What is my self worth?

What is self-worth?

I tied my self-worth to many things over the years.

The last time I wore a bikini.

As a kid, it was tied to things like grades, making my parents happy, or what my peers thought of me. It always felt like a delicate thing that floated around like a feather on the wind. There were longer lasting things to tie it to. I started tying it to the people I was with. First, friends, then boyfriends, then husbands (I had two) or bosses. I planned on having a family and tried to be good. But no matter what I did, my self-worth was fleeting and nebulous.

I tried to be successful in the way I thought society expected. I wasn’t very good at it. With major depression from the time I was 14 or so, and chronic illness that started around 20, that made my brain and body feel like an enemy to fight, to put into submission, it was hard to find traditional success for me. Not for a lack of trying.

Added to that, I’m an artist. Feeling the need to express yourself yet having your most basic tool, your self, betray you, doesn’t make for a lot of productivity or satisfaction. It felt like the most precious part of me was broken and useless a lot of the time. I’m nothing if not persistent, so I continued to fight and try to find ways to make life work the way that I thought it should. I didn’t really have any allies, and I had little reason to have trust in my fellow humans.

Then, a relationship broke me, broke me open and forced me to build my self-esteem from the ground up. It was a slow process, I found trustworthy people and learned to be more discerning in my relationships. I was doing pretty good. I had gone back to school, I was teaching welding, and I had started a non-profit that was empowering. I was slowly building steam.

Then COVID-19 hit. It shut down all but my most basic work. I made some income on designing, planning and installing gardens. Thankfully, I was able to continue that for a while. As the world seemed to crumble around me, my father was dying.

It was the right thing for me to do — to go to my family and see what I could do. An early source of self-worth was caring for my family, especially my dad. I moved across the country in my little VW Cabrio filled with plants and clothes, and the few things precious to me.

My dad improved for a while, he hung on for two and a half years or so. As I took care of him and my mom, my health deteriorated. When he died, I couldn’t tell what was grief and what was depression and what was chronic illness.

As it did when I was in an abusive relationship, my world started to shrink. My body was becoming weaker, my thoughts becoming more confused. I had trouble keeping things straight a lot of the time. It got to the point that it took everything I had to feed myself and shower occasionally. Even that started to feel impossible sometimes.

The one thing that I had lately built my life around, taking care of my family, slipped through my fingers. What was left?

What is left of self-worth when you can’t take care of yourself or do anything society considers productive? Or cannot create or do much of anything but keep yourself alive?

Thankfully, I had already built a support system of friends, and I had met an amazing man the year before my father’s death. They all cheered me on and told me how amazing I was. I didn’t feel it, but I trusted them. My partner was my biggest cheerleader. For a while, talking to him was the only bright thing in my day.

If I hadn’t had the successes that I did before, the successes that I had deemed inferior compared to my peers, I don’t know what I would have done, who I would have been.

I am a fighter, I love life, I love nature, I am curious, kind, generous, creative and smart. I had spit in fear’s eye and laughed. I have a deep optimism in me and I delight in life. But all those things seemed meaningless in the face of my body and my mind breaking down.

Recently, I got another diagnosis, and ironically, it gives me hope again. I want to do so much in life, I want to travel and spend time contemplating the universe and learning every fucking thing I can. Determination is what I cling to, the possibility of doing all the things I dream of. And enjoying all these things with my partner.

I have only been on my new treatment for about a month. I am slowly starting to feel better. I don’t know how long the journey is, or what it looks like. Nothing is ever guaranteed.

But one thing that hit me this morning, something that has pushed through to my consciousness a few times these last couple of years. If you are disabled, or unable to contribute to society in a more typical way (like with mental illness), what is self-worth? I know in theory that we all have intrinsic worth as humans but knowing that and feeling that, are two different things. 

Struggling through this, holding on by my fingernails, has made me more determined, made life look more sparkly and wondrous, even when it feels like I can just see it through the window. But I am an optimist. What of those who don’t have that? I am so grateful that I had already in place a support system when things got really hard. I already had practiced being kind to myself. I had already dealt with periods of being too ill to do much. I still had a glimmer of hope that I could get to the other side. But what if I hadn’t (my partner is incredibly optimistic, himself)? What if I gave up? I hope I never find out.