’t want to be with you, or why you don’t fulfil them, the fact is you don’t.

I know this because I have lived it. I was with a person for 12 years who was habitually unfaithful with other women. I wasn’t brave enough to face it fully until I was brave enough to leave him. I knew what was happening each and every time it happened, and often asked him about it, but was happy to swallow the set of cleverly orchestrated lies and emotional blackmail I was given, each and every time. I had no love for me, and filled that void with each false promise he gave.

I am not the victim of this story. I chose to stay. But living in such a manner for such a pro-longed about of time, meant that I was left with no self esteem at all. Instead of being able to view it objectively and say: this person isn’t right for me, instead I, along with many, defaulted to: ‘what is wrong with me?’.

This question festered in my soul for the entire time I was with him. I could never understand why I wasn’t enough for him. Instead of leaving, I gave him more. I tried to be the best wife ever, provide the best home ever, cook the best food ever, in the hope that I would one day become ‘enough’.

You will never be enough for that person. You have to choose to leave and you have to realise that the world won’t end when you do, because actually, you will be able to create a world for yourself that is more wonderful than you ever imagined. Once you do, you will never allow yourself to live under those terms again.

What you need to do is become ‘enough’ for yourself.

My journey towards becoming ‘enough’ for me started with the explosion of someone new into my world. Someone who showed me that life could be different, that you should/can live an amazing life, full of love for yourself and that in turn, you can be tremendously happy. That person became my best friend.

I met her 9 months before my wedding. Before that I hadn’t really let a friend be a friend to me for years, keeping everyone at arms length. She refused to be kept there. She saw all the possibilities buried deep within me, and encouraged me to look at my life as it was and to strive for better, in all senses. One of the first things she successfully encouraged me to do was to leave the role I was then working in. When I did and I joined a new company, I was exposed to working with men who loved their wives and treated them wonderfully, showing me something I’d forgotten existed. She continues to challenge, inspire and support my evolution to this day and I couldn’t love her more for it.

I still married him. But I had started to listen to what she had to say and my journey towards love had begun.

Another important part of my evolution came in the form of weight loss. I met someone at my new job who was doing Weight Watchers. Inspired by her, I lost 2 and a half stone over 6 months, and have kept it off to this day. Suddenly the world started to view me differently, and so did I (I will write a separate post about this at some stage).

I had been ignoring my intuition for a long time – my head, my heart and my gut. Gradually though I became acutely aware that something was wrong for me in how I was living but I had lived for this person for so long, I still could not see it was him.

My then boss, seeing that I was at some kind of crossroads, introduced me to a wonderful woman called Zofia Sharman and she became my coach. At first I did not want to hear what she had to say. It was 3 months after my first meeting with her before I was brave enough to do a second. De-constructive coaching is a wonderful thing. It helps people who have chosen to live like me, to clear away all of the emotional debris, and re-connect with who they really are and what they really want. My first meeting with her was in July and by November, I had walked out of my life, and had taken the biggest step of all towards building and finding a new one.

I am ‘enough’. I continue to be inspired by the wonderful people in my world each day and am grateful to every single one that does. I believe you meet the people you are meant to meet in this way, right at the time you are meant to meet them.

I am proud of my story, and am delighted to tell it to those who ask and are interested, in the hope of inspiring them to become ‘enough’ for themselves.

Let us all check in with who we are in our current relationships, whatever that relationship might be. By choosing to remain in damaging relationships, we are preventing each other from realising true happiness, from being ‘enough’. Don’t be afraid to be the one who chooses to let it go, because letting go was THE best thing I ever did.