So, I have a really, really tough time trying to “love” myself.

This isn’t a new thing either.

It’s not like I woke up this morning and realized this.

I’ve hated myself for so many decades that the thought of loving myself, even liking myself, makes me cringe.

I hate it.

And I hate that I hate it too.

Since I was a kid I’ve dealt with self loathing issues.

Easily since I was 11-12 years old – and I know I dealt with issues earlier than that, that’s just when I was first sent to therapy.

Self loathing was seemingly my first friend.

It was the one I listened to the closest.

And the one I confided my deepest regrets to.

The thing is, it just mirrored everything horrible I’ve ever said or done back at me my entire life.

It never let me forget anything awful, ever.

And it reminded me daily about what a piece of shit I am.

And because of that, self harming was my go-to coping mechanism up until just the other year.

I honestly don’t know how I got into or out of the habit of doing it in the first place.

I started when I was a kid.

And the only thing that really stopped me was the severe and dreadful heart wrenching feeling I’d acquire after the fact.

It would hurt me more to do it than it would help anymore as the years passed.

It used to be a sincere feeling of euphoric relief.

In the last few years, it just became this awful action that made me feel dreadful and sad after it was done.

Recently, I hate myself even more after I do it.

It started to make me feel desperate.

Where before the last few years, it gave me a sense of accomplishment almost.

It would conclude my outbursts most times.

But all that to say that I’ve hated myself for a very, very long time and that time has been complicated.

My relationship with myself has been tumultuous for decades.

I can barely stand to look at myself.

I was never one to stand and gaze into a mirror.

And when I’m in psychosis, mirrors become traps, doubled sided and camera laced, traps.

So, I still have a hard time with them.

I have a hard time with a lot of things about my looks.

I have a difficult time with compliments too even.

And when I was at my worst, in my 20’s and 30’s, people would just tell me to look in the mirror and give myself positive affirmations.

And I’ve never understood how the actual fuck that’s suppose to work.

Put post it notes on the wall.

Let them say things like “you’re worthy” and “you matter” and shit like that.

Fuck you.

That shit does fuck all.

I literally can never believe them.

They don’t compute.

My mind isn’t wired in a way where it is possible to believe things like that.

When I started to finally get on antipsychotics, and got out of the hospital, I realized that there’s a step that’s missing.

An entire section that people don’t bother to tell you about.

People expected me to go from hating myself to loving myself.

But that’s not logical, that’s inappropriate, that’s not feasible.

There’s a whole middle process missing.

And I realized a while down the road, that it’s neutrality.

Neutrality is missing.

I have to go from hating myself, to not actively hating myself, to being neutral about myself, to accepting myself, to then being able to sort of like myself, to being able to like myself, to finally being able to love myself, and then eventually the final step is being able to love AND accept myself for everything that makes me, me.

There are so many middle steps.

And society just wants people with mental illness to just “be better” because they don’t want to deal with it or don’t know how to handle it or both and then some.

So toxic positivity reins supreme.

There are countless reasons why society can’t the mental illness’s sad/bad days, but the biggest one is probably because it makes people uncomfortable. 

And people don’t want to be reminded of bad times that make them uncomfortable.

They want sunshine and bunnies and rainbows all the time because that’s comfortable and tolerable.

And goodness, lort forbid anyone be uncomfortable.

Sadness, self loathing isn’t comfortable.

But the thing is that too much positivity, positivity like that, abrupt, not acknowledging sadness exists positivity, is that it’s toxic.

If we were more open to letting people just be as they are – that whole radical acceptance idea, it is what it is mentality, we’d be a lot better off with one another.

Because for goodness sakes, let you, do you – regardless if you’re having a rough time and currently hating yourself.

If you are hating yourself and you hear yourself calling yourself names and wrecking your insides with soul crushing words…

If you are in that position – I’ve been there, I’m sure most of us have at some point, just try for one minute to start to not actively hate yourself.

I actively hate on myself – call myself a “dumb bitch” or a “stupid cunt” in my head.

I started to pause for a moment after I’d hear these types of phrases and just stop everything, simply telling myself that’s not true.

A simple no and then as much silence as I can muster together.

As much of a pause as I can bear and handle and create.

Basically, trying to no longer actively hate on myself.

Trying to get that inner fucking critical voice to shut down.

Trying to quiet the horrors of my own mind.

I am just trying to get the active part to start to retreat and no longer be so active.

And I was also counterpointing that voice in my head.

The neutrality is in the silence though.

Meet it with dissonance and uncomfortability. 

Because I always agreed with that inner voice.

I just took them as truths for my entire life.

I guess I didn’t ever realize that I could disagree with these critics until this year.

I’m working on it.

And they’re lessening, very slowly.

Very slowly they’re showing up a touch less often.

But what’s terrible for me and others out there, is the fact that the voices don’t shut up for any period of time.

Mine don’t quit, ever, because of the schizoaffective disorder.

It doesn’t help because this underlaying, counterproductive bullshit is happening all the fucking time.

And it’s terrible and degrading and it rips me apart some days.

And I still think people around me are talking about me 24/7.

I still can’t really go to the grocery store.

I had a time last year where I could but that dissipated again.

I still can’t be out in public much.

Crowds mess me up.

But the fact is, is that even in retrospect, I don’t have to agree with this fucking narrative all the time anymore.

I can disagree.

I can tell them they’re wrong and how and why they’re wrong and I can hold space for something different – even if it’s just silence or nothing.

It makes me feel better to omit a sense of neutrality rather than self love.

Because I’m not there yet.

I’m not even barely to self like yet.

It gives me the ick to even say that I’m barely to self like because being closer to self like means that I’m closer to self love and that makes me want to puke.

It’s hard when something you’re suppose to love has hated you for so many decades of your life, ya know?

Like how am I suppose to just up and even like something that has actively outright hated me my entire life?

It’s like I’m suppose to accept and love this awful, self abusive part of myself.

And fuck that.

I wouldn’t do that with anyone else.

But I can’t divorce or leave myself I guess.

The only thing left to do is try to change and try to accept that change, however slowly the acceptance takes.

– Keren