It’s amazing how alone you feel while dealing with relationship issues until you realize that there are a million other girls out there dealing with the exact same thing.

Tonight, a good friend of mine needed to talk out the issues she was having with her boy that sounded almost exactly like the issues I had been having with my ex-boyfriend of now over 3 months.

Though the situation as a whole was very different, the traits of the boy and the pattern of the relationship paralleled what I had gone through. She had come to me because she knew I was a few steps ahead of her.

The moral I tried to instil in her was that she deserved to be treated like a queen, and any guy who treated her as anything less was not worth her time. She knew this, but was having difficulty making sure she was actually treated as so. It can be easy to see what’s wrong, but fixing it isn’t quite as simple. This was something that I struggled with myself.

It was only after having been lied to by my ex, (an action that results in immediate expulsion from my life), that I was finally able to draw the strength I needed to end the rollercoaster of drama for good. It took me two years, but I was finally able to do it. I was lucky, I suppose, to have found out he lied, because it gave me the “over” (as my friend called it) that I needed to make it happen. She didn’t have the “over” yet, so it wasn’t as easy. She’s a smart girl, though, so I’m confident she’s going to be just fine. With me, though… I needed that real push.

Every time my ex and I had broken up, I thought I had had the “over.” Apparently I was wrong, as we kept getting back together. It was not until tonight, and talking to my friend, that I was confident that I had, in fact, found my strength, my confidence, and my self-respect to do better.

I stopped blogging about my stupid relationship drama a while ago because, well, it got immensely repetitive. I felt the need to blog tonight not only because of the coincidental email I received from my ex late last night coupled with my friends similar issue, but because I felt the need to share, especially with the ostomates, the sense of self-respect and confidence that I feel right now.

It’s hard for any person, especially a woman, in this day and age to be confident in themselves because of all the (ok I know this sounds cliché, but it’s true) magazines and television representations of the perfect image; body type, personality, lifestyle…

This can slowly tear away at the little self-confidence one has so that it’s easy to fall into a trap and believe that, if one guy says he loves you more than anything in the world, that he means it, even when he treats you like garbage.

Though I am a confident person and don’t even factor my ostomy into my self-image, it’s still very easy to fall into that trap. It’s hard enough for a normal person to realize how amazing they are and to ensure they get the respect deserved from their partner, but it must be a million times more difficult for a person uncomfortable with themselves because of their lifesaving appliance.

I guess this is another reason why I do this blog thing. I share because I want to make sure others don’t fall into the same patterns as I have, and especially, do not fall into ones much worse. I blog and post pictures of myself with my bag to encourage other ostomates to be proud of what they have and then, hopefully, that sense of pride can culminate itself into self-confidence.

Each and every one of you, bag or no bag, deserves to be treated with respect, dignity, and love.

Please make sure you are.