Self-love

I love me, I’m awesome. I am comfortable with my own company. I have to be, I live alone. I am comfortable to take myself out for food or to the cinema and in this very modern world these things are lauded as the ultimate in confidence. So why is it that when I do people still stare and make me feel uncomfortable? With one breath my friends will congratulate me on my ability to enjoy my own company and then shoot me a look of such pity it catches in my craw.

Do you know what, yes I get lonely, yes I wish that sometimes I had someone next to me to share that awesome film or the great grilled cheese I just had, but I don’t. So I had to make do and in making do I fell in love with my own mind and my own self. Is that so wrong? Hi, my name’s Rebecca and I’m selfish! Not the kind that means I steal the last chocolate in the box, although let’s face who else is going to have it, I live alone remember. No, I’m the kind of selfish that stems from a desire for self-preservation and a need to not descend into a spiral of self-pity and loathing for my single status. I love me, I’m awesome. There, I said it again. The gasp of society is audible even from behind my keyboard.

What has led to us being so afraid of loving ourselves? Why have we let the media drive a message into our minds that means every time we look inwards it is with hatred and negativity? It makes me weep to hear strong, beautiful women criticize themselves and their appearance on a daily basis and it makes my blood boil that no-one comes to their defence. I will forever have their backs. I will forever try and be the light within their internal Google search of revulsion at the miracle that is their own selves. They will never find self-love in the gym or the shopping centre. Sure those things give you a satisfaction, but without the knowledge and acceptance that we are, each and every one of us, amazing, that satisfaction will always be temporary.

Give yourself a break. There can be no perfect goals when there is no perfect specimen against which all others are measured. The media cannot dictate what perfect is as it does not exist. We aren’t all even imperfect as the ‘perfect’ is non-existent. We are all different. We are all of indeterminate shapes that exist outside basic mathematical ideas; I’m not a rectangle or a triangle. I am a woman. I am soft and I am strong (I am not long, I am not Andrex), I am the best I can be today and tomorrow I will be the best I can be for that day. I love me, I’m awesome. See, I can say this shit all day long, because it’s true. I gave myself a break. Self-love is liberating. Try it, you might just like it.