Hear me

If you could just realize that this is the only you you've got.

If you could just figure out how to embrace yourself, accept yourself. If you could just understand that we need to surround ourselves with people who want to appreciate our best self. It's all anyone can do, put their best self forward. 

We can't force others to appreciate and love us in a way that we desire. We can make our needs known and then it's out of our hands. It will be what it will be. It will be enough, or not. The people we love will care how we feel, or they won't and we can choose to take it or leave it, decide if the good outweighs the bad. 

We are far more than how our parents treat us. We are impacted, influenced, and shaped by our relationships or lack thereof with our family but ultimately, we are our own person. It's incredibly freeing to say, here is my best, take it or leave it. Relate to me in a way that is good for my spirit and if you don't care to, or, at the very least, bother to try, I will limit or eliminate entirely the time we spend together. If I choose to allow you to stay in my life, accept the fact that in not caring about how I feel and what I need,  you will affect the me you get, affect how I relate to you, how I love you.

There comes a point when we need to be completely honest with ourself and accept when someone will never become the parent that we want. A point where we stop trying to be something we're not to win the approval and appreciation of someone who'll never approve or appreciate.

I don't mean stop being good and kind and true to ourselves, I mean stop expecting or yearning for an appropriate and fulfilling reaction to our best self.

Be your best self for yourself and if you are fortunate enough along the way to touch others in a way that moves them to show their love and appreciation in a way that we find meaningful, it's what love and life is all about.

Some of us will not have the parental relationships that dreams are made of but it doesn't have to prevent us from experiencing very real and meaningful emotional connections with other people,  we just need to keep the parental disappointment from hindering us in putting our best self out there for the world. 

If we can manage to appreciate and accept ourselves, we will find that others will begin to also, maybe even some of those parents who previously were impossible to reach.

Or maybe not, and if not, it's their loss.