The Journey to Self-Love

“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love someone else?” The famous quote from the Queen themself: RuPaul. The purpose of the quote is simple: self-love needs to be the foundation for any relationship. However, the road to discovering self-love may take years for many, myself included.

My journey began with the high school version of myself. Waking up and staring at the reflection in the bathroom mirror in the morning was a daily trigger of hatred. I was disgusted by the skin color and the wild, entangled curls. Even the use of grease failed to keep my curls straight for the day. I was a Mid-western bi-racial anomaly. Raised by self-animosity in a world where white beauty standards rules. As black awareness grew within the media, it was often associated as a social eye-sore. I wanted to be Molly Ringwald, or even Kelly Kapowski. It was the world around me, and I felt invisible to my peers. Standardized test continued to mock my insecurities with its notorious question of: check ONE box. How do I decide between two races I don’t belong to? I frequently checked other, thrusting the hail of an alien life form trapped on this mud ball (perhaps, I’m Gallifreyan), secretly hoping that was the reason I felt disconnected with the human race. This was the foundation of my youth. Though the forms eventually adjusted to accept other racial types, the sense of belonging remained void in my heart. I wanted to escape, and college gave me a chance to assimilate to a different culture. Perhaps I would uncover who I am in a different part of the world.

For college, I flew to the other side of the globe, where the sun first rises. I took my studies seriously, determined to fit in the new culture I wanted to adopt. During a visit to a restaurant with my Asian friend, whose language proficiency was much lower than my own, I first encountered an obstacle to my goal of assimilation. A waitress came to take our order. Since my friend frequently struggled to comprise a cohesive sentence in the foreign language, I had to fluently swooped in to save her. I began to place both our orders and noticed, the waitress refused to look at me or in my direction. It was as if my facial features were so repulsive. I was a monster in plain sight, but for the sake of making a profit, could be heard. She found my friend’s features much more visually appeasing and kept her eyes glued on her. Though I was upset, I was too naive to realize what was happening.

My second encountered obstacle occurred after returning to America. I decided to use my language fluency to obtain employment. Fortunately, I resided in an area where my speaking skills in the eastern tongue were more of a requirement in retail and other business within the neighborhood. I went to fill out an application for a video store. Similar to Darryl Hannah’s character in the 80s movie, Splash, I had used television to acquire colloquial language. As a result, I became familiar with famous television actors and actresses from the Asian country, giving me the confidence to believe I was the perfect employee for the job. The titles and the language would not be a barrier for me either. It was confirmed by many natives how perfect my language skills were. When I went to speak to the owner, he looked at me and almost immediately turned me down, just by my appearance, regardless of my proficiency in the language. He also added I would make the customers feel uncomfortable. In other words, I would be a bad omen for the shop, need not apply! My final encounter, similar to the video store, turned me down because I was not a native from the east Asian country.

Shunned in high school and another country for my racial features, it really buried me in a mountain of self-loath. In addition to accepting myself for who I was at the time, I had no friends to offer mental support. At the time, the friends I wanted and needed would not accept me because I was not local enough for the community I resided in. I wondered if my gender had a role to play in blocking the flow of internal happiness and love. The rejections and isolations gradually grew to a tidal wave of depression and suicidal thoughts. Yes, I wanted to die. I wanted to be removed indefinitely for the living hell I was experiencing with loneliness. Why bother making friends, if I am not planning to live long enough to enjoy their company? I engaged in many life-threatening activities. Self-harm became my partner for many years, nuzzling in my earth extent of my worthlessness. Without me, the world will continue to revolve. I am not needed.

As my fourth decade around the planet reached an additional five years, I reevaluated my life, for the first time. It was with the popular musical with Keala Settle belting out This is Me, I realized the only person stopping me from reaching happiness was myself. I needed to make a change to find my true, authentic self and live my life as who I was meant to be. I announced who I really was and surprised by how many people either “knew” that about me, or accepted my as my true self. Despite any legislative bills attempting to erase the people in the community I now belong in, my self-realization of my own self-acceptance is what saved me from making a life ending mistake.

Where I once wanted to meet death before my 50th trip around the sun, I am excited to say I have reached my 51st trip. Death will have to take a raincheck on our date because presently living my life as the person I should have been, is addicting and thrilling. I have revisit many dreams I had for myself in high school and am motivated to see these dreams manifest themselves into reality. I have more self-love for who I am, despite not being in a committed romantic relationship. Even if I spend my remaining years on this blue ball single, I have the strength within me to love myself and respect the person I am today, dismissing any ill-feelings towards, or about, me. The journey to self-love can be hard, but empowering when you obtain it.