You can actually spot when "This is why I don't mind myself" turned into "Oh my god I love you all".
One of my dearest online friends recently asked in a post how to go about enjoying her own company, and after reading it, I kept thinking how I should make a post about why I don't particularly mind mine. Before I do this, however, I will note something fairly obvious but important; this is based entirely on my own experience, and it might not be of use to anyone else. Some bits might seem relevant or useful, other bits twee or outright wrong. This is just what works for me, and my main reason for talking out loud here is that if any one part of it is helpful to even one person, then it is worth saying.
For some odd reason, the idea of forgiving yourself seems to have become confused with being selfish, or worse - wilfully ignorant. Society seems to congratulate us for self-flagellation - denying yourself, saving yourself, sacrificing what you want. Ignoring your own needs is noble, repressing your own desires is proper, putting away your dreams is part of growing up. For women, there's the added pressure of appearance and propriety - you shouldn't be fat, shouldn't be flat-chested, shouldn't be loud-mouthed, shouldn't be slutty. Over and over you are encouraged to be quieter and smaller, to hide yourself and everything you are, and it's like someone dimming the world by shutting a million candles away in pretty and proper little cupboards.
Candle analogies are used a lot with regards to people, and I can see why, but even in this that shame, that fear of being yourself too much comes into play - people who die young or die violently when living their lives fiercely and openly as they wished to are often said to have 'burned too bright', as if an early death is to be expected when you don't conform. I think the candle analogy only works if everyone's candle is a different length, and no one really knows how long theirs or anyone else's is. Protecting the flame and carefully keeping it on a slow burn could lengthen the duration of burning, but who's to say how long it could have burned for in the first place?
With regards to the idea of forgiveness, whether it's for something that caused genuine hurt or something perceived as wrong even if it isn't, I'd like to make a request here and now.
If you hate some part of yourself for something you did that cannot be changed or rectified - if you have broken something, lost something, or hurt someone you can no longer get in touch with - stop. Stop hating yourself for it now. Regret it, if you like, and learn your lesson if there is one to be learned - not to be so clumsy, forgetful, accidentally or deliberately cruel again - and let it become a hurt of the past, where it belongs. Self-hatred is like ballast, it keeps your head out of the clouds but it stops you from rising any higher. And, in and of itself, it's useless.
I have fucked up in the past, and I will in the future. I have said hideous, horrendous things, hurting people I never took the chance to apologise to and lost contact with when it was too late. I don't expect them to forgive me. But I will not keep kicking myself over and over for something I cannot change and only know I'll do my damnedest to avoid doing again in the future.
No one ever seems to stop and say "It's okay to forgive yourself for making a mistake", despite the capacity for forgiveness towards others we often have or are encouraged to develop. So, I'm going to say it now.
It is okay to forgive yourself. It is not the same thing as demanding forgiveness. It is not the same thing as expecting others to forgive you.
Next time you look in a mirror, stop looking at yourself and just look at Louise, or Tom, or Jack, or Emily, or whoever that person in the mirror happens to be. Chances are, they're a human being like everyone else, as capable of love and hate and incredible or mediocre deeds as anyone.
Give them a push in the right direction. They probably deserve it.
If you don't already like yourself, learning to like yourself is a hell of a job. The truth is, unless there is a higher power out there, nothing in this world exists that knows and understands you completely, yourself included. Throughout life hurts and joys and other experiences add layer after layer to you. Some of the new layers affect you on a subconscious level, drawing you to certain people, giving you irrational (watching Poltergeist or IT as a child -> fear of clowns forever) or perfectly rational (I have been stung by a wasp, I no longer like wasps) fears.
No matter how shallow or simple you may seem, you are not wholly knowable. No matter how damaged you feel, there are parts of you that remain unbroken. You will always, always be worthwhile, interesting, and loveable to someone, even if you haven't met them yet. Learning to love yourself is the process of making the wait for that moment bearable.
Where learning to cope with yourself seems largely to come from forgiving yourself, I think learning to enjoy yourself is fuelled by embracing your senses of curiosity and adventure, and deciding for yourself what is and isn't appropriate. Also? By keeping track of what you do. If, like me, your memory isn't up to scratch, record it however you can - on camera, in a sketch, in writing, even by associating certain events with a song or smell or taste. I'm used to forgetting things I experienced alone and getting frustrated when I try to recall them later once I have someone to talk to, and this always helps.
We're used to "Curiosity killed the cat" and "Better to have others think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", but where would we be as artists, writers, people of science, people of faith, people who are all or some or none of the above, if we never asked questions or did things outside of the norm? Some of the most interesting people in the world won't speak up unless spoken to, and it's a damned shame.
I'm lucky in that a combination of my dyspraxia and the way my mum raised me has meant I've never feared public speaking or looking daft. Unfortunately for mum, it also means my sense of propriety is skewed - I take my shoes off in public, I am always, always touching things, and I ask questions that I sometimes really shouldn't. I'm comfortable in myself in a way not many people get to be, in part because my parents have never asked me to be any different, in part because I wouldn't know how to be anyone else.
We're in a weird situation in this world where being 'good' has been somewhat warped into meaning something other than being kind, to ourselves and each other. The funny thing is, when I was deliberately excluded by my peers while I was little, it had the side-effect of leaving me with no choice but to continue enjoying my company for a long time. I would poke at ant holes to get them running out for a play. I read and read and read. I played videogames and sketched patterns on pavement slabs with stones. I hid behind trees and hedges and bushes, picking up wildflowers and acorns (and, occasionally, bugs, which never ended well). I snuck up on birds (successfully) and squirrels (less successfully). And because no one had ever bothered to approach me for friendship, I never gave much thought to what anyone thought of me. It never quite occurred to me I should like or dislike myself because to me, I just was who I was - I didn't even consider the possibility I should or could change myself.
I'm wandering away from my original point here, but I think accepting yourself as being worthy of acceptance is the core part of it all. And this is where I get a bit stuck - whenever I have a friend or family member who can't accept themselves, who get caught up in self-hate or self-blame, I can never quite wrap my head around it entirely because I love them. The child-like part in me gets stuck on "But I love you, and I don't know even a tenth of what there is to know about you. How can you hate yourself when that tenth of you is enough to love by itself?". It's a bit of a... okay, a lot of you will know Supernatural enough to get this reference, and my apologised to those who don't, but in essence it's a bit like that moment where Castiel just frowns and tilts his head and says, "You don't think you deserve to be saved". It mystifies me at heart, no matter how much I may get it on an intellectual level.
I think writing this basically exposes something that has never really shifted for me all my life, something that drives my writing and my interactions with everything around me; I love people, even when I'm not part of their world. I'm constantly overwhelmed by how incredible the world around us is, to the point where I do on occasion have to deliberately step back and away from everything so I have a chance to catch up and process it all. I'm awed by how I've never met two people who are the same.
Compassion is the act of suffering with someone, but I don't think it's quite that - it's more about, I wish I could show people what I see when I look at them or listen to them or read about them. I want them to feel how I love them and know that, to me at the very least, they deserve it. I spend so much time day by day trying to see things through other people's eyes that once in a while I wish I could throw that switch into reverse and have them see through mine. I like the world we live in, I like the people in it, and I think our capacity for good things is just as infinite and alive as our capacity for cruelty. There's a moment in my life I keep referring back to like a cliché, my turning point, and it's fed into everything since then. It's the moment I saw one of the two ringleaders of my bullying, who had got tippex in her eye by accident, crying and being comforted by a group of the other girls and accepting their comfort. That was my "Oh! They're people too!" moment, where all the stories that everyone needs love and everyone has the ability to love stopped being fairytales for me.
So, after that wall of text, I still don't have much of a solid point to make - but I can say this. A girl who tried to make my life hell who left me with damage that took seven years to cause and ten years to heal was human and capable of kindness and capable of hurt and deserved comfort like anyone else. There isn't one person here on my flist who has caused me even a fraction of that hurt. There isn't one person here on my flist who hasn't been ten times as kind or funny or amazing or all of the above as that girl was hurtful.
Given all of that, and the fact you're still alive and still capable of kindness and fun and being generally amazing - do you still not like yourself? Because the maths don't add up for me, and they never will.
You deserve to be loved, and even if that's weirdly hard to accept, I would highly recommend you try to.
For some odd reason, the idea of forgiving yourself seems to have become confused with being selfish, or worse - wilfully ignorant. Society seems to congratulate us for self-flagellation - denying yourself, saving yourself, sacrificing what you want. Ignoring your own needs is noble, repressing your own desires is proper, putting away your dreams is part of growing up. For women, there's the added pressure of appearance and propriety - you shouldn't be fat, shouldn't be flat-chested, shouldn't be loud-mouthed, shouldn't be slutty. Over and over you are encouraged to be quieter and smaller, to hide yourself and everything you are, and it's like someone dimming the world by shutting a million candles away in pretty and proper little cupboards.
Candle analogies are used a lot with regards to people, and I can see why, but even in this that shame, that fear of being yourself too much comes into play - people who die young or die violently when living their lives fiercely and openly as they wished to are often said to have 'burned too bright', as if an early death is to be expected when you don't conform. I think the candle analogy only works if everyone's candle is a different length, and no one really knows how long theirs or anyone else's is. Protecting the flame and carefully keeping it on a slow burn could lengthen the duration of burning, but who's to say how long it could have burned for in the first place?
With regards to the idea of forgiveness, whether it's for something that caused genuine hurt or something perceived as wrong even if it isn't, I'd like to make a request here and now.
If you hate some part of yourself for something you did that cannot be changed or rectified - if you have broken something, lost something, or hurt someone you can no longer get in touch with - stop. Stop hating yourself for it now. Regret it, if you like, and learn your lesson if there is one to be learned - not to be so clumsy, forgetful, accidentally or deliberately cruel again - and let it become a hurt of the past, where it belongs. Self-hatred is like ballast, it keeps your head out of the clouds but it stops you from rising any higher. And, in and of itself, it's useless.
I have fucked up in the past, and I will in the future. I have said hideous, horrendous things, hurting people I never took the chance to apologise to and lost contact with when it was too late. I don't expect them to forgive me. But I will not keep kicking myself over and over for something I cannot change and only know I'll do my damnedest to avoid doing again in the future.
No one ever seems to stop and say "It's okay to forgive yourself for making a mistake", despite the capacity for forgiveness towards others we often have or are encouraged to develop. So, I'm going to say it now.
It is okay to forgive yourself. It is not the same thing as demanding forgiveness. It is not the same thing as expecting others to forgive you.
Next time you look in a mirror, stop looking at yourself and just look at Louise, or Tom, or Jack, or Emily, or whoever that person in the mirror happens to be. Chances are, they're a human being like everyone else, as capable of love and hate and incredible or mediocre deeds as anyone.
Give them a push in the right direction. They probably deserve it.
If you don't already like yourself, learning to like yourself is a hell of a job. The truth is, unless there is a higher power out there, nothing in this world exists that knows and understands you completely, yourself included. Throughout life hurts and joys and other experiences add layer after layer to you. Some of the new layers affect you on a subconscious level, drawing you to certain people, giving you irrational (watching Poltergeist or IT as a child -> fear of clowns forever) or perfectly rational (I have been stung by a wasp, I no longer like wasps) fears.
No matter how shallow or simple you may seem, you are not wholly knowable. No matter how damaged you feel, there are parts of you that remain unbroken. You will always, always be worthwhile, interesting, and loveable to someone, even if you haven't met them yet. Learning to love yourself is the process of making the wait for that moment bearable.
Where learning to cope with yourself seems largely to come from forgiving yourself, I think learning to enjoy yourself is fuelled by embracing your senses of curiosity and adventure, and deciding for yourself what is and isn't appropriate. Also? By keeping track of what you do. If, like me, your memory isn't up to scratch, record it however you can - on camera, in a sketch, in writing, even by associating certain events with a song or smell or taste. I'm used to forgetting things I experienced alone and getting frustrated when I try to recall them later once I have someone to talk to, and this always helps.
We're used to "Curiosity killed the cat" and "Better to have others think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", but where would we be as artists, writers, people of science, people of faith, people who are all or some or none of the above, if we never asked questions or did things outside of the norm? Some of the most interesting people in the world won't speak up unless spoken to, and it's a damned shame.
I'm lucky in that a combination of my dyspraxia and the way my mum raised me has meant I've never feared public speaking or looking daft. Unfortunately for mum, it also means my sense of propriety is skewed - I take my shoes off in public, I am always, always touching things, and I ask questions that I sometimes really shouldn't. I'm comfortable in myself in a way not many people get to be, in part because my parents have never asked me to be any different, in part because I wouldn't know how to be anyone else.
We're in a weird situation in this world where being 'good' has been somewhat warped into meaning something other than being kind, to ourselves and each other. The funny thing is, when I was deliberately excluded by my peers while I was little, it had the side-effect of leaving me with no choice but to continue enjoying my company for a long time. I would poke at ant holes to get them running out for a play. I read and read and read. I played videogames and sketched patterns on pavement slabs with stones. I hid behind trees and hedges and bushes, picking up wildflowers and acorns (and, occasionally, bugs, which never ended well). I snuck up on birds (successfully) and squirrels (less successfully). And because no one had ever bothered to approach me for friendship, I never gave much thought to what anyone thought of me. It never quite occurred to me I should like or dislike myself because to me, I just was who I was - I didn't even consider the possibility I should or could change myself.
I'm wandering away from my original point here, but I think accepting yourself as being worthy of acceptance is the core part of it all. And this is where I get a bit stuck - whenever I have a friend or family member who can't accept themselves, who get caught up in self-hate or self-blame, I can never quite wrap my head around it entirely because I love them. The child-like part in me gets stuck on "But I love you, and I don't know even a tenth of what there is to know about you. How can you hate yourself when that tenth of you is enough to love by itself?". It's a bit of a... okay, a lot of you will know Supernatural enough to get this reference, and my apologised to those who don't, but in essence it's a bit like that moment where Castiel just frowns and tilts his head and says, "You don't think you deserve to be saved". It mystifies me at heart, no matter how much I may get it on an intellectual level.
I think writing this basically exposes something that has never really shifted for me all my life, something that drives my writing and my interactions with everything around me; I love people, even when I'm not part of their world. I'm constantly overwhelmed by how incredible the world around us is, to the point where I do on occasion have to deliberately step back and away from everything so I have a chance to catch up and process it all. I'm awed by how I've never met two people who are the same.
Compassion is the act of suffering with someone, but I don't think it's quite that - it's more about, I wish I could show people what I see when I look at them or listen to them or read about them. I want them to feel how I love them and know that, to me at the very least, they deserve it. I spend so much time day by day trying to see things through other people's eyes that once in a while I wish I could throw that switch into reverse and have them see through mine. I like the world we live in, I like the people in it, and I think our capacity for good things is just as infinite and alive as our capacity for cruelty. There's a moment in my life I keep referring back to like a cliché, my turning point, and it's fed into everything since then. It's the moment I saw one of the two ringleaders of my bullying, who had got tippex in her eye by accident, crying and being comforted by a group of the other girls and accepting their comfort. That was my "Oh! They're people too!" moment, where all the stories that everyone needs love and everyone has the ability to love stopped being fairytales for me.
So, after that wall of text, I still don't have much of a solid point to make - but I can say this. A girl who tried to make my life hell who left me with damage that took seven years to cause and ten years to heal was human and capable of kindness and capable of hurt and deserved comfort like anyone else. There isn't one person here on my flist who has caused me even a fraction of that hurt. There isn't one person here on my flist who hasn't been ten times as kind or funny or amazing or all of the above as that girl was hurtful.
Given all of that, and the fact you're still alive and still capable of kindness and fun and being generally amazing - do you still not like yourself? Because the maths don't add up for me, and they never will.
You deserve to be loved, and even if that's weirdly hard to accept, I would highly recommend you try to.