How much do you love yourself? Rumination on Valentine’s Day
Everywhere you go, you will see hearts, everything is pink and red, and you are constantly forced to think either – being in love is a good thing and that you are lucky to have someone who is there to make you feel special or you are miserable thinking you wish you had someone who made you feel special. Either way you are missing the point of being in love with the most important person in your life – YOU!
All the Jane Austen books that we grew up reading or all the rom coms we watched, only led us to believe that love happens only when someone else loves us back. That we are not worthy of love unless someone else tells us that they love us. If God forbid, they don’t, we were completely useless in the first place and that our self-respect and self confidence is next to zero.
I hope you get the drift by now. Hell Yeah! I am talking about self-love. Are you able to love yourself indifferent to the fact that you are loved or not. It’s a concept maybe a little far-fetched and dark to write on eve of Valentines Day. But this is the truth. You should have the greatest love affair with yourself. Call me an idiot and I am happy. But hear me out. Hear me out because this Valentine’s Day I want you to fall in love with yourself before falling for anyone else.
Remember that episode from SATC where Sam says to Richard, ‘I love you a lot Richard but I love me more’. Remember that. You must learn to love yourself independent of anyone else loving you. Those unrequited love things, those trust issues that pop up, those fights, Honey! Just save yourself from all of that and fall in love with yourself. And this is gender neutral by the way. I mean increasingly I am witnessing how badly men are broken. They wear their scars but don’t show them unlike how us women can proudly display. Sometimes, I wish I could tell all the men that it is awrite to be messed up, to be vulnerable, to be broken. That no one will judge them and that they can build themselves back up.
Recently a good friend from yesteryears reached out saying he was vulnerable and even though he never opened about the problem, he wanted to know how I was resilient over so many years. I want that friend and every other man to know this, you don’t have to be strong, you don’t have to be ‘manly’, and you don’t have to feel scared to ask for help from your ‘girl’ friend or anyone that you feel comfortable with.
On a separate note, I personally feel I am incapable of loving someone else. Maybe I have too much self-love, you know like ‘main apni favourite hun’. I sabotage my relationships for an unknown fear. I think it’s the past that haunts or I feel that loving someone else will only lead to heart break so better to love myself. And therefore, I am champion in ensuring that those who may or can love me, should ultimately not like me. ‘How to lose a guy in 10 days’ was cliched, I have better tricks up my sleeves.
Yet, I have learnt that those who will love you, will do so even if you step on the last nerve in their body. And that’s not me telling you that you can take anyone for granted, that’s me telling you that I hope you find that person who loves the ugly in you along with whatever little beauty you have left. He/She will be capable of loving the Picture of Dorian Gray as much as Dorian Gray. I wish you all that and more.
And as I write this, an email notification pops up to tell me how I should celebrate Valentine’s Day with the SO but the song that is playing ON REPEAT MODE is Miley Cyrus singing ‘I can buy myself flowers, Write my name in the sand, Talk to myself for hours, Say things you don’t understand, I can take myself dancing, And I can hold my own hand, Yeah I can love me better than you can’
Aah the cliche and the contradictions, guess thats what life is about or should I say love!
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