On Unapologetic, Indiscriminate Self Love

Okay, so maybe this isn’t such a radical concept. After all, you can’t really go a day without being slapped in the face with “I woke up like this” selfies just plastered on your Instagram feed. People all over are proclaiming their acceptance of their faces, tummies, fingers, toes, etc etc etc… but is loving yourself really skin deep?

I recently went to my pediatrician for a routine ADHD checkup on account of the cocktail of drugs I had been given over the past few years. I was sitting in the slightly-too-small plastic chair that was just kind of haphazardly kicked in the corner of the room, answering a slurry of questions about my mental state. “How are your grades?” The small Asian man asked. I wrinkled my nose. “Honestly? Pretty bad.” I said, and I watched him punch my answer less-than-verbatim into the exam room computer. “And you? How’s your self-esteem?” I had to stop myself before I gave him an answer that I had worked far too hard to believe in. Instead of “oh, I loooooove myself,” the words came out more like “Well, I’m gorgeous, I know that. I think I have a shitty personality.” All true. It’s a frigid day in hell when I say something negative about my appearance, I mean, I genuinely think I’m a beaut. So I’m sitting in this boat-themed examination room in the middle of Wellington telling a complete stranger about how my hatred of myself came not from my tubby, acne-prone little body, but from my expectations of how other people react to the words that come out of my pretty face, and I’m like, how did it get like this?

Days like this, my mama said…

Growing up with a Chinese mother, I was raised to believe I was the smartest, richest, most talented child, and I believed it. Then puberty hit me like a train about two years too early and everything was horrible. Hair was everywhere. My skin produced enough oil to fry an entire carton of eggs. It was a nightmarish, traumatic experience for everyone involved, including my ever-so-doting mother. She was horrified that all my friends were thin, silky haired, flat chested, even resembled little porcelain dolls lined up in a row, and her daughter? Well, I kind of looked like a greasy, overweight Mowgli from The Jungle Book (with a huge chest). Cue the wanting to jump out of my skin every day of my life. For a few years, I clung desperately to any boy who had shown interest in me, I became codependent at an early age, I counted calories obsessively: all tell-tale signs of your classic self-loathing teenager. Sound familiar? But, as the story goes, I blossomed into an effervescent red lipped-cat-eyed narcissist who was absolutely secure in the reality of her situation: she was mean, she was brave, and she was “flawless.”

EXCEPT SHE WASN’T

For a little while I had stood under this giant “screw everybody” umbrella, and it totally worked. My self-esteem skyrocketed, my selfie angles evolved, I didn’t care about anything. It was wonderful. I was a sociopath. Soon enough, however, I started to wonder where all of my interpersonal relationships had run off to. My friends didn’t really talk to me, my partner at the time became extremely disconnected, and although I was resilient and carefree on the outside, suddenly I was “not okay” again. Amazingly, I didn’t suspect that it was my narcissism at all, until I had that conversation I mentioned earlier at my pediatrician’s office. Everything kind of came together.

I wasn’t going to please everyone, I knew that, but instead of discrediting them, I had to accept the very real reality that other people exist. They are 100% human beings, just like I am. So what if they want nothing to do with me? That’s alright. They’ve got their own lives and their own experiences have led them to come to that conclusion. I never needed to be aggressive and hateful towards others for them to realize my strength. I can be a human, they can be a human, we can be humans away from each other, but no matter how two people feel about each other, no one person is any better than any other.

I am not “flawless.”

I am extremely flawed.

In fact, I’m a complete and utter disaster.

And you know what? That’s alright.

Unconditional self-love comes from acceptance of yourself and of others, not from superiority. It comes from loving your fellow homo sapiens as much as you love yourself, but knowing when to take a break and treat yo’ self. No matter what qualities you may have, positive or not, unapologetically loving yourself means just that: loving without apology.