We’ve all heard it before. “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself,” or “No one can love you if you don’t love you.” I’d like to say that that sentiment is fucking bullshit.
I have never loved myself. I do not see myself as beautiful, or as someone fun to be around, or as someone worthy of love. My anxiety convinces me that no one likes me, my depression convinces me that I am not worth being liked, I do not feel like someone that anyone would choose to be with. I do not love myself. It is something that I am working on, but I would not say I am anywhere close to loving myself.
I do not love me, but he does. My boyfriend looks at me like I have hung the stars in the sky. My boyfriend tells me daily how smart he thinks I am, how beautiful he thinks I am, how perfect he thinks I am. He asks about my day everytime we get on the phone and genuinely cares about my answers. He is the first person to like my articles on Facebook, and if he doesn’t see them he asks me to send them to him. While he does think I’m attractive, he values parts of me that aren’t just my body.
Being in this loving relationship has helped me find a safe spot to work on loving myself. I can confide in him my deepest insecurities and know that he still thinks I’m beautiful even with the parts of myself that I hate. I can talk to him about feeling like I am not good enough and he’ll remind me of all the things I am good at. He gives me someone to show all the worst parts of myself to and he doesn’t look at me any differently.
If someone I love wholeheartedly can love me so strongly, can see something in me worth loving that much, how can I keep hating myself as much as I did? He sees me as the best thing to come into his life, and I know he would never lie to me, so I must be something worthwhile.