Self-love as an act of defiance
My journey towards self-love was not an easy one. I’d grown up in a society that told me that I should hate myself and everything that made up who I was.
I started focusing on self-love when I was 16 after what was one of the worst years of my life. To give background: I have what my doctors like to refer to as a ‘compromised immune system.’ Basically I get sick often and I’ve had a couple of major illnesses in my past. When I was 16 I was hit with about 4-5 different health problems.
In the past when I would get sick I would stress-eat, sleep all day, and binge watch shows and this caused me to be a chubby and socially awkward child. This time was different: I still slept all day and binge watched shows but I wasn’t able to eat anything because my illnesses affected my stomach. I lost quite a bit of weight during that time but not in a healthy manner at all.
During the period that I was ill I was taken out of school for a semester, isolated from my friends and family, and hated myself more than ever. Sometimes I was so weak or in pain that I couldn’t walk and on one occasion I passed out from dehydration. I visited the emergency room weekly, knew the staff, and could describe to you in detail how to administer an IV. I wasn’t healthy.
After I got a diagnosis and began treatment I began to see more and more people as I went out and interacted with the world again. One thing will always stick in my mind that I heard constantly during this time. The phrase “Oh, you’ve lost weight, you look so healthy.” That idea that I had dropped a couple of pounds so therefore I must be fine surprised me more than anything I’d been through in the months prior. I heard this from friends and family, people that knew what I was going through, and the idea scared me so much that I finally realized something was wrong.
I had hated what I looked like since the end of the 5th grade mostly because that is what society taught me. I had tried to become what society wanted. I went on diets, played water polo for 4 hours a day during my freshman and sophomore years and I was still not what society said I should be. The one time that I looked like what society had wanted was when I was at my worst and that is when I decided to change.
I started by trying to not beat myself up over every little thing that I did wrong. I tried to appreciate the things I did right and worked towards getting better at the things I was struggling in. Rather than looking at my failures and saying “wow I’m awful and will always be awful” I tried to look at areas where I could improve. I would take time to take a look at who I was, how I existed and would tell myself that I am ok, my existence is valid no matter what that existence looks like. Over the months of telling myself this I actually began to believe it. By the next summer I wouldn’t shy away from mirrors, I didn’t hate taking pictures, I was more comfortable wearing my clothes.
If I live in a society that tells me every day that I should hate myself then the biggest thing I can do is love the very person I have become. It was and is a process and on days where I am feeling horrible about my self-image my spite for this type of society is what keeps me from going back.
If I am a horrible person for looking at myself and thinking that I am ok, then I never want to be a good person.
I encourage you to appreciate the person you have become whether you do this out of shock and spite like I did, for your own benefit or the benefit of others, or whatever your reason: just try.
If you can spare some love for the person that you are then do it. Love yourself, you have been through so much, you have survived, and you are here today. Your body has been through so much and yet it still exists and isn’t that an amazing thing? Take a look at the person you are and know that you are deserving of love, from yourself and from others.
I’ve come a long way to get where I am with who I am. I think back to those experiences that I had and I’m glad that at least something positive came out of all those horrible things. Self-love is a big thing: it’ powerful, it’ inspiring, and sometimes just a little weird but I’m glad it exists in my life.