If You Can't Love Yourself...

Image credit: Clem Onojeghuo, via Unsplash 

“If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”

—RuPaul

I would always say my “amen”s to Mama Ru, the only deity you’ll catch me praying to. Though whether she would hear me from my spot, hidden beneath blankets in a bed I hadn’t left for days, was debatable. That one “amen” would be the most I would speak some days. Welcome to Ismay in the height of her depression; eating nothing but handfuls of Rice Crispies, and being force-fed dinner by my justifiably worried mother.

RuPaul’s sentiment was one I liked to whisper to myself when I felt my most masochistic. As a lifelong sufferer of depression, self-love was hard to come by, and in my foggy stupor it was easy to chew and swallow that usually bitter pill; that I was incapable of loving anybody else.

It felt right to me. I’d only been in two relationships in my life, and although I was happy in them, I didn’t feel love. Not the love that’s sung about. Not the kind of love that had me running through the airport to stop them from boarding that plane. Love felt transient to me. Something that was going to end, so have fun while it lasted.

Needless to say, neither of the relationships lasted. The nihilist approach to relationships doesn’t seem that sexy when you say it out loud; “Hey, beautiful. I don’t know if I’m going to wake up tomorrow wishing you were gone, but at this moment you’re the person I want to binge-watch Orange is the New Black with.”

So, this RuPaul-watching, duvet-swaddled, depression-gal was stunningly single. I checked Tinder more often than Facebook to look at all of the women and femmes advertising why they would be the best person to love. All the while I kept reassuring myself that I was pathetically incapable of love, but these people might help me forget that for a little while at least.

“And what a prize they would be getting,” I would remind myself. “A tiny lesbian with sexual hangups, who will have the first shower in a week just moments before meeting them for the first time… and ruin it by sweating profusely. Did you forget about your social anxiety? Just another cherry on top of the dumpster fire.”

I didn’t love myself. I didn’t love anyone else. And they had no reason on this earth to love me in return.

Let’s cut to now. I’m still in bed, still watching RuPaul, but without an overwhelming malaise following me around on the daily. I’m in not one, but two loving romantic relationships and I’m generally happy with myself and my life. The journey involved therapy, discovering polyamory, Following My Dreams™,  and ultimately learning to love myself. It wasn’t an easy journey, and it’s not without its struggles and setbacks. But along the way I learned some very important things about love, where RuPaul was wrong, and where she was right.

I believe we’ve been taught how to love wrongly. Be it the films where love is proven by punching the new boyfriend in the rain, or the way your friend comforted you after a breakup saying that they weren’t “The One”. Even outside of my polyamorous lifestyle, I think the idea of having One Person to love is causing more hurt than help.

Romantic love is wonderful. But it’s not a judgement of how successful your life is. We’re living in a situation where we believe that if we’re not in a relationship, then we’re losing. The longer we’ve been single, the longer we’re proving that we’re unloved. And that idea wrecks your mental health to the point where you give up on love because someone you went on one terrible date with is ghosting you.

Put your time and your effort into other forms of love. Self-love, obviously, is the goal. But until you can get to that point, the love you receive from friends and family is just as important as the romantic love we are all told is the Real Deal. Placing those loves as less important than romantic love isn’t fair on them, or on you. Part of the secret to finding happiness is to realise how much love is in your life. Even if it’s only one family member, or only one friend — that’s love, and that’s important.

Now to Mama Ru. Because RuPaul isn’t wrong, but also isn’t right.

It’s hard to truly love other people when you don’t love yourself. Not because you don’t deserve love or because you’re incapable of loving, but because it’s hard to love people when you have convinced yourself that love isn’t a possibility for you. You become a self-fulfilling prophecy; you tell someone enough times that you’re unlovable, then they’re going to start believing it. Looking back, I think that I truly wasn’t capable of loving somebody else, because that bleak sludge of life didn’t let me express intense emotions like love.

But that’s romantic love. The love we assume Ru is talking about. But even in my darkest times, when I didn’t speak for weeks and contact with the outside world was limited to what I could see through the crack in my curtains, the love for my friends and family was still there. What little emotion I could feel was deservedly used on the people who would poke their head into my room, or send me an old picture of us with “I miss you” typed above it. The kind of love that made me endure my first tattoo that I pass my finger over to remember that my best friend is always there for me, no matter how much or how little we speak. This is the love that really counts during those bad times. So…

“If you can’t love yourself… You’re going to be fine. Just keep trying, and love without limits.”

—Ismay Hutton

Ismay is a freelance writer, editor, and nerd. She’s a streamer and podcaster under the pseudonym “aTeacupGamer” and has dedicated her life to using what little money she has to becoming a human doodle via tattoos. Suffering from anxiety, depression, PTSD, and ADHD, she’s slowly but surely learning what it’s like to love life again. Or at least learning not to sweat profusely while signing for packages.