You know that saying that goes, “you can’t love someone if you don’t love yourself”? Well, in my book its bullshit and I’ll be happy to tell you why. We don’t judge others as harshly or with as much cruelty as we do ourselves and we never will. We can see all the love and kindness in others and never see it in ourselves, because we ruminate over ever little decision we’ve ever made.
I am nearly 25 and I still have trouble loving myself. If we all lived in bubbles and never experienced the world outside, in any form, we’d have no issue loving ourselves. There’d be no one to compare ourselves to or media to look at, and we could live knowing that we are all great and lovely humans. However, that is not how the world exists.
We all have constant things influencing who we should be, how we should look and what we should do. It’s not uncommon to feel like you have to conform to that. What we fail to realize is that everywhere we look and see are supposed “perfect” people, but they have shit going on in their lives too. The thing is they just don’t talk about it.
They don’t talk about for the same reason you keep comparing yourself: it tears down the perfect picture you are “supposed” to put out into the world. But here’s another idea: F*CK THE PICTURE! That picture is what drives our internalized hatred of ourselves, to do things we don’t want to do and be who we have no desire to be.
Loving yourself is not something that happens instantaneously, you will not wake up tomorrow and immediately love every part of you. It is a step by step process and as we become aware of the world, things force us to go over those same steps repeatedly. Today you might think, you feel and look awful and tomorrow, you might feel like the greatest person alive.
Falling all the way love in with yourself takes the introspection that some of us don’t want to engage in, because we can only pick out the bad. However, we all have bad that we don’t like or care to talk about, but that’s not what makes us, even if it feels heavier. What you are worth is completely up to you. If you don’t love everything about you now, that’s alright but you will have to learn to eventually. Amplify to yourself the positive things people tell you about yourself and stomp on the negative. Feel free to wake up and tell yourself “I’m the shit” if you have to. We are not perfect, we all have negative, but that’s what makes us balanced. Your life is beautiful just because of your own existence so take the time to fall in love yourself, piece by piece. It’s worth it!
