Self-love is so important because no one else is ever going to love you perfectly. Not even yourself.
I have a group of best friends. Not just one. Each of the humans in my circle of best friends loves me in different ways. Even though I know that they love me, they show me that they love me and tell me that they love me; I can't feel it. I know it but I can not feel it.
As a friend, I love others greatly. When you become part of my life, I will go to the ends of the earth to pick you up and if you can't get up I will lay with you until you are ready to get up again. I've lost count of how many planes I've caught to surprise the people I love, of how many times I've sent carefully thought out care packages, planned intricate surprises or even just small things like leaving roses by the stairs (10 pts if you see what I did there). I live to be there for my friends when they are at their worst. I live to see my friends smile and laugh. Maybe it is selfish of me but making them feel good is what makes me feel good. Those moments are often too short and fleeting.
It feels like many of my friends only talk to me when they need someone to vent to. Since moving to New Zealand, it feels like they rarely keep in touch unless its to check in and make sure I am not going to off myself and tell me they can not wait for me to come home. It feels like no one is able to set aside time for a real call or video chat. Before moving, I can't remember the last time someone in California invited me to a party or asked me to hang out first; not as their back up plan. After the Denver incident, I remember my worst days filled with radio silence and slinking around my apartment making excuses for all the people that were too busy to respond. I felt like the crisis no one wanted to respond to, partly because they did not how to handle it but also because it was not a priority in their life.
I chose to move to New Zealand because I remembered feeling the most loved when I was not living in California. It was somewhere new to explore, with a better pay rate and my ruined reputation from Denver would be non-existent. The thing is when I got here, I had not been loving myself. I had fallen out of the habit for so long I could not remember what it as like to love myself. It took a handful of visits with friends and Nick sending me on Donuts Dates, to get back to loving myself. It feels so much easier to love others than it does to love myself. It feels like more effort to take myself out and less joy than when I make someone else smile but it still feels good.
Even though it feels good, it does not always feel like being loved good. As a kid, I was raised to believe that we needed other people's approval and love to feel good. That is was something outside of us that made us whole. It has to start inside. We are created whole and other people's love should only add to our lives. Until we know how to love ourselves and what makes us feel loved we cannot ask or expect others to love us the way we need to be loved. This does not mean we should lower our standards but have realistic expectations based on what the people around us are capable of.
The point is that we should put as much or more effort into loving ourselves as we do others. We are the only person who is capable of always being around to love our self. Some days we will be tired, we will be hurt, we will be unable to love our self. So when we reach out we need to know what we need but also what the people around us are capable of providing. The people around you may not love in the same way you do. They will show love by asking if you are okay and trusting you when you tell them yes. If you know what you need and ask for it, I firmly believe that the people around will do their best to meet that need.
While I do not always feel loved, I still know that I am loved greatly. I know that is not a matter of none of my friends loving me to the degree that they would fly halfway across the world to see me, it is a matter of the gesture being expensive and requiring time (resources that many of my friends do not necessarily have). I have love letters to 'open when...' and countless nights of friends driving over to sleep with me when my night terrors get the best of me. In these moments I am loved. However, these moments are short and fleeting. I know that I am loved, despite not being able to feel it for extended periods of time. Regardless of feeling too many negative things or not enough positive things, this life is worth living because I am loved.
<3
Nik Nak