When you read the title of this post “finding love for myself,” you might assume that I’ve been out searching for a new soul mate, that I’m seeking a loving companion for my life journey.
And you’d be wrong.
I have already found my soul mate. He’s not glamorous, he sometimes snores and often wakes me up muttering expletives as he sleeps, but my husband is definitely my permanent lifelong companion.
I love him and he loves me, and we really try to be good to one another despite the fact that we spend almost every single day together. We both work at home on the internet, and though most days we work less than 10 feet apart, we never seems to get sick of each other (at least not sick enough to go get another job).
But all this is beside the point.
If I wasn’t searching for a new life partner, what the hell am I talking about?!
I’ve been searching for the love within myself, the love for myself. I don’t need someone else to love me, plenty of people already do. I have a glorious number of loving people in my life that fill my heart with joy to think about.
But for a long time I had very little love for myself.
It hurts very much to realize that you may be popular, nice, talented, and fun, but that it doesn’t mean anything because the person that really matters, that you’re really wanting to impress, is absolutely not interested in falling in love with you.
Of course this sounds pretty weird when you try to write it down, but if you suffer from this affliction, I’m sure you’ll get my meaning.
For the longest time, I lived under the torment of my own mind. New ideas, risks, and interests were all subject to the impartial judge of my negative voice. Do you hear these thoughts too?
“This will fail.”
“You are so stupid!”
“How could you make this mistake AGAIN?”
“You should never have even tried. This was just a waste of time from the beginning.”
It took a long time, and the experience of having my son, to realized that that negative voice wasn’t real. It was a separate, chattering entity created by my mind at some point of my childhood. It doesn’t matter why it was created or how, but what does matter is that it wasn’t me.
I was able to realize that these thoughts were not mine.
Even after eradicating this negative voice, I still find myself struggling to love myself. To freely and openly love and cherish my body, mind, and abilities without judgment or scorn. It is like searching for a soul mate in a way because each day I learn new and interesting things about myself, each day the love grows just a little big bigger. Each day it’s easier to love myself a little bit more.
Find love for yourself,
Leah Day
