self love

By: Amira ElSayed

I had therapists tell me it was ironic how much love I gave out because I didn’t have much to give to myself. I would laugh, as if self love was some kind of sick joke. I had someone else tell me once that I would never be able to properly love anyone until I learned to love myself. Now looking back, I get to laugh at the irony because they have no clue how much love I’m able to feel, maybe not towards myself, but towards those who matter.

Never Being Good Enough

Self loathing doesn’t necessarily have a target audience. It can start within any age and gender. I have witnessed kids that said how much they hated themselves at the age of seven and were filled to the brim with criticism. Others were about sixteen and said they wanted to have angel wings so they could fly close enough to the sun and watch their tears burn into steam and wax burn on their skin, so they had a reason for why they were thick skinned. Some others were only twenty when they started to learn about suicide and how they thought it was poetic and beautifully tragic. This age trail just keeps getting worse as we grow older.

What is Self Loath?

Self loathing is when you cannot stand to look at yourself in the mirror, when you hate everything about yourself and view your own worth through the very worst. It’s thinking you’re never good enough for anything or anyone.

Everything has a Consequence

Everyone deals with their emotions in different ways. Some would binge watch episodes and eat and never get out of bed hoping to avoid human interactions; others would write poetry to express how they feel. But with black ink on pages, it feels as if you have your blood smeared all over and are reopening wounds.

“Loving you almost makes life worth it”

Dying on the inside has happened so many times, so when someone tells you that loving you almost makes life worth it or maybe even loving you makes them forget how much they hate themselves, that isn’t poetry and shouldn’t be romanticised. It is taking all the love we could never give ourselves and putting it to good use. It is reminding ourselves that if someone could love us; that way then we can try to breathe again.

Self love doesn’t always come first, or second, or even ever. Love will not heal a person. It will not work like magic and wipe our slates of bodies clean of scars; emotional or physical. Love will not heal us but maybe it could hold our hand if we ever decide to heal ourselves and maybe tell us a joke or two.