Testimony Vol 1: Me, Myself & Love
In order to complete your journey without becoming beat down and worn out, you must learn how to work through your own stuff. Embrace it, accept it, and love it!” – Iyanla Vanzant
Humanity has projected a narrative that being alone is treacherous, boring and redundant. I would come across certain discussions pertaining to individualistic situations where NO ONE accepted the idea of simply being alone and being centered with who they are in the present. They were either running from something or was simply too scared to ask for the tools to withstand that solitude.
“It’s easy for me to avoid me” . Meaning you find every way possible to not be caught alone with your feelings, thoughts and emotions. It’s easy to find distractions when you’re trying to run from something.
I truly believe in the importance of understanding the inner workings of self. Identifying the characteristics, beliefs and mentalities that distinguish us from everyone else; what makes us unique. It’s about that time that we face our biggest enemy and our greatest supporter. The person from our past, the person we are currently trying to accurately identify and the person we will become in the future. The ONE person that knows you inside and out and will take your secrets to the grave. Ourselves. The inner me. Our true authentic self.
I mean, is it really self love if you’re not able to pick yourself apart, admire yourself, and dislike yourself while loving yourself all at once? – J. Taylor
Self Loathing vs. Self Loving
According to the dictionary, self-loathing is compared to self-hatred, low self esteem and acting out in fear while self-love is described in the context of “an appreciation of one's own worth or virtue”. Here are a few examples that display the differences:
Loathing
Knowing that you have the capacity to do greater but staying within your safety net of complacency/comfortability
Maintaining a position within toxic friendships/relationships because you’re scared of the unknown, feel unworthy and/or don’t want anything different
Dwelling upon negative beliefs and ideas about yourself so much to where you downplay or complain about every little thing in life
Loving
Willing to follow your dreams, goals and ambitions to truly succeed in life no matter the sacrifice
Understanding who you are and what you deserve to dismantle, disqualify and dismiss anyone or anything that tries to hinder your personal growth
Doing the work to obtain the mental and emotional strength to embrace both large and small victories without staying down too long.
If you would like more info on what self-loathing behaviors look like click here
Coasting through life, complaining about every single thing, making excuses and living in the victim role falls into the loathing category which gets you nowhere. You cannot have the audacity to think that providing yourself with sufficient compassion, empathy and love can come from those behaviors. A great friend of mine says that “Part of living includes maintaining your well-being, taking care of yourself inside and out at all costs, experiencing new environments for personal and social development AND SO MUCH MORE!” Check out her Living not Loathing blog here! These unspoken rules to self-care are so vital because you will miss out on one of the greatest achievements happening on this earth: to love at your greatest capacity. When you lack the capacity to love life and yourself in the midst of your struggles and mistakes, you will feel like you’re in WW17. Constantly fighting with negativity that YOU brought to the table because of unrealistic expectations or desires. Some of you are stuck loathing because it’s safe, it’s a pattern, it’s all that you think you know or because you feel you’re undeserving. SNAP OUT OF THAT!
So how do we get out of self-loathing and into self-loving?
Glad you asked! Honestly, that is something that you have to determine. You have to identify what happened between the time you truly met life face to face, guns blazing, ready for all punches and when you just crawled into a ball in the corner and just let “defeat” and trouble take over. What happened to you? What changed?
Isaiah 54:17 (KJV) states “no weapon formed against you shall prosper”. He didn’t say the weapons wouldn’t FORM, He just promised that they wouldn’t PROSPER. I know that troubles will happen, struggles will take place and maybe the plans I had for myself aren’t going to work out after all .. But God. I found new ways to express love to myself by spending more time alone, finding activities that I love, praying and building a better relationship with God but most importantly for me I got out of the idea that “life sucks”. There is so much joy, happiness and life out there than just to waste it “loathing” around. It’s time to LIVE!
Alone vs. Lonely
There is a HUGE misconception and distinction between these two words. Society has contributed those as being single to being lonely but that goes to show how people don’t understand the strength in being by yourself. A choice that you can make or life will make for you. Click here for a well explained definition of the two or click here for a song I feel describes being comfortably alone.
Loneliness is a state of mind while being alone is a state of being.
The mind is a heavy weapon to have if you do not understand it’s true power thus having the capacity to let the loneliness mindset consume you. See, when I think of being alone I attribute it to being comfortable in your solitude, comfortable in your own silence, taking time to spend with yourself. On the other hand, loneliness is sadness and uncomfortablity with the present personal reality/environment, ultimately a need for escape. It is the state of mind where you need someone, anyone that aligns with your idea of them “completing you”. This state of being relinquishes power of wholeness in trying to live up to an inadequate definition of love where the only way you can float through this life is being hand in hand with someone even if it is the devil himself. Codependency in its simplest form.
Being alone gives you the opportunity to answer your own in depth questions without the influence or opinion of others. Having the desire to be a whole, healed and happy individual means sacrificing the company of others and intentionally creating a space for God to work. It grants you the serenity to explore vulnerability, communication, conscious decision making and independence to better understand how YOU move. Identifying factors for yourself gives you room to determine what you are looking for and what you can bring to the table. You’ll have developed or begun to develop a clear mind to see your positive attributes and the essential gifts you can contribute to others (romantic or friend relationships). However, if you’re in the lonely stage, not working on being the best you, you’ll only bring that mediocre version of yourself to those relationships. You’ll become the leech, taking and never giving because think about it, what do you really have to offer?
It is natural to desire intimacy and companionship. That ideal does not make you lonely. The issue comes in when you feel that you cannot function without another human being. For those who find a need to bounce from one person to the next, I pray your eyes are open to how destructive that can be. You must identify what you’re running from because you won’t ever be able to hide. Life will find a way to drop that very thing on your doorstep, right at your feet, right before your next blessing and it will only get bigger until you face it.
“You have to take the time to deal with those insecurities and problems or you’ll just be inviting someone else into your chaos”.
I grew up with the idea that I have to fall in love with me first before I can fall in love with anyone else. That ideal challenges me to define (specifically for me) what love actually is, what that looks like and how it can be shown. It requires you to identify what side of the “love yourself” spectrum you fall on: Do you really love yourself flaws and all? Do you only appreciate the days you’re feeling like Mary J. Blige in her knee-highs on stage and try to forget about the other days you feel like Viola Davis crying with her wig off ? Can you stand the silence that develops when you are alone in a room? Do you constantly need a distraction from yourself because you’re just not a good sight to see? Ask yourself these questions and really understand where you’re at. This awareness will shed light on how you need to move next and may answer unanswered questions within your love life.
If no one else told you today, I love you. You’re beautiful/handsome and worth every great thing life has to offer. I pray that you take time to get to know you as much as you try to know everything else. If you’re not comfortable with you, don’t expect anyone else to be.
Stay tuned for Pt. 2 where we aim to go just a little bit deeper
“You are the love you seek. You are the companionship you desire. You are your own completion, your own wholeness. You are your best friend, your confidant. “You are,” as poetess Audre Lourde wrote, “the one that you are looking for.” You are the only one who can do what you are looking for someone else to do. When you go out into the world, looking for love or work or melons, realize that you are bringing your goods to the table – your soul, your mind, and your body. If you do not feel good about who you are and what you have, how can you expect your goods to be matched pound by pound, stitch for stitch? If you are on the love block without knowing the truth about you, you, my dear, are in a lot of trouble!”- excerpt from In the Meantime . . .
