When Self-Love Isn’t New (AKA You Actually LIKE Yourself??)

in Self-Love on

Paramore’s Still Into You showed up in my Instagram feed yesterday. It’s a love song, but I couldn’t help thinking about how people tend to talk about self-love like it’s something you’re either:

A.) working towards because you couldn’t possibly like yourself you’re completely fucked up.

B.) you’re absolutely healed so of course you love yourself you’ve achieved the highest level of consciousness.

Where’s the in-between? Where’s the room for second-guessing and having digested all the self-love content that Brene Brown has to offer? How come every time you get down on yourself, people are quick to jump in with a mocking WOW GUESS YOU HAVE A LOT OF SELF-LOVE TO LEARN?

Your self-love wasn’t fake.

You know that trope of high-school loves break up and older people go “Well duh, that wasn’t REAL love.” (Speaking as someone who got married at 18, I may have been a little bamboozled, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule.)

While there are many flops of teenage love out there, I don’t think there’s a single flop of self-love. Here’s what might actually be happening:

  • You’ve met new people who are pushing a narrative on you consistently that is difficult to withstand.
  • You’ve come up against a new situation that is challenging you in different ways and you’re second-guessing yourself.
  • You’re having a major life change (death, move, job change, etc) that is weighing on you
  • It’s literally just a bad day. You forgot to eat and are feeling down on yourself.

There’s no “wow, guess you were just pretending to love yourself this entire time, and now your life is continuing- it’s become OBVIOUS.” This is a ridiculous line of thinking and anyone who tries to convince you that you’re actually a beginner when you DO like yourself isn’t worth your time.

Self-love isn’t perfect.

You don’t have to be enamored with yourself 24/7. People who are “perfect” are boring, pretentious, and most of the time- lying. Anyone who claims their life is just full to the brim with self-love all the time (or even more baffling that they’ve never had moments where they were uncomfortable or disliked themselves) should be looked at with a critical eye.

Self-love is also a… relative term. It might be easier to think about liking yourself or enjoying your company or if things were really, really hard- just hating yourself less.

It can be easy to get as wrapped up in the idyllic narrative of self-love as the narrative presented of the typical old Disney princess. Someday my prince will come. Someday I’ll love myself unconditionally, perfectly, without ever deviating.

You like yourself. And that’s what matters.

You can keep chasing your tail- a lot of people do. When you started on your journey, you probably didn’t know your head from your ass so you needed to do a little chasing. You’ve done the work though. You might even be so self-aware now that it’s freaking painful.

You’re ultimately the expert in yourself. That’s what everyone is always (theoretically) supporting you in becoming. In being the best, brightest, most authentic version of yourself so you can be chock full of self-love.

So now that you have some of that, now that you can look in the mirror and not cringe- don’t let every bump in the road feel like a KO to everything you’ve worked for.

You like yourself. Even in the ick.

As Paramore says, Baby even on our worst nights- I’m into you.

Psss- Like Paramore & breaking out of the box that a lot of self-development paths put you on? You might like INK STAINED SOULS – A 7 Day Creative Writing Challenge for Elder Emos to Let Their Inner Angsty Teen Scream. Learn More Here.