Some rules are made to be broken.  Break some.

The line above is from one of my most cherished possessions:  a letter of advice written to me from my dad.  It was actually an assignment from my 12th grade English teacher, and had some connection to a Shakespeare play I’ve now long forgotten (sorry, Ms. Snead).  I framed the letter he wrote, and still have it on my desk.  His letter was both poignant and blunt (familiar, much?).  Every sentence is applicable, even today.  But the line above has stuck with me in almost every moment of bedlam or adventure.

I always assumed he was hinting towards the pursuit of fun.  Which I’m always a happy navigator of, contributor to, and advocate for.

But I’ve found that the pursuit of fun does not always equate to happiness.  I’ve found there are times when the pursuit just leads to dissatisfaction.  Because a rule was broken that should not have been.  A rule that a wonderful friend shared with me when I struggled most with the loneliness of being alone.

Rule #1:  You have to love yourself first.

I’ve never felt this to be more true than now.  See, this awful, unexpected thing happened, even after I became a widow.  Something that might only be significant to me, due to my hyper-awareness of others’ perceptions.  But what I noticed was that people looked at me differently.

Some was from women.  But most was from men.  Either way, a handful looked at me with something that felt like… pity.  Like I was eternally wounded.  Like I was damaged forever.  Like I now only had one eye and three toes.

And suddenly, loneliness wasn’t my only fear.  I was now afraid that was the only way I’d be seen again… like someone to be pitied.  Like someone who could not be seen or valued for what I brought to the table, but for what I had lost from a table.

And because of this perception – because of this perceived view of how others now saw me – I came across a new problem.  One I never knew was possible.  For a while, I forgot how to love myself.

When you’re married, you always have that person to fall back on – that person that validates you with their love, acceptance, and presence in your life.  But with that gone, things felt darker than most realized.  Because I forgot how to love myself without depending on someone else to do it for me.

And to be honest, that took a very long time to learn how to do.  To love myself for who I have become.  For who I am on my own.  To find the person that I am without Chris.  To find the pieces of myself that define me at my core, that I don’t have to leave behind with the memories.  That don’t require someone else’s love and validation.  And most importantly, that give me a reason to keep going each day, without input from another human being.

That takes a lot of patience.  Which is not a virtue I was overly blessed with.  So I probably made some mistakes for the sole excuse that, for a while, I didn’t know how to love myself for what was left of me.  Yet.

But I’m reminded of it now because I see it popping back up in the world around me.  I see struggles with confidence, initiative, and independence.  I recognize these struggles, because, I’m sorry to say, I’ve experienced them.

I’m more sorry to say that I can’t give anyone a set of steps of how to get out of the dark tunnel of self-doubt.  I’m not sure I could even explain the steps of how I learned to love myself again.  I can tell you that it took time (ugh), patience (more ugh), and a lot of trial and error (yay, new adventures!).  But I think what helped most in my re-discovery of myself, so to speak, was a lot of self-awareness.

Now, I don’t mean self-awareness of whether or not you’re breathing, or how people are looking at you, or whether or not you’ve stopped at yet another green light.  I mean self-awareness of when and where and what makes you truly happy.

Determining at what moments you truly feel at peace.

What you do when you have the choice to spend your time as you choose.

Who you tend to call when you need a pick-me-up.

From what people you feel the most energized after being with.  Or calmer, if that applies more often.

Which things you do because you truly want to, and which you do out of guilt.

Around which people you are the most transparent version of yourself, versus those you feel like you need to hide pieces of yourself from.

Where you retreat, when you need to retreat.

If everything was suddenly gone, what parts of yourself would you have left and would you use as your “supporting beams” to stand back up.

And then eventually…

Being okay with those things.  Being okay with sitting on the porch eating un-shelled edamame and a gluten-free beer, with nothing but the breeze as company.  Being okay with saying “no” when everyone else hopes you say “yes”.  Being okay with disappointing others, because you understand the importance of standing up for yourself.

It’s hard to be alone.  It’s hard to process that forward.  Hard to define yourself as a valuable human being, even though you’re not “with” someone else.  Even in my situation, I have felt that struggle.  Felt that self-doubt.  Felt the isolating feeling of unworthiness.

But it’s even harder to move forward, breaking rules that shouldn’t be broken, because we struggled with the number one rule of life:  to love ourselves first.

I know so many friends keep commenting how strong I am.  It’s not about the strength.  It’s about the willingness to soul-search.  The willingness to get a little dirty in the search.  The willingness to find the things that make living with loss worth the effort.  And accept separation from those that, well, don’t.

You can find your strength.  Once you love yourself first.

Then maybe we can find the rules that were actually made to be broken…