yet another self discovery

I just found out that I have a low self esteem. How has this escaped me so long?, one might ask. Because I know God loves me. I know His Son loves me. I know that I have incredible worth. Therefore, I figured I had a healthy self esteem.

But, Hitler has incredible worth. God and Jesus love him as much as they love me. I certainly don't think highly of him. And, as I recently discovered, though I don't place myself on the same level as Adolf Hitler, I also don't think highly of me.

The other night I was trying to think of something that's naturally good about me. I came up empty. It went kinda like this:

Well, I have faith.
But not enough, obviously, or you wouldn't be struggling with this huge problem.

I'm a good mom.
But not good enough; what kind of mom puts her kids in spiritual danger the way you do?
Oh, yeah.

Well I love my kids.
Do you?
It seems like I do, but maybe I don't. Maybe what I feel isn't love, but something selfish. Love, by its very nature and to its very core, is selfless. Engaging in pornography is simply selfish. I don't know. I don't even know if I have love for my kids, my precious, precious angels who deserve the best mom in the world and are stuck with me.

So then I stopped trying to come up with stuff that's good about me. And I realized that I have never thought much of myself. I found my journal from when I was 16 the other day, and I didn't like myself then, either. But I wasn't even bad then. Just confused. I also realized that my parents and my family contributed largely to my lack of self love. I couldn't trust them. Whenever I needed to cry, I had to hide. And, so, I thought that having feelings was bad. I still feel so guilty when I start to get upset about life, because think of all the other real problems out there. And, not only that, but how dare I feel sad about how someone treated me, or about something else, when I have a habit that I need to think about, that's destroying my life? That's where my focus should be. Not on petty disappointments.

In my teen years, I wallowed a lot in self pity. It was truly pathetic, and I knew it then. I hated it about myself. I don't do that anymore. It's just turned into self-neglect. I have trained myself to not care about my own feelings. They never mattered to anyone else, anyone important to me (i.e. parents, siblings, husband) why should they matter to me?

I don't suppose this is a healthy way to go. Now, I'm confused about my own feelings, and I'm to the point that I don't even know if my own feelings are genuine! Is this sorrow for sin, or is it something I'm making up? Is this longing for righteousness, or is it pretend?

I'm a mess!