“We have all heard the maxim “If you do not love yourself, you will be unable to love anyone else.” It sounds good. Yet more often than not we feel some degree of confusion when we hear this statement. The confusion arises because most people who think they are not lovable have this perception because at some point in their lives they were socialized to see themselves as unlovable by forces outside their control. We are not born knowing how to love anyone, either ourselves or somebody else. However, we are born able to respond to care. As we grow we can give and receive attention, affection, and joy. Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment.”—
Bell Hooks, All About Love (via beaucoupshade)
I’ll take this further.
We are taught, these days, NOT to love ourselves. We all know the litany of Get thinner. Get taller. Get nicer hair. Dress better. Have more money. Get smarter. Get whiter. Get more sexy. Try not to get older.
Which is bad enough. But while we’re being told about all the things we’ll never be good at, we’re also told: Don’t brag about yourself. Don’t self-promote. Don’t admit to the good deeds or impressive things you’ve done. Don’t take pride in your accomplishments, it’s arrogant and unseemly. Don’t talk about yourself, you’ll bore people. They don’t want to hear about you. What the other person has to say is more important. Don’t be ambitious; ambition is tacky. Don’t try to get ahead in life. Sit quietly till someone notices you and rewards you. (Oddly enough, 99% of the time, no one ever does.)
You watch these memes going around Tumblr, simple things like “Name two things you like about yourself.” And people can’t do it. They’re so conditioned into silence that they can’t admit to HAVING good qualities, or even worse, they’ve been smothered to the point where they can’t even SEE them.
When you tell somebody—most people, that’s how bad this is, it’s most people—that they should love themselves, to them it sounds like you’re telling them, “You should be arrogant. Be pompous. Be self-aggrandizing.” It literally makes no sense to them. They don’t understand what the hell you want from them this time. Isn’t there already enough stuff that they can’t get right?
But guys. It just means: it’s okay to forgive yourself for your flaws and mistakes.
It means: if there’s something you like about yourself—the curve of your nose, the way you pronounce a word, your skill at music or writing or growing flowers or knitting, your readiness to drop everything for a friend in need, even the way your dog loves you—it’s okay to like it. It’s okay to be proud of that.
It means: that tiny flicker of pride you feel when you’ve done something good—don’t squash it, this time. You DESERVE it. You do. And I promise it won’t turn you into a monster.
It takes a long time to cultivate self-love and self-worth. Many of us have to start at the very lowest level: one little warming flicker of satisfaction that we catch and choose not to snuff out. And slowly, we add to it. It can take years to build into a full bonfire, but in the meantime, curl around those tiny flames and let them warm you. Curl around the good words that your true friends give you. Cultivate the knowledge that if a person you admire is your friend, maybe they understand something that you don’t—and take pride in that too, and comfort.
And that horrible, self-hating voice that’s always prepared to squash things for you: you just have to keep telling it to shut up. Tell it it’s stupid. Shove it down. Try to disbelieve it. Try to change the words it uses. Instead of “You’re stupid” or “You’re humiliating,” turn it into “That was stupid” or “That was humiliating.” Such a tiny change, but even striking at your own actions instead of the core of your self makes a huge difference. The fight is hard, and it hurts, and it’s slow. Sometimes the voice is too strong, and you just have to huddle up around your tiny flame of self-worth and protect it while the voice kicks you in the back. But slowly it’ll get weaker. Slowly you’ll build up more ammo to hold up against it. I’ve still got my voice, but it can’t hurt me the way it used to. I KNOW I’m good for something now, even if I can still be stupid and an ass sometimes.
I won’t ever go back. I tell you, my friends, the glory of the light of self-worth is worth every inch of the slow crawl in darkness to get there. And I’ll tell you what else: I know it’s fucking terrifying to start, because all you can believe in at first is failure, all you know to expect is pain. And it can hurt a bit at first, it’s true, while you’re scrabbling for that first bit of kindling. But once you get hold of that first small spark, it NEVER hurts as much as sitting alone in the dark. Every single step forward feels better than the previous one. There’s still pain, there’s still shame, but you can feel WARMTH, for the first time in your life.