His Unwanted Bride (BWWM) √

Chapter 22

After two and a half months of therapy, it finally seemed like I was getting somewhere. It stopped looking like a waste of time to me.

Therapy gave me a chance to get so many things off my chest and when I had to talk about my relationship with my husband and how my issues affected it, I opened up to the therapist on how I really felt about my husband. Avery was the only one that I told I was in love with Keith. When I told the therapist, she had said You can't truly love someone else if you don't love yourself.

Those words had made me frown. I disagreed with her and I told her I did love myself. Her words had been if you did love yourself, you wouldn't need anyone to tell you that you are beautiful  the way you are. And that's the very first step to getting better, accepting yourself for who you are and loving yourself the way you are.

I thought so hard about what she said and I realized it was true. I didn't love myself. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror without hating what I saw in there. I had called myself a failure so many times because I had tried so hard a number of times to work on my weight and failed woefully. I saw myself as that child that ruined everyone's lives because my mum hadn't been ready when I came and I was that love child that had ruined things between my father and Amanda. And when I realized that I really didn't love myself, I had cried so much and then decided to work on it. I figured that if I love myself, I will be happier and stronger, that I won't let what people say about me get to me. So my motto became Be me and Do Me.

Self reflection and meditating every morning just to find my inner me became an everyday thing. I found out that deep down,  I resented my parents for being the way they had been with me.  I figured that if things had been different when I was younger, I would have grown to be a better person. So I worked on actually forgiving them and then I decided within me to not let that shape who I was anymore.

I started looking at myself in the mirror everyday morning and night after showering. My mantra became "You are beautiful the way you are. You don't need to change yourself, the world should change it's heart." My favourite song became Alessia Cara's No Scars To Your Beautiful. I became more positive. I wanted to be a woman my baby would be proud of calling his mother, I wanted to become my baby's role model. I spent more time around positive people, both online and in the real world.

All that and more made me make peace with who I am. I stopped seeing myself as a failure. So what if I'm fat? It wasn't affecting anyone except me and it wasn't even affecting me at all. So what if Amanda didn't like me? You can't be liked by everyone no matter how good you are. The world will always have something to say. I stopped seeing myself as a failure. So what if I failed to lose weight? So what if I failed to meet up to the world's standard of beauty. What about my other successes? All my final results had come out as distinctions, including the one that made me cry that night. I had had mastered the art of cooking and keeping a home. I had a best friend that loved me for who I am. I realized that all that mattered was how I saw myself and not how others saw me.

I began seeing myself as a made woman, a mother to be, a veterinary doctor to be and a woman that graduated from the University with summa cum laude with a GPA of 3.92 despite the ups and downs I faced throughout those years. I accepted the fact that I was getting a divorce and was going to raise my baby on my own.

And on the last day of my session, Suzanne, my therapist had said "You have come a long way Danica" and I gave her a real smile.

"I have, and I am really thankful for all you've done for me. I am happier than I've ever been and I'm practically buzzing with positivity. I'm going for my checkup today and I'll want to find out if I'm having a boy or a girl and that is one of the things that I'm very happy about right now."