It's Not Crazy to Love Yourself
I wish I could marry myself.
No, that's not crazy at all.
I love myself deeper than any love I've ever felt; and this love didn't happen overnight. It took a lot of unlovable moments and unloving times. Lots of heartbreak and figuring out how to piece it back together. It took me to be cracked wide open, insides seeping out, to realize how precious those insides were. I haven't always been cute and I haven't always been a good woman; but the realization of that helped me get here. It helped me work to become the very things I used to wrongfully describe my worth.
My longing desire to be like someone else took full control in fourth grade. I was in elementary school wanting to have boobs like other girls in my class. In middle school I wanted the latest fashions like the cool kids. In high school, I wanted weave. In college there were weight issues; even after losing 20 pounds.
I was never satisfied.
There was always something new to hate about myself. Always something new that needed fixing.
That's how self loathing works. You'll fix, and fix and fix until there's nothing left to pick at. But you still won't be happy. And you still won't love yourself.
I looked for love in broken relationships and irrelevant friendships. I needed validation from those around me - no matter how damaging they were to other areas of my life. I needed others to fill me up with their love, because I couldn't muster up enough of my own. It felt good until all those people were gone. Until I was left to make myself feel as whole as they had once helped me feel. Until I was stripped of the only expressions of love I ever knew.
I wish I could marry myself.
No, that's not crazy at all.
I learned to love myself because God loves me. Because God has saved me over and over again, even when I least deserved it. I learned to love myself because clearly there was something worth loving, and while I may not had found it at the time, I knew it was there. I knew it was only a matter of time before I fell in love with what God created in me. Before I fell in love with the things those around me had experienced.
The lesson I had to learn, was that self-love is intentional. It's work, just like loving others. It takes time, effort and lots of patience. It doesn't just happen over night, but with constant soul-searching and an unwavering willingness to do so.
I learned that self-love is deeper than self-esteem. It's not just the way you feel about yourself, but how you treat yourself. High self-esteem means nothing if you still disvalue yourself enough to pass your body around. Establishing your self-worth is irrelevant if you continue to allow yourself to be mistreated. Self-love prohibits that, or at least manages it better. It's your constant urge and desire to protect yourself from harm. To treat yourself appropriately so that others begin to follow suit. To actually implement the standards created by that high self-esteem and sense of self-worth.
I learned that if you don't get started, you'll never do it. Like anything, you have to commit to starting. You have to put yourself on the path and take that first step. Strip yourself to the core. Peel back everything that has defined you up to this moment. Every opinion. Every bit of validation. Every thing that you realized never mattered. It'll get ugly. But it'll be worth it. And that is enough reason to muddy your boots for your journey to true love: self-love.
Loving yourself is equivalent to loving God. To take care of yourself the way God has taken care of you is to return the favor of salvation to Him. It's taking care of His child. Handling yourself as preciously as He did when He created you.
I wish I could marry myself.
And, no that's not crazy. Because I worked damned hard to feel this good about who I am and who I'm becoming. It's not crazy because the lessons I've learned along the way, have assured me that this type of love is necessary. That this type of love is perfectly okay. It's not crazy because like any relationship leading up to marriage, this love took work. It took arguments and sacrifice. It took soul searching and eliminating soul ties. It's okay because I didn't just stumble upon this love. I birthed it. I dealt with the morning sickness and night sweats on account of conceiving this self-love. I pushed it from my core with all the strength I had; with all the strength I could muster up. It's okay because I worked to get here. I worked to feel this way. And I deserve a ring for this sh*t.