Hello beautiful people. It’s been a pretty minute since I’ve written anything for you to read. This “writing for others” thing is still so fresh on my list of to-dos that sometimes I forget to do it and other times I’m uninspired or I’m just not in a space to share. Sometimes I don’t have anything to give. Sometimes I need my words to be for me. Just me.
That’s the simplest and most obvious way that my writing and my blog have shown me how to love myself. When I first started blogging 2 years ago, I would exhaust my every moment and every thought trying to document and analyze each one for my readers. I’ve learned with time that some words can be crafted and beautiful without being seen. Allowing that to be okay and removing the demand of making something for others to read is one small way that I can show myself love. And isn’t that romantic?
We are conditioned to believe that it has to be. By our basic social construction of the word, love, it is always romantic. All kinds of love: platonic, family, spousal, spiritual; they are all romantic. Something about the delicate weave between people, the connection of hearts, the elaborate coordination of souls; it is all romance. Even when it’s not necessarily pretty, something about the way we suffer in love is romantic. The way we suffer out of love. The way that we hurt and recover. The way that we continuously search for more love.
Through the means of being in the presence of love, and searching for love, and being broken by love, and being healed by love, I have arrived at a need to love myself better. I find myself being fixated on loving myself honestly and purely in order to better love those around me. I am unable to sustain the perpetual state of self-loathing, of self-deprecation that so many of us accept as normalcy. I lived in a space for a long time where I talked down to myself. Where I built myself as small as I could to avoid confrontation or loss. I lived for a long time trying to wish my body away. Trying to apologize for the way it slinks itself upright, the way it takes up space, the way it clings near to things, and runs from others. I’m so exhausted of writing apologies across myself, of speaking harshly to myself, and of trying to change myself for the comfort of others.
The image of self-love that is plastered across our screens today is luxurious and romantic and extremely aesthetic. It’s shown as bubble baths, face masks, a glass of red wine, and a vase of fresh flowers. And let me tell you, the peaks of self-love can be all that. It can be all that romance, all that self-wooing, but the troughs of self-love are real shit. They are messy and desperate and sometimes lonely. Sometimes self-love is just you, alone, sitting with your thoughts trying to figure out what the hell you want. Sometimes its a goodbye you don’t really want to say, but know you need to. Sometimes its just saying “no”. Its simply showing up for yourself in whatever way you need. Yoga or not, a glass of wine or not. Self-love is learning how to be with yourself. By yourself.
Surprisingly, self-love seems to be the most unromantic kind of love. It seems to walk the line of appearing either narcissistic or pathetic. Self-love is dangerously bold, brilliantly selfish, and comfortably lonely. And without it, all other loves cannot exist in genuine romance. Your love, your best love, the best love that you can offer to someone else, is no good if you can’t love yourself.
You could say that I am in love with self-love. I’ve clung to it during times of heartbreak. I’ve fallen backward onto it in times of spiritual chaos. My writing seems centered on the act. I have spent a great deal of time documenting the desperations and weaknesses of my heart, the stubbornness and uncertainties of my mind, and the healings of my soul. I wish that I could say that 100 percent of what I write is for you. I wish I could say every word I type is me trying to spin wisdom to help you, but in an effort of full disclosure, sometimes these words are born strictly for me. Call it narcissistic, pathetic, bold, selfish, or lonely, but these words are the thoughts of my heart and the beats of my mind, and I like to call it self-love.
Love always,
