on abundant self love
[image description: a young version of the author holds a white plastic fork in their brown hand as their mouth opens to a “u” shape. they’re about to blow out the candles on their birthday cake. the flames from the candles reflect in the circular glasses they wear. they have friends next to them. their parent took the photo.]
dear ant,
consistent therapy and loving community have helped me realize that i do not love myself. if love is an action that i readily volunteer to demonstrate for those in my life, then why am i not acting in loving ways with myself? well, as brenda from scary movie once said, 'she don't love haself'. brenda was right. they don't love themself and they do not value themself. but my hope is that this essay may help someone else feel and be more seen, heard, felt, touched, warmed, understood, and perceived in ways they could never put to words before.
i hesitated to write this because i recently noticed that writing publicly—and by extension, tweeting—was one of the only ways i felt comfortable sharing details of my personal life with anyone. yes, this might sound like basics from the outside looking in, but i always thought of myself as especially open. still, my mom still always wondered why i felt so comfortable with so many strangers knowing my business, why put all my business out there? i usually told her that those folks only actually knew things about me that do not particularly matter to me, even though they seem personal to them. there was some truth in that. and i also now know that i mostly chose to release my musings and opinions into the ether—read: the internet—because i was uncomfortable directly sharing with a given or chosen family member. baby ant didn't love themself.
the internet is much less generous and much more aggressively unkind, but it was a lot less scary to share to a cloud of strangers than those in my life. this behavior goes back to early-pubescent ant, back when i livejournaled with zero readers. then wordpress, then tumblr, and then wordpress again. my depressed, sexually confused, well fed, and unhappy 14-year-old ass felt like the safest method to put a thought on the table is online. the ether is open-access and opt-in; there is little doubt that my readers didn't want to read my contributions. by comparison, i thought that people in my life didn't have the option of opting-in like a newsletter, so why bother them? i thought family did not have a choice and friends were almost coerced into spending time with me. i thought hearing from me in what i felt was an excessive amount would aggravate them and cause them to dislike me [more]. countintuitive, i know. but that is what trauma will do to you. they couldn't yet love themself.
for example, i spent thirty years thinking that i truly loved helping and serving strangers and fam just...because. i didn't think i was some angel of altruism, but instead that i we owe it to each other. and that's principle threads through from my earliest memories to now, often creating conflict between me and family because of how i would show up for too many people, including strangers. so yes, i do enjoy giving/helping/serving, but only now can i be honest enough with myself to admit that i also use giving as a shield. i do not readily allow people to love me through giving/helping/serving when i am the recipient. i can't receive the very same thing i give on a daily basis. and when i do, my internal monologue is much less kind to myself than i may appear. because i do not think i am worth that level of care or assistance. mmmm, they don't love themself.
i cried in almost every photo when i was a baby. i was quickly taught to cry less in order to be less annoying/sensitive and more manly. instead, i just looked somber or smiled without exposing any of my teeth—i was self-conscious about how my teeth looked. and i didn't start actually liking photos of myself until i got old enough to realize i want to build an archive of my experiences. of my past and current selves. personal reflection i did in my mid-twenties on self-acceptance and self-love with my mindbody helped me work through some of my insecurities. but even then, photos functioned solely as archives and rarely ever as both archival and celebratory. do they love themself? nah.
celebrating the anniversary of my birth also proves difficult when i wish i wasn't here. when i truly believe i don't deserve to be here, regardless of how much people say and prove to me otherwise. those two ingrained feelings come from our good friends dysthymia (persistent depression) and internalized capitalism. but i'm an abolitionist, so i work hard to recognize when i am regurgitating and enacting logics of productivity, profit, and power. i see others as inherently valuable regardless of their capitalistic contributions, such as wage labor and human reproductive capability. so why am i so stuck on devaluing myself? i am supposed to be quite happy to continue living this life during whichever particular time i reside in. i often don't. i often, still, don't love myself.
at this point, i must make a distinguishing point: as children, we had cake, family, friends, gifts, and love aplenty for every birthday. i fall into a more conventionally attractive category of person. so read my words as i write them: there is no 'woe is me' to take away, but ideally an act of witnessing some very vulnerable truths of how my lack of self-love has shown up in my life thus far. this aside should personalize the way that abundance can co-exist with abuse and trauma. that while i had what i needed and much of what i wanted, i also experienced and witnessed many things children should never have to face. i had no idea how to work through the trauma that i did not yet recognize was traumatic. so i pushed through because we had abundant food, shelter, love, and time. survival mode does something to loving themself. survivor's guilt does something to loving oneself.
but. this year, i had a good birthday. one of the best birthdays i can remember. that's because of almost a year of weekly therapy sessions and years of prior [university-subsidized] therapy. and because of a therapist who forced me to question if being alone was a desire most rooted in my nature or most rooted in my trauma. and the answer was mostly trauma, much more so than some part of my temperament. so the way to gently love myself was to receive the love my communities wanted to give me. not speaking “thank you” and muttering in my head that they don’t really mean it, but truly believing their kind words, gestures, and gifts. this year, i happily accepted the affirmations. i accepted the well wishes. i accepted the in-person company that my therapist had me seek. they, i, are beginning to love themself.
while i obviously have more work to do, this process of recognition, witnessing, and transforming would not have been possible without the time to do it. the desire has to exist, but the desire cannot exist when there aren’t enough resources to do more than survive. and even with the desire, time is an invaluable and nonrenewable resource. we do not all have the time, the desire, the resources, the proximity to power, the on and on and on. i try not to take that for granted.
love,
ant/me/us/we