Loving Little Kylar

My younger self asked to be loved a little deeper this week, and it has been overwhelming. I didn’t realize how much I was still rejecting aspects of me. Little Kylar got in trouble for crying, being scared, for needing comfort. So I choose to agree with that treatment and despise myself every time I felt that way. If only I could be tougher, maybe I would be loved and valued.

I learned to ignore my feelings and intuition, and do/allow things that weren’t good for me. I hated how empathic and sensitive I was.

I learned to despise myself, hating my kid belly and my puffy cheeks, and later, hating my skinny, weak teen body. And hating how young I looked (22 in the bottom right photo). How could I ever be accepted and loved if I perpetually looked like a wimpy, soft little kid?

I experienced so much shame in my mid-twenties when I first became a personal trainer. I was just enough healthier that I looked athletic, but I had never played sports, and hadn’t experienced consistent fitness training for very long. I felt like a fraud because my life didn’t match what most people would assume when they saw me or heard my title.

I was also in my mid-twenties when I begin to learn sports for the first time in my life, soccer, volleyball, and I wanted to die of humiliation continually because of the anger and incredulity of those around me who saw me as an athletic looking young adult, and didn’t know I didn’t have any athletic experience. My skill level didn’t match my appearance. I hated myself for failing to meet those expectations.

Throughout my adult life and professional career, I have felt like a failure because I could never get as muscular nor as lean as I always wanted to be. And not for lack of trying. In the last 18 years I have encountered few people with more discipline and consistency in diet and exercise then myself.

For 30 years my deepest dream was marriage, but the cumulative shame of lack of relationship experience, purity culture training, imperfect body, and complex PTSD kept shutting me down.

The heartbreaking reality is that I haven’t been loving myself unconditionally. I chose to agree with those who withheld love, and I continued to punish myself for lack of perfection. All along, little Kylar was just waiting to be loved and accepted.

It’s time for little Kylar to come home and be loved the way he was worthy of all along. I want to assure myself, that if I never get any more muscular, never get any leaner, never stop dealing with panic attacks, and never get incredible at sports, that I will always love who I am, no matter what.