Self Love is a Bloody Battle
Some thoughts on how I overcame a lifetime of self loathing and chronic depression.
I’ve found myself in the kind of relationship I used to dream about but never quite knew how to achieve. BFD is loving, kind, and respectful in a way that makes me feel genuinely loved and is soothing as fuck to my nervous system.
In a recent Instagram Q+A, someone asked what changes I made in order to allow this kind of love into my life, and while my answer was simple— “I finally learned to love and accept myself”— on some level, saying it felt like a cop out.
This is because I spent most of my life in desperate search of a loving, kind partner—the type I’d seen friends and acquaintances so easily fall into relationships with. I’d look at them with envy and bewilderment as I continually pursued men who seemed great in the honeymoon phase, but later revealed themselves to contain overwhelming levels of avoidance, anger, and contempt.
My search for answers about why I always chose people who could barely stand me often drove me to the same place: someone who seemed more relationally wise than me saying something along the lines of “self love is the answer!”
In those days, I didn’t totally get what they meant. “Yeah, yeah, yeah I love myself” I would think while refreshing my text alerts to see if whichever motherfucker was bread crumbing me that month texted back yet. The concept didn’t really click for me until I realized that self love is as simple as treating yourself the way you’d want to be treated by someone else.
Before I could acknowledge that *I* was the main culprit for my discontent, I was convinced that men were the problem. It was my opinion that the way they’ve been socialized since birth in our culture resulted their collective inability to be the kind of partner that I believed in my bones I deserved, goddamnit!