Putting Yourself First: a necessity

If you’re anything like me then the concept of putting yourself first may be totally alien to you. I’ve come to realise throughout many years that putting yourself first is not only ideal, it’s a necessity. It’s a necessity for your survival, your mental health and your overall self. I have spent years of suffering to finally come to the understanding that if you don’t put yourself first, someone else will put themselves in front for you.

For a backstory and example, I spent my early teens allowing people to walk over me. I allowed them to force me to crumble, through their words and actions both. By the end of my last high school year I had developed depression, anxiety and disordered eating habits/thoughts. Many of this was due to the previously mentioned bullying. My whole high school life was clinging onto one toxic person to the next. This was because I didn’t put myself first.

My heart is gentle and though I am proud to say it, it is something that is taken advantage of easily. I allowed myself to have a ‘best friend’ who purposely became so toxic to me that I believed that best friends making fun of your body, your life  and your soul was normal. I also allowed myself to endure two years of taking care of someone who eventually told me that I would be the reason she would kill herself because I became friends with a girl she did not like. Every single day, every single night for two years straight I would talk this person out of suicide. I would allow her to cry on the phone for hours to me. I would put things that would be fun for myself off to talk to her in case something happened. I would be in my car with my family and talking her out of suicide or bad thoughts every day, unable to hear the words my family spoke to me. Her approaches to our ‘friendship’ absolutely ruined me, my mental health was not healthy. In the end of it all with that one, she tried to fight the friend of mine she didn’t like, she screamed at me and told me that I had betrayed her in front of my entire school. She will never see how much I fought for her, how many sacrifices I made for her mental health over mine. The other cruel ‘best friend’ continued to try and break me after she wasn’t close enough to make fun of me to my face. She turned every single person who did not know me properly against me, to the point where teachers had biases and hatred towards me. When we were around people, she would act concerned and considerate. Talking as if nothing had happened and acting as if she cared about what was going on in my life, knowing full well she was hurting me all the same. People believed her over me, even though she admitted not only to me that she was a ‘manipulative bitch’ and that she knew it too. Those two played their own versions of tug of war, with me being the rope. I was being pulled and stretched until eventually, I broke.

It took six long years for any of the staff at school to realise that I was not okay. That I ached so badly inside. Unfortunately, the only reason the man that realised this realised it because of the fight that occurred but I am glad he did. He took me to his office and told me how they were playing games with me and had been for a long time. Of course, I knew this from the beginning but I never cared because I didn’t put myself first. The principal told me two words I will never forget. Nobody had ever told me anything like this, mostly because no one knew what I had been through, the man didn’t know of everything that had occurred throughout high school for me but he knew of my two ‘best friends’. He told me, ‘’be selfish’’. Never in my life at that point had I ever been selfish, my anxieties and depression had raged a battle inside my mind over such matters.

 It was another day when he pulled me into his office, asking me that on a scale of 1-10 what do you like about yourself, because he knew it was a 0 now. He told me that he knew that I wasn’t okay. He told me that he had gone through tough times through high school too. He began to weep in front of me, a grown man that I’d only ever talked to once or twice before now and told me that his heart was breaking for my sadness. We wept together in his office as he reminded me to be selfish again.

It was at that moment that I realised, If I was an outsider of my own life, would I still consider the idea of being selfish and putting myself first an outrageous idea? If I told myself all the things that I had gone through and pretended they hadn’t happened to me, would I think that that person shouldn’t be selfish? No. They should be as selfish as they please and put themselves first.

You need to put yourself first in everything you do. You deserve to put yourself first. Don’t ever allow others or your mental illnesses to come first. It will tear you down. Part of loving yourself is putting yourself first, it shows strength and respect for yourself. I’m sure most of us know a situation where it could have been remedied for ourselves had we just put ourselves first.

Start today. Putting yourself first is a necessity, otherwise your entire self-suffers as a consequence. Remember your values, remember yourself. Keep grounded within yourself. Don’t live for anyone else but you. Nothing good will come of it. If you don’t want to go to that event, say no. If someone is treating you wrong, call them out on their own shit. If someone has hurt you, let them go. If someone is pressuring you to choose something for your own life, don’t listen to them. Live your life the way you want to, live it for yourself because it’s yours.

Never put someone else in front of you, in the end you are all that you have.