an essay that was once entitled, “I would rather dislike myself than lie about it.”
Listen. Obviously it is not the ideal situation.
I would like to be a person that is 100% made of things that I love. I would like to feel about myself the way I feel about the spring in bloom— in awe of my perseverance. Excited for inevitable beauty. Up everyday new again, chilled at the frost but delighted to thaw out once more anyhow. I wish I found the scent of myself as intoxicating as fresh petals on a warm breeze. I wish I woke up each day giddy and blissfully in love with myself.
Sometimes I do. Many days, in fact. I try and find time every day to take my favorite lotion and run my hardened hands over my back and body slowly, with feeling, to relish the touch of myself. Sometimes I go to bed clearheaded and perfumed and sweet, smiling simply to myself about another day well-spent.
And not everyday is perfumed, well-kept bliss. Sometimes I stink. Foully.
Loving in the Command Form
The Self Love (TM) movement has darkened our door with a relentless, unyielding bid: love yourself! Not only is it an ask, it is a requirement of the heady, holy Healing Journey. The call to love yourself at all times is designed to be a difficult, though somehow not impossible task.
I would like to remind the readership here that I am a therapist by trade and by training, pre-licensure. I have no beef with cultivating a relationship with yourself that is loving and genuine. I am also critical by nature; I cannot help but be skeptical of this particular demand of loving, branded as growth and exploration— especially since we exist in a society that hijacks the meaning of health and wellness to value production. I will always raise a brow when we are pushed to dispositions it is easy to be productive from.
It is easy for me to complete the tasks of my day when I am satisfied with myself. It is easy to pull myself out of bed when I have a good working relationship with the person that gazes back at me while I brush my teeth.
It is far easier to pretend to like yourself than it is to reckon with self dissatisfaction.
A multitude of problems arise when self-love is a compulsion and an obligation rather than an easy and genuine reality. At least, for me. I do not enjoy obligation and I do not enjoy viewing loving as a chore.
So why can’t I just… dislike myself in peace?
I saw this wonderful video with Nikki Giovanni saying that one problem that she notices amongst young people is that we do not like ourselves very often. Well. Yeah. I think if I had the surety of years and decades with myself, I would likely settle into the person I am at the end of every day and say, “good job body for surviving another day,” and have that be enough. But it’s not for me at this stage of life— I am still getting to know me. I’ve changed a lot over the course of things, this whole and grand twenty-four years. I haven’t had a lot of time to meet this person I’m supposed to love so much! I dare say there was likely a time where Nikki Giovanni probably did not love everything about herself. Youth makes it easy to have criticisms; fondness of myself has most definitely grown with time, as I have settled into this body and this skin and these scarring a little more. Forcing self-love did not make loving myself any easier, I don’t care what CBT says. It doesn’t.
And anyways, I don’t know that dissatisfaction has to negate love. Let’s get specific— why don’t I like myself? What is the root of my self-loathing? Am I disappointed with myself? Am I frustrated? Am I ashamed? All of those feelings can coexist peacefully with the tenants and duties of love that I have committed to. Right now, I don’t like the fact that I’m not vulnerable. I would rather just fall off the face of the earth and not say goodbye to people over letting folks that love me know that I am scared and struggling. That’s not my most favorite characteristic— I think it’s childish and cowardly and one I would very much like to outgrow. Why would I want to run from or change that emotion? It’s here on purpose trying to tell me something important. I think disliking yourself can be useful. I already know that I am predisposed to acting selfishly and without strong regard for others (since childhood), and I saw the consequences of choosing the easiest path for me. It’s okay for me to feel badly about me if it’s true and if I learn things from it.
Also, I am not all… me. If that makes sense. There is not an insignificant percentage of me that is made of Grief, for example. I am never far from that sort of deep-rooted sadness anymore. I am not sadness, but chronic sadness is a part of me. Anyone that has ever lost anyone significant knows that there are some things which simply do not return. I don’t have to like that reality to make peace with it.
The endless pressure to like yourself is not just fucking exhausting, it can be stifling if you would be better of telling yourself the truth! If I don’t like myself, so what? I haven’t committed some great sin. Not liking or loving oneself does not always indicate some grave betrayal of self-hood. Sometimes, it’s just the unfortunate reality of a situation. Why should I make apology for that?
How much easier might it be to do right by myself if I didn’t consider some feelings unacceptable or unfeelable? What if I just allowed myself the freedom of the full range of human emotion without recourse— even if it was unpleasant or inconvenient for me?
Final question, since I’m here laying out my grievances: what does liking or loving myself even mean? Because I feel like I can love myself without liking myself. Have y’all never had siblings? Have you never been hung up on a bullshit nigga? What if I am the bullshit nigga of my life? What if the summation of my parts is really just… not shit? There is some truth in the practice affirming oneself, the fake it til you make it versions of self love: those are designed to change your self perception, and they can help with adjusting a lens that is incredibly and unfairly self-critical. In addition, there are some parts of me that I just straight-up do not like. Sometimes my dislike is not from a distorted view, but because I have fallen out of my own commitments and standards.
a therapist’s ode to negative emotions.
There is actually plenty of reason to have beef with yourself. You are a full and complete person, and that includes flaws that sometimes effect the people around you adversely— even the people you love. Especially the people that you love! Your actions have consequences!! If one of the consequences of acting nuts is that you like yourself a little less, so be it! The further my Politic develops, the more fangs she grows, the hungier she gets, the less I like past versions of myself. There are many ways in which I have been hurtful to people I should have protected and advocated for. There have been many times in which I was dead fucking wrong. When I realized that, do you know what I felt?
Shame. Disappointment. A deep, slow, aching sadness.
Those are reasonable responses to realizing how you fuck up! There is no need to run from those emotions! The task of self-love is not liking yourself in and through all things. The task of self love is figuring out how to love yourself and be disappointed in yourself at the same time. The true task of love is figuring out how to love yourself is especially present even in moments when you are ashamed of your actions. Unconditional love means that love has to learn to co-exist with every condition your body and mind could be in. Sometimes my body and my mind decidedly do not get along! Is the most self-honoring path forward than pretend that’s not happening? Are we certain? That sounds like a great way to have a breakdown to me.
Radical should compel you to action.
In conclusion, I want us to stop throwing around the word “radical” if your politic is content with you sitting in your ass. What is radical about the love you give yourself if it does not compel you to better loving? If I am convinced I am not perfect and will never be, if I am convinced I am a finite being and I will never be more or less than myself, if I am convinced I can change (and I am), then that means to be in love is to constantly be in motion towards something better. Love is an action and love is a state of being that compels you to action in itself.
I firmly believe a much more radical way to love myself is to be honest. No, I have not liked every iteration of myself that I have come across. There have been times in my life, situations and circumstances in which I was dead wrong. Like, dead wrong. No I don’t like that heifer. But it’s not beef! You live and you motherfuckin learn. I can forgive myself without liking myself. I can rock with myself without liking myself. It’s uncomfortable and embarrassingly clunky but it’s honestly better than lying and faking it until I’m full of all this artificial regard and manufactured gratefulness for my circumstances.
What Ariana say? Arms crossed with that attitude, lips pouted :(
More importantly, just because I don’t like myself that much right now does not mean that I need to self-sabotage. You know how much bullshit I was on in the year 23? I regularly did not like myself. Every now and again I was on the brink of a seriously poor decision and I would have to look myself in the face and say, “Ismatu. You hate yourself and that’s fine. But you don’t hate six year old Ismatu and she’s counting on you to keep the promises you made to yourself, and you don’t have thirty five year old Ismatu who is delighted that you were steadfast to yourself. You don’t have to like yourself but you are so not allowed to fuck up their lives.” And that was honest enough for me to regulate my (alleged) drug usage! Idk! It worked! I don’t have to like or enjoy every bit of myself to value it. I don’t have to find pleasure of every moment of my solitude to love myself. I don’t think there is a person outside of me walking the earth that is 100% made up of things that I like. Why would that be my own self expectation?
What kinds of love do I never wish to withhold from myself? What kinds of love are impossible for me to nurture for myself all the time?
And when I am wallowing in self-loathing, those feelings don’t go away because I squinted meanly at them and called them unproductive. I did not magically find a new pot of grace to bathe in because I ran out of patience with myself. Sometimes I am on some bullshit. Sometimes I have to make peace with that to really be able to grow and stretch into my new skin.
in summary
I am caught in this constant process of becoming. I don’t have to like the look of my molted skin for me to find value in that moment. I don’t know that I have to strive to like or love or cherish or whatever myself; I think for me, those are secondhand items that come from approaching myself in sincerity. The only thing I work towards actively is peace with all the selves I am accountable to. I find peace and I breathe deep, and sometimes I am happy.
—Ismatu Gwendolyn
11| "Radical self-love" does not mean you lie to yourself.