Self-love and self-respect, and how I came to it.

I used to hate myself.

This is a tough one!

This is the basis for all really good things that come into one’s life.

Disclaimer: All names of my ex-girlfriends are changed for privacy reasons.

For most part of my life I hated myself. Why? I do not know for sure. I have been told by my father and my grandmother that my mother was an alcoholic. As soon as I try to recall any situation of our family life nothing like this comes into my mind. So, I would guess that either my mom really was an alcoholic and I simply do not remember anything or there was something else badly wrong with our family. In Poland drinking a lot of Vodka and other hard stuff was normal at any meeting among adults. I spent my first 11 years in communistic Poland and had quite a normal social life with the kids from our area. We played together, we fought against each other. We even had real wars between kids of different blocks. But as far as I know, no one was harmed more than some bruises. To me it was a lot of fun.

However, I remember one event that might be a triggering point. My mom gave me 50 zloty in order to go to a grocery store to buy something, I think it was potatoes. As we were living in a communist country it turned out that the things that I was told to purchase were not available, once again. So, on my way home a bigger boy came across my way. I was around eight years old. However, the bigger guy told me to give him the money. I was…