Learning to Love Yourself

One concept that I have struggled with for years is accepting myself for who I am, and finding love for myself without depending on the love of others to validate my existence.

But self love isn’t always about just loving yourself, it’s about being kind to your mind, body and spirit, by drinking enough water, giving your body the nutrients it needs to survive, and enlightening your soul with experiences and connections to the outside world.

Growing up, I was a people pleaser and I was always concerned on whether or not people liked me. I was always the quiet one in class, but I thought that my generosity would be able to get me far in life. I didn’t live my life to my authentic self but rather on the accord of others and I constantly kept finding myself miserable because I kept allowing my self-worth and value to be determined by external factors and the opinions of others.

I was miserable.

I kept telling myself throughout my teen years that I did love myself and I would try to learn how to love the parts of my body or my personality that I despised. However, again that soon became me picking out more flaws and me trying to fit body image types that were not meant for my body. It took me years to figure out how to be comfortable with my body and provide it with the nutrients it needs to survive.

I never had trouble falling in love with the people around me. I depended a lot of my existence on the presence of others and did not really step out to live my own life unless I was accompanied by someone else. Me falling in love with people did hurt me at the end of the day as I put my entire worth in the validation of others and only felt worthy if other people deemed me worthy.

I refused to accept who I am because I wanted to be recognized as a certain kind of person. I wanted people to perceive me in a certain way, which also resulted in friendships that were shallow and inauthentic and were not meant to last.

I was miserable.

What held me back for the majority of my life was the fear of being judged and the lack of self love and acceptance that I had for myself. I kept relying on other people when other people could not give me the love that I was trying so hard to look for. I had to learn that I needed to give it to myself before I could ever expect other people to return that love.

I also relied a lot on the fact that outdoor activities or any activity at all should not be done alone, and is also better with the company of others. While yes, some activities may be more exciting with other people, it’s okay to do things by yourself and have some time to just explore.

Life is so short, and it’s easy to get caught up in the midst of it. Do not allow yourself to fill your life with stories of “what ifs” and instead just go ahead and do what you need to do in order to better yourself and grow as a person. You do not need another person or another body in order to exist. I do not need another person in order to validate my experiences or validate my reasonings to spend time outdoors.

Self love looks differently for everyone, but the biggest component is to be able to spend some time with yourself, and reflect on your interests and who you are as a person, and to not be afraid to confront the ugly sides. My self love consists of regularly eating healthy meals, drinking plenty of water, doing things that make me happy, and finding comfort with being alone. Being comfortable with being alone has always been the hardest thing for me, but I am beginning to find the beauty in having experiences that are personal to me and no one else.

Hating yourself and beating yourself up on a consistent basis is such an easy thing to do because we can avoid responsibility for something. But learning to love yourself is such a difficult feat because you are forced to confront and learn more about yourself, and you have to learn to take responsibility for you and your life. Now I still struggle with this, it’s not easy, but it’s important to recognize that hating yourself is the easy way out, and loving yourself is hard, but more than worth the effort.

solitude

I believe it is time to be more candid in my posts, instead of hiding under the mask of metaphors and rhymes, and sentences with seemingly no meaning, but is a double edged sword. It’s been a really rough few weeks, and I still far from where I would like to be. Everything recovery-wise is going smoothly, and I am physically doing a lot better.

Over the past few years I have spent the majority of my time surrounded by others, enjoying the freedom that I have, and keeping myself busy really. I made sure that I was busy with schoolwork, my social life, and my on-campus internships. I didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on myself and reflect on what I really wanted out of my life.

I was so busy distracting myself and following dreams that I thought I had wanted, that I forgot what really mattered to me in my core being. Yes I love psychology, yes I really do enjoy business. I enjoy bringing the two concepts together and seeing how psychology and business intersect and thrive. However, I had forgotten what had mattered to me before coming to college. Before I had conformed to my college campus life.

I had forgotten my dreams of becoming a writer, something that I have dreamt about since I wrote my first novel in fourth grade. Though the novel was basically a spin-off or a fan-fiction, if you will of: “A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket, (though now it’s ironic that it is so fitting to my current situation), I had loved writing. Now I write academic essays, I’ve perfected the art. At this point writing an essay is second nature, and I would have to thank my high school for that.

Fiction and poetry has always had my heart, and blogging is a bit different. I don’t know what the boundaries are. With fiction and poetry there are no boundaries, you write whatever comes to your mind, or whatever comes from the heart and soul. However with blogging, I had always found it incredibly difficult to keep it up and to be honest, this is probably my eighth time trying.

But blogging doesn’t have boundaries either. For me at least. It’s a boundary-free platform I could write whatever I want. Hell, I’m probably screaming into an abyss right now. I guess the hardest part of blogging and why I always end up failing, is that it’s difficult to keep up. Before I struggled to think of topics everyday and I felt restricted to what I could talk about. I guess I put up boundaries for my self, or was pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

These last few weeks has allowed me to rediscover myself. I find that I have matured in ways that I needed to be. I needed to become tougher on my decisions and learn to walk away and let go. I always have a tendency to let people walk all over me and ask why I’m not flat enough.

I have been learning to love myself again, not that I hadn’t before, but I am not used to the lack of attention I am getting. Before, I was constantly communicating with others, walking around outside, having a purpose, and getting validation of just existing. External validations help with confidence, it helps with love because it gives you the facade that you need to believe it yourself.

It is not wise to trust on other people’s validation and happiness if you cannot create your own. So I have found little joys in life, more appreciation for easy mobility. I am essentially useless. I cannot work out, not that I did a lot of that before anyway. I cannot lift anything more than about ten pounds with my left arm and nothing more than five pounds with my dominant arm. I have literal baggage that I have to carry around where ever I go as they are attached to my body.

Being here in solitude, I have found it incredibly hard to be comfortable with my loneliness. I wasn’t accustomed to the quiet house with creaky floors. I wasn’t accustomed to the quiet footsteps and the polite knocking. I wasn’t used to being surrounded by people on a consistent basis. It all went from endless noise to uncomfortable silence.

Silence with just myself. Maybe what makes it so uncomfortable is a result from being surrounded by noise all of the time. I haven’t actually been by myself in a very long time. Alone with my thoughts. It’s been awhile since I’ve done that.

However, as time goes on, I find that I am becoming less uncomfortable being by myself. I would not go as far as saying that I am completely comfortable, but I am trying to get there. The past month has been a roller coaster of emotions where it’s making it more difficult to cope. Being in a hospital for ten days really does something to your mental health. Writing is cathartic, which is why I always tend to write more when I go through something traumatic.

Despite it all, I am recovering very well. Everything looks great and I am pretty much healthy I just have to finish out the next 19 days of IV antibiotics. It’s been a hell of a year dealing with my health issues but I am nearing the end.