Resonating... day 326. stand in it.

day 326. stand in it.

For so much of my life, I thought that before I could love myself, I’d need to banish the parts of myself that were unlikable.

I thought I needed to cast out the darkness, the imperfections, the shadows – before I could be loveable to myself, or any one else.

I really didn’t trust that the deepest kind of love was unconditional.

So I spent years and years of my life trying to fight off anything that felt too close to being loved.

Because I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t the person I wanted to be yet. I wasn’t quite worth loving – at least not as I was, just yet.

I didn’t know that to really know love, you have to be willing to stand in the broken.

You have to stand in all that you are – all your flaws, all your failures, all your shit – and declare that there is nothing so wrong about you that isn’t worth loving.

It’s not an easy thing to do. To love yourself even when you know you’re not that likable.

Hell, I struggled to stand in my own broken self tonight.

The temptation to wallow in my shortcomings and curse my parents for thinking it was a good idea to bring my wretched being into this world got really strong. So for a solid 30 minutes I lamented my very existence and felt the warm embrace of self pity wash over me.

Until I remembered – ok, was gently reminded by J – that self hatred is highly unproductive and generally gets me less of what I want.

Because what I want, what we all want, I think, is know that we are loved. And it’s true what they say, you really can’t feel the love of any one until you love yourself. And loving other people the way they deserved to be loved? Heck, it’s just impossible.

So, sometimes you’ve got to start small. Even if at first you just start by loving the pinky toe of your right foot, eventually, the love will grow. That’s the awesome thing about love. Once it gets started, it becomes uncontrollable.

Tonight I started with loving the easy bits. I love my elbows. I love my eyebrows. I love the fact that that after 326 days, I’m still writing. I love my commitment. I love my brain. I love that even when it’s really easy to sink into the darkness, I keep swimming.

Until suddenly, I found myself starting to love my shadows. I love that I still struggle. I love the parts of myself that are real and scared and small.

And then I saw it. I saw this human being in front of me that truly believes there is something about me that is unconditionally appealing. And this guy, I think he’s on to something.

Because truth be told, he’s not perfect either – and yet I love him (without much rhyme or reason sometimes) too.

Maybe this is what it really means to be human. To recognize that we’ve all got our broken. We’ve all got our own darkness, our own failures, our own twisted thoughts and dirty secrets. And without all that, well, we’d all be kind of boring.

So stand in the flaws and the failures and the shit, and declare yourself lovable because of it all.