How to Love Yourself

Right now, I don’t like words, and I don’t like writing. I’ve spent entirely too long trying to craft an elegant passage in order to share just one message. Love yourself. Why is that so hard to do? And why is it even harder for me to explain? Probably because I’m no more an expert on self-love than a two-year-old is at using a toilet. But at least the two-year-old and I are both trying.

I used to hate seafood, and it bothered me. My thoughts constantly berated me with the idea that, “if other people can enjoy it, then why can’t I?” I wrongfully felt like I was inferior because I couldn’t eat a common food (I couldn’t do the thing that countless others could), but that drove me to learning to love all kinds of seafood.

You know the funny thing about the hypothetical aforementioned two-year-old is he hasn’t learned that not loving yourself is a possibility. All he knows is there’s a whole lot of stuff to explore, touch, put in his mouth, and break. If the conditions are the way they’re supposed to be, he also knows that he’s loved. For reasons I can’t explain, most people genuinely love being around children.

Learning to live with schizoaffective disorder was like learning to enjoy a whole list of seafoods. Except they aren’t seafoods. They’re devilish turd-faced gremlins. And instead of learning to eat them, you’re letting them live in your house. (I never clamed to be good at metaphors). As the gremlins I hallucinate stare at me while I eat my supermarket salads and watch White Collar, its easy to feel like no one could learn to love this. Truthfully, I don’t expect anyone to love turd-faced gremlins. But they aren’t really gremlins, and they aren’t seafood either. They’re not even diaper-wearing two-year-olds. They’re just a manifestation of some slightly abnormal brain activity. Whether I like it or not, that slightly abnormal brain activity is part of me. No one likes the gremlins, but I have indisputable evidence that most people genuinely like me, slightly abnormal brain activity and all.

If people can love seafood, so can you. If toddlers can love themselves, then you can love them too. The toddlers can see that other people love them, so they love themselves. You can see that other people love you, so you can love yourself. (At the risk of being redundant) If other people can love you, then you can too! And finally, If I can learn to love myself (gremlins and all), then you can learn to love you and every part of you.