“To love means to love yourself a little less sometimes and to love others a little more than you can promise. You remember all the times they’ve tolerated the pressure of your depths and all the times your love has surpassed this graceless age. This is the part where you realize that there will always be voices outside of love’s open door and it will hurt until it stops but when you really really love someone, you don’t anticipate it to ever stop.”
I was 21 when I wrote this. To be honest, I have no idea what all the flowery words even mean. Like I get it and I also don’t. I read my own and old writing sometimes and whisper what the fuck to myself.
In hindsight, it seems as though I romanticized pain often and would mistaken suffering for love. It appears I believed that to love meant to put others ahead of myself which in some cases could be true— I know that when I cook for a lover, I’ll make his plate bigger than mine. When he’s having a bad day, I’ll put aside my personal qualms to be there for him. But I’m learning that things begin to fall apart once your emotions for each other surpasses your ability to communicate with each other. There is nothing in the formula about sacrifice to the extent of self-betrayal as I seem to used to advocate.
What I’d tell my then 21-year-old self now is: to love means to love yourself a little more.
Self-love has always been a concept I struggled with. When people come across my online social media account, I appear to love myself. I openly post my body in tiny bikinis. I don’t hold back showing skin. I’m always smiling or looking playfully-mischievous in every photograph. I know how some people may view me. She’s just another attention-seeking girl ungrateful for all the privilege she has.
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