Why don’t I love myself?

Why don’t I love myself? I ask myself this so often. And I never have the right answer. I have answers like “well because you are useless” or “you don’t bring any form of value to the world” or “you’ve never been successful in a relationship, even when you gave your all, and so you must be unlovable!”
I feel these words. I truly feel them. And it hurts my heart. Not because I think others think that about me but because I genuinely believe that about myself. I used to be strong. I used to be fearless. I used to fall down and get back up again. But then one day I realized I was afraid of heights, and then a few years later I was afraid I wouldn’t make friends at a new school. Some more years past and I was afraid I wasn’t pretty enough to get a boyfriend and a few years after that I was afraid that no one would ever be able to love me the way that I am. And why would they? I didn’t… I didn’t like the idea of being someone’s wife and struggling with depression, I didn’t like the idea of being a mom and having an anxiety attack, and I especially didn’t like the idea that I would never view myself as someone to cherish.
This was my perspective on life and not because I have an absent father or an unloving mother. Sometimes things happen to you in your life and you don’t know why. You don’t understand why it didn’t just happen once but happened twice. Maybe three times. And that left you feeling like you were no longer a prize. Why would something like that happen to you if you were someone of value? Why would anyone treat you like garbage if you were a trophy? I didn’t know. And I honestly still don’t. But it left a mark on me. It bruised me. But I could cover that up easily with a sweater or makeup or even get in another relationship to try and find some value in myself.
That didn’t work. Instead it broke me. I had been living by the concept that if some guy loved me, then I would love myself. But all this did was drain my spirit. I hated myself more than ever. I hated who I had become and who I let in my life. I remember someone asking me if I was living my life that way to prove a point to my last boyfriend which I thought was so absurd for someone to say… but in reality, what was more absurd was the fact that I was living that way to prove a point to myself.
I needed validation from men as if it were to redeem my sense of value and worth from the boys who had taken it from me.
(I’m taking a moment to pause here and say this isn’t an article about hating men. I have the most influential and loving men in my family and friends and I don’t know what I would do without them. This is an article about my personal derailment and loss of identity that lead me to seek out the attention of dating and relationships.)
That being said I was desperate to get out of my singleness because my singleness is what made me feel the most unlovable. I had complained about this over and over to my best friend until finally one day she said,
“Do you think you’re the woman you would want your husband to have?”
I was quiet for a second. And instantly, the past several years of my life all flashed in front of my eyes.
I looked at her smiling in discomfort, “no.”
It was in that moment that I realized for the first time how severe my self hatred was. How I had molded myself into desperation. How unbelievable it was to be so disgusted by my own self.
It was then that I realized, it’s not about the fact that these men don’t find me valuable or lovable, it’s the fact that none of these men are what I am actually looking for. And the only reason I’ve been entertaining this was because I had been convinced that I was of lesser value than I really was. I genuinely believed that I didn’t deserve anything better than what I had been through already.
But I was wrong. I thought about my husband and the type of woman I would want him to have. I thought about his goals and dreams and values. I thought about how he would like to treat me, and I him, and how he would be convinced that I was the most amazing woman he had ever met. And I realized, I didn’t believe any of the stuff that I would want my husband to believe about me.
How on earth could I love someone else if I didn’t even love myself?
I am still in this season of figuring out how to love myself so deeply again. How to not be afraid. How to move mountains. How to believe that the way God designed me was through perfect and precise knitting inside of my mother’s womb… not a single thread out of place.
This season is not easy, it is like starting from the beginning. But I want to be the woman that my husband dreams of having one day. I don’t want to be mediocre or second shelf. I want to be the trophy that gets polished every night and centered perfectly on the top shelf.
I don’t want to ask myself ever again, why I don’t love myself. Because I have decided that I am going to fall absolutely, head over heels, in love with myself.
