Love Thyself — I Promise To Love And Honor Myself

Self-love is something that I’ve always had trouble with. Relationship failures, domestic abuse, both physically and mentally, body image issues, how I speak, what I believe, what kind of job I have, how I parent, and who I even am at the core, have always been grounds for anxiety with me. All my life, I have found myself hiding and burying parts of who I really am and what I’m doing out of fear of what others might think and that harsh digging sensation that my inner sense of self would get whenever people’s judgment came my way.

It has been a huge cause of depression in my life and insecurity. It has kept me from applying to jobs out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to do them because of that default anxiety inside of me that was saying that I wasn’t as good as everyone else, wasn’t ‘adult enough,’ wasn’t ‘smart enough,’ and that I would fail at it.

It has affected a lot of the relationships around me because by hiding parts of myself I’m not allowing people to see the real me or find someone to love the real me. It’s gotten me into toxic relationships. It’s what makes anyone, myself included, feel lonely in a world of others because there is no real connection this way, because nobody really knows you.

This year, I decided to do something different. This year, I decided for the first time ever, that I was not just going to love myself, I was going to love myself unconditionally. That no matter what I look like, if I succeed, fail, say the wrong thing or the right thing, accomplish what I wanted or not, I would not beat myself up over it. I would truly love myself as if I were putting my unconditional love into another partner or child. I decided to treat myself how I have tried to love others and then some.

We all make mistakes, we all have weaknesses and insecurities, and that’s okay. This is what I’m telling myself now - that it’s okay to feel this way, that I’m human, and that it’s okay to be upset, hurt, scared, or confused. I am loved. I love myself and I’ll get through it.

In honor of this commitment, I went a step further. I bought myself a promise ring that I now wear every day as the symbol of my commitment to love, honor, and respect myself from that first day I put it on until forever.

Every day I look at this ring, especially when I’m out with other people who may make me falter to my old insecurities, but one of the things I have realized after I started wearing the ring, was that the word, ‘respect,’ was also used in the self-love promise that I made. This isn’t just some self-love surfacy thing about bubble baths and getting your hair done. Self-love, means respecting yourself, too.

If people start walking all over me, or I feel myself starting to shrink and hide my truths when I’m speaking, or when they’re speaking, that is not respecting myself. Respecting yourself means being brave enough to stand up for who you really are inside and not being afraid to be truly who you are.

This has been liberating for me. I feel like I am the most confident and ‘me’ I have ever been. Love yourself. Really love yourself just as you would love anyone else in any relationship unconditionally. Unconditionally is key. Be in a relationship with yourself. It is unbelievably amazing what it does for you psychologically.