(Noun) Self love is the belief you hold that you are a valuable and worthy person.
At the beginning of December 2018, I did something that I never in a million years thought I would ever do. Broken, defeated, exhausted, and in a complete state of utter despair, I wrote:
I am loved.
I am loving.
I am capable of love.
I am worthy.
I am worthy of love.
I am deserving.
The list of affirmations went on and on and on. As I wrote those words, the tears flowed out of me like never before. I had been crying for almost all of 2018, but this time it was different. It was not out of sadness or out of anger or madness or even out of fear. It was out of compassion. These tears came with understanding. These tears were full of love, the kind of love that only I could give myself.
As I wrote I am loved, I am loving, I am capable of love, in my mind I saw the missing word of “not”. It was ever present and magnanimous. I resisted the urge to write it in because I knew that not only did I not feel loved, loving, capable of love, or deserving, but it was the reason why I rejected it every time I loved and was loved in return. The power of “not” was smothering me and I wasn’t quite sure I would be able to survive it.
I wrote those words of affirmation down on paper for 30 days straight. It seemed foolish in the beginning, but writing them down, facing them, forced me to step out onto that most uncomfortable ledge and deal with my self-loathing. At the end of that time, however little it was, I did feel loved, loving, capable of love, deserving, and much more.
The reason for my self-loathing is still locked away in all of the layers of me. It is not as important, though, to uncover them just yet. First, I needed to learn how to love myself. First, I needed to know that I can find value in that.
There are still days. There are still moments where I find myself back there wanting to return to old familiar ways. I haven’t written down any words of affirmation recently, but they still go through my mind, sometimes quietly and sometimes like a mantra. I am loved, where the “not” is diminished, where the self-loathing quietly lives, but where I am no longer unsure that I can survive it.