Hi Everyone and thank you for your responses:
Diva: Thank you for your encouragement and kind words. I hope you are having success in your struggles
Wildcat: I don't know that she isn't capable of building trust again but her own words were that she has trust issues. I guess time will tell. I hope she is able to and finds real happines because she deserves something much better than what she got.
Goofy: First, I want to send my sympathies to you regarding the passing of your Father. I just read that and I am sorry to be late in relaying this to you. I read your ideas for the holidays and think you are very creative to come up with these ideas. I hope your day went well today with your family.
I do relate to your post. It is part of the reason I took a break from writing here. I found myself compounding my issues with everyone's. (My issue, not yours.) If you could meet her you'd see why I feel the way I do. She's positive and looks at the glass as half full. She is my opposite. I'd like to be more like her in many ways. I must admit that part of my concern is for myself also. I look at her and I see what her situation did to her, then I look at me. If I must endure all that I'll never make it. I know I'm already enduring things and that my outcome isn't sure either way right now. Anything can happen and I'm continuing to hope and pray that mine will work out. Today I am struggling to hold onto that.
I do esteem others better than myself, which is good but I take it too far. I realize that putting others before yourself is a way to make sure that you are not always first. Under normal circumstances it works well, it is balancing. In my world everyone is better and I am dirt. I am never first and therefore I don't deserve as much as others. I am trying desperately to challenge this. It seems incredible to me that I can write the difference down but be unable to make it work in my life.
I know that bad things happen to good people. I know that sometimes the bad things can become blessings in disguises. I know that every situation is ultimately different, even if they seem similar, and that they all do not have to have the same conclusion. I am trying to hold onto these thoughts.
I wish I could simply erase my negative core values and write in the correct (normal) value in it's place.