Forgive the Worker Bee

​As I want to work on this forgiveness aspect of my recovery I am realizing I have been doing some wordsmithing and jumping over the work that I ultimately need to do. Forgiveness is an act of love, right?  I haven’t been able to really think about how to forgive myself for what I did while drinking because it is so tied up with why I drank in the first place: seeking acceptance while self-loathing. How do I forgive myself for hating myself?
 
When I think back to my family, how my identity formed as a teenager, I came to think of earning love through achievement and that turned into love through competency.  I am competent.  And when I’m not I have no value.  Sadly, I truly believe that, and then I’m resentful of it.  Even in my marriage I see elements of this: I take care of the bills, travel, dogs, etc., and that’s how I earn my love, through being of use.  When I was in high school I thought if I were to be an animal I would be a worker bee, a fucking drone doing my part to keep things in order among the other faceless masses.  Useful, needed, uncelebrated.  How uninspiring.
 
I have created a divide within myself through the façade I have used for decades of a successful confident woman.  “Fake it until you make it” has worked well for me to get hard times, and I fake it all day long, then cry myself to sleep with self-loathing, anxiety, and overwhelming fatigue.  I carry resentment toward people who I have felt I had to earn my love with them through my achievements, but I set it up this way.  I know that I have isolated myself from true connection by acting the part.  I have thought, “you don’t really know me, you know what I have shown you. If you did really see me for what I am me, you would hate me.”  How do I get at that to pick it apart?
 
How do I get at that?  Writing this out.  Asking for help (don’t know how to do that yet).  Talking to my inner critic and cultivating a better dialog with myself about myself.  This is the work at hand to reconstruct my self-worth beyond a function for others to use.